Printing Industries of America honored the multi-channel publishing solution of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) with one of this year’s internationally renowned InterTech Technology Awards. In doing so, the association is recognizing a product that goes far beyond the confines of traditional printing. The Prinect Media Manager enables media service providers to move into the growth segment of multi-channel publishing. They can expand their business model profitably and unlock new customer segments by processing order content centrally in a media-neutral format and publishing it via all available online and offline channels. The judges were particularly impressed by the system’s ability to be integrated in an end-to-end workflow, its modular design geared to specific users, and the resulting process-efficiency. 

“As the printing industry continues to evolve, technologies like these are critical to the successful transition from one business model to another,” said Dr. Mark Bohan, Vice President Technology and Research at Printing Industries of America. More specifically, “Our panel admired the proactive manner in which resources and content were managed, with updates being pushed out without any further user action,” he added. 

Prinect Media Manager – one system with a whole host of benefits

The Prinect Media Manager is a media publishing system that can be used to publish the same information in various media channels. Media-neutral image, text, and video data is stored in a database and output for print and online media (websites, tablet shops, etc.) in an automated process. Any changes need to be made only once in the system. This ensures multi-channel publishing is efficient and cost-effective. Users can integrate the system into the existing Prinect print and media workflow. Employees of the media company and those of its customer can access the same file with different functions. This enables parallel order processing, speeds up project progress significantly, and ensures a high level of transparency for everyone involved. 

What’s more, the solution benefits from a modular structure and can be adapted to the user’s specific needs. Optional modules include a marketing calendar for planning campaigns, a cockpit providing central access to all modules and offering external users access to the database via the Internet, and the flow function for straightforward visualization of all project phases.

“Heidelberg helps customers unlock business potential – also outside the traditional printing sector – with creative products. Multi-channel publishing applications enable print shops to open up new customer segments, generate additional orders, obtain better margins, and also improve customer loyalty,” said Jason Oliver, Senior Vice President business area Digital and Prinect at Heidelberg.

InterTech Technology Award – renowned award for innovations in the print media industry

Printing Industries of America first presented the InterTech Technology Award in 1978. Each year, the association recognizes print media innovations in a variety of categories. Heidelberg has received over 30 of all the awards presented over the years for various prepress, press, and postpress technologies. That puts it well ahead of its market competitors and underlines its long-standing innovation leadership in printing along the entire value-added chain.  For further information, go to: www.printing.org/intertech