IFRA

25 years ago you would have found editorial systems, but full pagination systems in today’s sense of the word did not yet exist. Advertising systems were capable of processing liner ads and to output sorted classifications to film setters in galley mode. How did the ppi story start? Who or what triggered the tremendous success of Pape + Partner Informationssysteme GmbH, as the company was then called?

Peter Pape was and is a visionary. From the day the ppi Media was founded, he has always striven for progress. For the past 25 years, our tradition has been innovation.
Inspired by the idea to promote production automation in the publishing and printing sector, Peter Pape started developing software in 1985 to optimize newspaper planning and production. This resulted in significant savings in time and costs. This concept was very successful, and the 7-man operation from 25 years ago has now turned into a global company that employs more than 160 people.
Our colleagues in our three offices in Hamburg, Kiel and Chicago are working round the clock to develop new solutions. And we are continuing to develop day by day. Let's talk about the future - which is exciting and full of tasks - rather than dwell on the past.

Today, ppi Media’s system solutions could be called the benchmark for software in the field of edition planning, advertising production and production tracking. Can you suggest any reasons for this?

Apparently there is something ppi does better than its competitors.
Of course, with our 160 employees, we're not an industrial giant. But what I can say is that everyone at ppi strives to improve the newspaper workflow successively. Early on we committed ourselves to the goal of being the first to introduce features like automatic newspaper planning, and have since continued to enhance them. Unlike our competitors we are specialists. We focus on the planning and production of print media, without losing track of what is going on beyond the margins of a newspaper on the rapidly expanding internet.
The internet is forcing publishers to rethink on a large scale. Cross-media ad campaigns are increasingly in demand. With AdInvent, ppi has developed a cross-media ad management system for the reservation of ad formats for online, print and mobile. We have introduced a solution to the market which provides a answer to the decline in profits in the industry and which will make publishing companies strong for the future.

For a long time ppi Media exclusively marketed its products in German speaking countries only. All of a sudden ppi Media received its first order from Asia from the “Times of India”. Was it a strategic decision to target this region?

The Times of India is a very special customer and the best example of how a coincidence turned into a strategic development. Debashish Ghosh, CIO of the Times of India, searched worldwide for the best solutions for a state-of-the-art newspaper production. After thoroughly checking all the possibilities, he decided in favor of ppi. Since 2001, cooperation between ppi as a software supplier and the Times of India has been highly professional and, in many respects, exemplary. Today the most important publishing companies in India are amongst ppi's customers. A fact that we are very proud of.

Today, ppi Media does business on a global scale, and its customer base can be found all over the world. However, the North American market developed surprisingly late compared to other markets. Do you see any specific reasons why North American publishers have been so hesitant in the past?

ppi Media entered the American market more than 10 years ago. To be sure, it has taken some time to convince the decision-makers over there of our products. But isn't it normal to show a certain degree of scepticism towards something new?
After selling our cross-departmental, integrative solutions to our first American customer in 2000, we have moved forward rapidly since 2003 after the turbulent economic times following 9/11.
Today, the New York Times Media Group or the Canadian Canwest are just some of our customers on the North American continent.

ppi Media is a long-standing IFRA member and has been actively involved in developing standards. Do standards play a decisive role in the software design of ppi Media solutions?

We are pleased that the IFRA is pushing the topic of standardization in such an exemplary way. We are well-known as 'integrators'. Standards are therefore extremely important to us, and they facilitate our work. Customers, too, benefit significantly from standardization in the field of software. For instance, standardized applications can be replaced much faster and easier by new, state-of-the-art solutions.
But not only do our customers benefit from this. We, too, exclusively use standard interfaces. If our customers do not use standard interfaces, we use a converter to ensure that all interfaces correspond to the correct standards.

Since 2002 ppi Media has been a subsidiary of manroland. Has this move had any impact on ppi Media’s product range or business development?

Before 2002 a number of companies were interested in acquiring an interest in ppi Media. We, the management, had a number of offers on our desks. The fact that in the end it was manroland AG who acquired a majority interest in ppi – Peter Pape, Martin Ruhle and I are minority shareholders – is due to the quality of the offer. What manroland wanted was a strong, independent software partner who would operate on the market as an independent, medium-sized company. And this is exactly what we are doing.
ppi Media controls and is wholly responsible for the development of its products regarding both technical standards and the assignment of its human resources.
Cooperation with our parent company has always been very constructive. manroland opens up significant international markets for us.
ppi does, however, also supply software to customers who use presses from other manufacturers.

Under the code name of "felix", ppi Media made an attempt to broaden its product portfolio to include editorial cross-media workflows. The project has since been abandoned. Would you care to elaborate on this issue?

I am still convinced that the felix concept was OK, although you are, of course, right in saying that the project has currently been abandoned. The technical know-how and innovations in felix have, however, been implemented in other new products developed by ppi. Integration in InDesign or our iPhone application AdInvent are essentially based on the technology used in felix.
We learnt a lot from felix, above all that our efforts were not in vain.

The aim of IFRA’s CCC Concept (Customer Centric Communication) is to help publishing companies to position themselves for their advertising customers as a full-service media agency that does not sell its own media channels only. To what extent has ppi Media’s “AdInvent” product already facilitated this, and what can be expected in the future?

Whereas print and TV were market leaders just a few years ago, today it is the internet and mobile services that are becoming increasingly significant. Collecting information is more up-to-date, interactive and faster, presenting publishing houses with significant challenges. Due to the drop in the number of readers, there is less demand for print ads, although the prices on the growing internet platforms and online services are so low that they can't make up for the drastic fall in profits.
We see great opportunity in these challenges. Why not combine all the media and provide ad customers with new services such as the premium packages I mentioned before. With AdInvent we have developed a software solution that builds bridges and combines collecting information via handy, e-book or laptop with the comfort of reading the newspaper at the breakfast table. Ad customers can therefore reach their target groups quickly, easily and comprehensively, and publishing companies will start selling ads again.
With AdInvent we have gone most of the way, yet we still have a lot of development ahead of us. Even when the media crisis has passed, there will be lots of exciting tasks waiting for us.

Thank you very much for this interview.

The interview was conducted by
Harald Löffler
Research Manager
IFRA GmbH & Co. KG
Business Unit Editorial, Advertising and General Management.