FARNELL INONE CASE STUDY

Faced with implementing a revolutionary product content management and publishing solution capable of handling around 200,000 unique items and more than 30 thousand high resolution images, Farnell InOne, a Premier Farnell Company, knew that it faced a complex challenge. 4 years after the project started, and having successfully implemented a state-of-the-art solution, Dave Howarth, Publishing Systems Manager at Farnell InOne explains the challenges they faced and the benefits they are now reaping.

With new technology a business learns very quickly that it is not just the implementation of that technology that needs to be considered. More often than not, a new way of working must be developed, which can be the most difficult factor for any business to effectively carry out. Farnell InOne have prided themselves over the years in being at the forefront of installing and implementing new technology and have learnt along the way that getting people to embrace new systems, and the processes that come hand-in-hand with new technology is one of the biggest challenge of any implementation.

Four years ago, as one of the world’s leading distributors of electronic and maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) products, we realised that to grow and prosper we had to change our existing publishing system into a Global Enterprise Content Management System (STEP) capable of handling multiple productions in three languages and for different publishing media. The system that we had was an unsupported application which had evolved and grown as the business developed. The system was linked into Quark, which enabled us to meet existing cataloguing needs – however, the problem was that as our businesses expanded geographically and as those business needs grew to accommodate an increase in product lines, the publishing system couldn’t cope with the increasingly varied and higher volume of sales and marketing collateral that the organisation needed. The result was that the production team often had to start working on the following year’s catalogue before the catalogue they were working on had even hit the streets. Although this system was cost effective it was not efficient.

The project to revolutionise our publishing systems began with a full review of our requirements. One of our main goals was to be able to produce 6 core paper catalogues in 3 languages with 22 variants across different channels. Whilst our immediate focus was on printed media we realised that in order to achieve this, we would need a system which would allow us to publish both paper and e-media catalogues in multiple languages from a single system. While our existing system enabled us to create multiple language variations we had to create a different database for each language variation – this was complicated, time consuming and inefficient.

Having outlined the business requirements we researched the market and considered our options. We recognised that Stibo A/S was well established as one of the market leaders in this type of publishing system. Previous enquiries into automated publishing systems had enabled us to build an embryonic relationship with their technologists, so we decided to explore how they could help Farnell InOne.

Stibo A/S, which comprises enterprise content management experts Stibo Catalog, print specialists Stibo Graphic and CCI, a world renowned newspaper publishing house, has more than 200 years of experience in developing and implementing publishing solutions. This was an important consideration for Farnell InOne, because despite the claims of some technology vendors that systems can be live and bug free in days, we realised from the start that what we were embarking on was a lengthy project and was not simply about delivering technology. In the end, we decided the technological solutions that we needed in terms of data management and printing could both be provided by Stibo.

Due to the complexity of the project, however, we realised the implementation of the technology was not the only thing we had to get right. Bringing in new processes and effectively managing the related workflow changes to enable us to benefit fully from the new technology was equally as important. We decided that we needed to find a partner, rather than just a supplier, that would be there to support us throughout the entire process. Having implemented many of these systems over the years, Stibo’s credentials were unrivalled.

After a consultation period, we decided to purchase the Stibo Catalog STEP Enterprise Content Management platform. During the production of the first round of catalogues we also implemented the ePrint Services publishing system from Stibo Graphic. This combination would enable us to gather, verify and publish our product data, which is now in excess of 200,000 unique product lines.

Using the new technology our product managers are able to manage all of the content via a single application, using our network of globally located staff to translate product details into the language variations without ever needing to move it from the STEP database. Rather than using different databases for building each language variation, STEP enables our catalogue creation teams to spend all of their time building catalogues.

Using this new technology we have also been able to automate the data verification process. This dramatically reduces the time required to check each line and it delivers considerable competitive advantage by increasing our ability to compete on the latest prices and reduce the lead time to produce each book. Using Stibo ePrint Services we can now control our print activity throughout the process, enabling the review and sign-off of completed pages digitally. It also provides print and catalogue managers with detailed real-time progress on the entire job, reducing the time that we take to publish our catalogues by anything up to 50 percent.

We had created an entirely new way of working and this is where the partnership that we have forged with Stibo over the last four years has come into its own. They didn’t simply implement the software and walk away – it wasn’t simply a case of ‘the software works, this is how you use it’, experts from both Stibo Catalog and Stibo Graphic have been there at every stage of the process to help and advise. They have worked with us across the organisation to offer advice on how we can maximise the use of the technology we installed and improve efficiency.

The total support for adapting working processes to fit the new technology has worked. In the end we had to set a deadline at which point there would be no going back – it was a phased implementation and about 20 months into the project we abandoned the old way of working and the new catalogue production process has been live ever since

The challenges that we have faced throughout this project have been testing, but the results have been worth the effort. We have achieved our initial aims of getting all the catalogues onto STEP and reducing the time and cost of producing each of them, and of producing the first set of master CD ROM based catalogues (the first of which was launched in the second quarter of 2003, nearly three years into the project). Another benefit has been that we are much more equipped to produce the varied sales and marketing collateral that the market at large requires. The upshot of aligning the processes and workflow alongside the new technological solution is that we have been able to reduce much of the day to day stress that our old manual solution caused our users. We are also able to increase the amount of minilogs we are able to publish to cater for specific markets, product sets and industries.

The ongoing support that we have had from Stibo A/S and the complete dedication of our staff has enabled us to successfully attain our goals

With four years of experience under our belts and the system and processes being embraced by the users we are now looking towards the challenges and the benefits brought by upgrading to Stibo’s latest version of STEP, integrating the system across a wider group of users, including the Americas and further streamlining the feeds to the e-channels.

Ends