Van Gennep and media asset management specialist dutchsoftware.com announce a strategic partnership which will provide broader solutions for publishers in process management and workflow. The first phase of the relationship will see Van Gennep's flagship workflow solution seamlessly integrated with asset management system, Elvis, from dutchsoftware.com.

"Elvis is the perfect complement to PlanSystem3 and its forthcoming successor PlanSystem4," comments Gerda Oppewal, CCO with Van Gennep. "With PlanSystem we pride ourselves on providing a very simple, user-friendly tool that streamlines the publishing process, whether for a handful of users or hundreds and whatever their role or function in the production chain. Elvis is very similar in concept and application, using intuitive programming, visually appealing interfaces and familiar processes to ensure users can pick it up and run with it in no time at all."

With current international installations ranging from small agencies to large corporate and publishing organizations, Elvis has been designed with the emphasis on visual simplicity and advanced indexing for flexibility in storage and retrieval. Built on industry standard protocols, the system stores all media formats including images, xml, video, articles and print layouts in one system, employing advanced Search Engine technology, rather than traditional database coding, to maximize its usability.

"You might describe it as the Google of media asset management," explains Bastiaan Born, commercial director at dutchsoftware.com. "We started it from scratch with the aim of creating an enjoyable searching experience that can be customized by each user to make it the most effective tool for them day to day. Combining up-to-the-minute search engine know-how with expertise in media formats and emerging technologies, we have developed a simple, intuitive and reliable system that visualizes very large files in very lightweight manner."

For both companies the collaboration will provide the ideal platform for market expansion and awareness. "We are a young company that will certainly benefit from the excellent reputation Van Gennep has built up in its 20 years of operation. But we also feel that we can enhance this reputation by providing PlanSystem users with instant, reliable and safe access to their digital assets," comments Born.

PlanSystem was designed from the outset to boost productivity, save time and increase profitability for publishers and creative services by providing precise control of the planning and workflow processes involved in production. All versions of PlanSystem provide real-time communication between everybody in the value chain including outsourced services, across town or across continents, to streamline processes and optimize resources.

According to Oppewal, the partnership is a timely and strategic move aimed at helping Van Gennep customers to remain current and competitive. "With the publishing world evolving at high speed, our customers are now working in video, web and all manner of media formats. The intelligent storage of all these materials is a massive undertaking and vital to effectiveness. With their similar approach and compliant technology, we evaluated dutchsoftware.com as the ideal partner in this endeavour – no surprise that creating the connectivity between PlanSystem and Elvis has proved to be very straightforward."