woodwing

For publishing all of its important business publications, HOCHTIEF AG relies on Enterprise, an editorial system based on Adobe InDesign/InCopy.

About HOCHTIEF
Founded in 1875, HOCHTIEF AG is now the third largest provider of construction services in the world. HOCHTIEF has about 47,000 employees and its range of services encompasses four tightly meshed modules: Development, Construction, Services and Concessions/Operations. Yet HOCHTIEF is not merely one of the most successful companies in the construction sector, its name stands for durable construction around the world. Protecting the environment, improving the quality of life and social responsibility are among the chief aims of the company and these aims are successfully practiced around the world.

The challenge
When producing company-related publications, it is imperative for HOCHTIEF to portray the company positively in the public eye, especially to investors and shareholders. Business reports, quarterly reports, environmental reports and customer or employee magazines are important outward portrayals of the company. They must be carefully produced, always at the highest possible technological level. For this reason, the company was looking for an editorial system that can put HOCHTIEF’s high requirements and quality standards into practice.

The evaluation phase
Christopher D. J. Butterfield is project manager for digital communication design at HOCHTIEF AG. He is very familiar with the production elements of high-value print products. Previously, all reports were produced solely using Adobe InDesign, but after a successful test of Smart Communications, a database-based editorial system from the Dutch company WoodWing Software, it was decided to produce business reports, quarterly reports and environmental reports using Smart Communications. Butterfield has very high quality demands: “The business report, for example, is more than just the outward portrayal of the company. It forms the basis for decisions by investors, public relations and the press. In addition, it is an important tool in competing for the best business report of the 'manager magazine'. Because the executive board also works on it, the business report is particularly significant and it receives the most attention, even more than the illustrated brochure,” says Butterfield.

The Implementation
“After we were able to successfully test a demo version of Smart Communications, WoodWing’s German software distributor Impressed GmbH recommended that we seek consultation from the system integrator Jeberien Consulting. Mr. Jeberien made our decision easy. Together with the team from HOCHTIEF, he completed the problem-free implementation in less than a month. The installation of the Enterprise server and the Adobe InDesign/InCopy clients was completed between Christmas and New Year’s Eve 2006. The training sessions of the editorial team took place in early January 2007. The new bilingual business report for 2006 was promptly finished in mid-February 2007,” Butterfield emphasizes. “Because HOCHTIEF employs a very high level of security in order to prevent external access to the central system solution, the implementation of other editorial systems was hardly possible. In addition, only a database-based solution met the needs of the high number of users, access control, versioning and the tracking of changes. The security and flexibility of Smart Communications is hard to beat,” says the HOCHTIEF project manager.

In order to completely utilize the strengths of, the production workflow was modified slightly and the editors were faced with a few changes. Butterfield puts emphasis on smooth operation in all areas: “For the editors, working with Adobe InCopy was something new, because they had previously only worked with Adobe InDesign. Now they could be directly integrated into the editorial workflow, just like their colleagues from accounting. The translators are also completely integrated and the error-prone process of manually entering corrections on the printed paper is a thing of the past.”

Summary
Another important point is increased productivity. “We can now issue the business report in two language versions simultaneously. The tight schedule could only be adhered to by switching to Smart Communications. Simultaneous editing, layout and translation means an enormous increase in efficiency. We see Enterprise as an investment in the future. We can considerably reduce costs and significantly increase productivity,” says Butterfield. “But we did not decide on Smart Communications solely on the grounds of the good price-to-performance ratio. The decisive factors were also the obtainable increase in efficiency, the time savings and the new functionalities for our workflow, such as parallel working, versioning, tracking, production overview, etc. Working in a structured and organized manner is no longer a problem.”

As for the introduction of Smart Communications, Butterfield also praises the excellent cooperation with their DTP agency and the system integrator: “Our DTP agency Creafix and particularly Mr. Gräfingholt have provided excellent service and support during the short implementation period. The cooperation with Jeberien Consulting, the system integrator, was also very good. They were reliable, always reachable, and they implemented the entire changeover in just three weeks.”
 

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