Multimedia ad and editorial solutions attracted a large number of representatives from the publishing industry to ppi Media's stand during the IFRA Expo 2010, which was held from October 4-6. ppi Media is a subsidiary of manroland. The visitors were impressed with the high level of integration in existing workflows.

Free slots were few and far between. "During the three days at this year's IFRA Expo 2010 we held more talks than we did at past events lasting four days. Our cross-media product features, mobile strategy and ongoing investment in more functionality and enhanced user interfaces for our classic products have paid off," says Norbert Ohl, COO at ppi Media, summing up the exhibition. Content-X, the joint solution for cross-media editing by ppi Media and Digital Collections, and the integration of IS-M/AM, SAP's ad booking system, in the AdX user interface, contributed significantly to this success. "By integrating SAP's solution in ppi's cross-media ad reservation solution, we have merged two systems into an elegant frontend that is easy and intuitive to operate and, like Content-X, is good value for money," says Norbert Ohl.

Three contracts in three days
ppi's new concept is a winner. The increasing significance of smart workflows is reflected in the three contracts which were signed during the IFRA Expo 2010. The Schwäbische Zeitung decided to install ppi's state-of-the-art magazine workflow, while the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung decided in favor of ppiTrack, ppi's smartphone application for mobile production tracking. In line with the installation of APL (Automatic Plate Loading), ppi's output management system printnet OM will be installed at Herold Druck in Austria during the coming weeks.

Strong innovations in ppi's Publishing Solutions
PlanPag in particular, ppi Media's central planning and production solution, stood out due to its new user interface and enhanced functions. "Our new PlanPag offers an intuitive user interface and can be individually customized. Thanks to the latest version of Unicode, typefaces and characters from non latin fonts are easily handled," says Norbert Ohl, describing PlanPag's new features.