“High-quality independent journalism is our trademark.” True to that principle, Heise Medien GmbH & Co. KG, one of Germany’s leading tech industry publishers, publishes magazines that include c't, iX, Mac & i, the technology magazine Technology Review, and the multiple-award-winning online magazine Telepolis. The heise online website is also a primary source of German-language high-tech news.
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Optimizing and automating magazine production while simultaneously repurposing content across a multitude of digital channels is a significant challenge for many publishers. And in the case of “print first” processes, it leads to an enormous amount of work. In order to publish across multiple channels in a way that is highly efficient, cost effective, and error free, Heise Medien made the decision to completely overhaul its Heise Medien production processes as part of its “Content First” project.
This involved defining a number of key requirements, which included:
- Standardizing processes across all titles and editorial departments and setting up a central production unit.
- Establishing the means to combine content across the entire company to create new products, such as cross-brand subject-specific dossiers – in a way that is highly automated and not tied to a specific medium.
- Reducing the amount of administrative work involved in producing magazines across all formats, as well as for in-house development of proprietary production tools.
- Focusing the work of each employee on his or her core competence.
All of the proposed measures were designed to increase efficiency in the overall process and shorten production times.