IFRA

Answering is Saxotech Director Glenn Allart Andersen.

WAN-IFRA: Does Saxotech offer a stand-alone DAM solution?

Glenn Allart Andersen: Saxotech offers Mediaware Center, a stand-alone workflow management system, with incorporated Digital Asset Management system. Via our import robots we can monitor multiple channels and through these robots make all digital material available for the editorial staff from one place – the Mediaware Center (MWC). From MWC the editorial staff can see the status of the asset, edit or work with the digital asset, create different versions and at the end publish the asset to the desired channel – website(s), mobile platform etc. All assets are archived as well.

WAN-IFRA: What are the strengths of your DAM solution for news publishers?

Andersen: Saxotech Mediaware Center can be used as a stand-alone solution, giving the total overview of all assets, see where the assets are in the editorial workflow and very easily publish/export them as written above to multiple channels. You still have the possibility to store your assets physically at different places or different servers, but your editorial staff doesn’t need to know where. All storage/placement information is stored and handled in the Mediaware Center. Previewing can start immediately and access to editing the material can be regulated depending on the asset’s status. This gives you total control of the available assets.

As an integrated solution, when all your editorial material is handled in Saxotech’s Mediaware Center you will have the optimal solution to support your workflow. In this solution you e.g. have the article and planning module in Saxotech MWC available. This makes it possible to drag and drop assets on articles and publish them together to different news channels. The system also allows you to create editorial ideas or story packages and relate them with assets. As we showed at IFRA 2009, this makes it easy to cover big media events like for instance a soccer cup final, where lots of editorial materials are created and worked with – print and online articles, photo galleries, video clips, pdf-background information, links to e.g. youtube.com, and still have the total overview at one place: Saxotech Mediaware Center. Since the database keeps track of the assets whereabouts you can at all times see, where your asset is in the editorial flow, if it is related to one or more articles/idea’s/stories and where and when it is published.

WAN-IFRA: Is it easy to integrate your DAM solution with systems from other suppliers?

Andersen: Saxotech MWC can export data in all kinds of different formats. We follow international standards thus securing easy integration with other suppliers. Saxotech Mediaware Center supports the most commonly used export formats / integration techniques like e.g. XML, RSS, SOAP or Webservices.

WAN-IFRA: Once the contract has been signed, approximately how long does it take for a publishing client to begin working with your solution?

Andersen: The total implementation time depends on the complexity of the solution and also the knowledge of the IT department at the client’s side. With regard to asset management as a stand alone project, it will normally take between 2 to 4 weeks to have everything up and running. A totally integrated solution with all editorial modules will of course take longer time.

WAN-IFRA: How much training is required for a publication's staff to start using your solution?

Andersen: Because a lot of technique is dealt with “behind the scene” using the system as a “normal” staff member is very easy and intuitively. Half a day of training is normally sufficient to work with the system as a normal user.

WAN-IFRA: Approximately how many titles are using this solution globally, and would you please name three of them?

Andersen: All customers who use Digital Asset Management in our system, use it as in integrated part of their editorial workflow – as a part of their localised version of Saxotech Mediaware Center.

We have approximately 1000 titles running our software globally. Three customers are: Belingske Media, Denmark; Magdenburger Volksstimme, Germany; and Can West, Canada.

WAN-IFRA: What developments are you working on in this area now – any planned updates for the near future?

Andersen: We recently released our newest version Mediaware Center version 6.5 (December 2009), where we have improved our integration possibilities dramatically and have introduced Channel Management. Channel Management makes it very easy to create different versions of the same story/video and publish these different version to the suitable digital channel.

In version 6.6 that is due to be released after the summer holiday, we focus among other things on improving our otherwise excellent digital asset archiving and in general we focus on making tools that optimise workflow efficiency and make it even more easy to exchange materials between members of media groups.

Interview conducted by Brian Veseling, senior editor for Publishing, Editorial and General Management and WAN-IFRA Magazine.