(September 09, 2008) Publik, a publishing agency based in Ludwigshafen, Germany, has been using the SoftCare K4 Publishing System for its corporate publishing projects since May of this year. This includes the employee magazine "kontakt" of ABB Germany, the German subsidiary of the global leader in energy and automation technology. Publik is responsible for the design and production of "kontakt", top award winner in the "Inkom. Grand Prix" of the German Public Relations Association (DPRG). The bimonthly magazine reaches some 16,000 employees and retirees of ABB Germany. New K4 integrator cnk networks helped implement the software at Publik and trained users during production, working with K4 trainer Viola Broll.

"I was surprised how easy it is to work with K4," notes Andreas Schwaderer, editor-in-chief of "kontakt" at ABB. "Because of the many features, I suspected the rollout and conversion would take a lot of time and training, but the conversion was trouble-free, and I actually enjoy working with K4." In fact, the rollout only took seven days, during which cnk networks installed the system at Publik and set up the publication. Next, the company provided K4 training for users at ABB and Publik. "The kontakt project was going really smoothly," explains Viola Broll. "When the magazine was produced under live conditions, the users were so well trained that we hardly had any support cases."

The decision to opt for SoftCare K4 was taken by Lutz Hildebrandt, Managing Director of Publik. His incentive for purchasing a publishing system was guided by the need to optimize production expenditures. The company was looking for a proven platform based on InDesign Server that also offered a Web editor feature for remote text editing. "In the end, our selection came down to two finalists: Woodwing's Smart Connection Enterprise and SoftCare K4," recounts Hildebrandt. "We decided for K4 because we knew that K4 represented a long-term solution, which will stay current for many years."

The cnk networks team was equally satisfied. "The editorial team must be able to count on the smooth cooperation between internal and external employees," says Nikolaj Wicker, Managing Director of cnk networks. "We are convinced that we provided the editorial team with an optimal solution by installing K4 and the K4 Web Editor." Now, the designers of Publik can work on the layouts, while external editors can still make changes to the text simultaneously.