WoodWing Software released the new version 9 of its multi-channel publishing system Enterprise, including the editorial management application Content Station. Based on broad multi-channel experience, extensive usability testing and reflecting the latest trends in the publishing industry, WoodWing – already the front-runner with multi-channel publishing – made another big leap forward to further simplify modern publishing workflows. WoodWing will show the new version at the World Publishing Expo taking place in Berlin, Germany, from October 7-9.

Five years ago, WoodWing Software surprised the industry when it completely overhauled its publishing system with the release of version 6 of Enterprise. By consequently separating content creation from publishing, the core was re-architected for pure multi-channel publishing. At the same time, WoodWing introduced Content Station, a completely new application to support multi-channel editorial workflows. Based on these strong foundations, WoodWing was able to introduce tablet publishing for its customers on the same day the iPad hit the market in April 2010.

Many new customers selected WoodWing´s solution to kick-start their multi-channel ambitions with Enterprise 7 and the subsequent Enterprise 8 release in 2012. Based on this broad multi-channel experience, WoodWing’s product management team spent a lot of time last year conducting market research throughout the world to define the next steps, making sure that WoodWing’s customers can be most competitive for the coming years. These findings made their way into the development of the new version 9 of Enterprise and Content Station, redefining multi-channel publishing.

Content Station 9 maximizes the simplicity of multi-channel publishing
Apart from the many changes under the hood, the new user interface of Content Station 9 is the most revolutionary part of Enterprise 9. Content Station 9 maximizes the simplicity of multi-channel publishing – it takes just three easy steps to publish to a digital channel: Creation of a dossier, authoring of the text and the immediate publication of the article. 

The new user interface allows to see channel specific views with all content and metadata for that channel at any point in the process. Without any effort, users can easily share or duplicate content on component level. It’s now also possible to have separate workflows per channel within a dossier in a fully transparent manner. The integration with channel-specific publishing systems like WebCMS and social media channels is much tighter, allowing a new level of efficiency. The enhanced plug-in architecture makes it even easier to add additional digital publication channels. Editors, designers and managers benefit from the single log-on for all digital channels.

The all new Publish Manager App in Content Station gives a complete overview of the publishing status across the various channels and enables instant control to approve or publish many dossiers at once.

Erik Schut: "We bring multi-channel efficiency to a completely new level”
"Even when we introduced Enterprise 6, we were clearly ahead of the curve – many people had trouble understanding the purpose of Content Station, a new kind of application focused on multi-channel publishing,” said Erik Schut, President of WoodWing Software. ”In the past 3 years, we have seen a tremendous embracement of the multi-channel functionalities of Content Station providing us lots of useful feedback and the energy to make the next leap forward. With the new version, we bring multi-channel efficiency to a completely new level and enable publishers to integrate all their publishing activities in a single organic and transparent editorial workflow, giving online and social media the same footing as print and digital publishing.”

A selection of images showing the principle is available in a WoodWing Elvis DAM collection at https://elvis.woodwing.net.

Helping publishers to monetize online content
Making digital channels an integrated part of the general publishing process, the new version also enables publishers to tap into the increasing revenue opportunities on the Web and other channels. According to a recent study by the Reuters Institute, the willingness to pay for online news has increased. The percentage of Web users in the United Kingdom who paid for online content had increased from 4 to 9 percent during the last 10 months, while in the U.S., this rate increased from 9 to 12 percent (Germany: 6 to 10, France 8 to about 13 percent). With future versions of Enterprise, WoodWing will continue to support publishers to publish and promote their content across channels.