May 2, 2005 -- Vio Worldwide, the Digital Supply Chain company, has today launched a radical new solution to slash the cost of sending colour ads to the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday, Evening Standard, London Metro, Loot, and Ireland on Sunday newspapers, all published by Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL). Combining the Remote Director colour-managed soft proofing solution from Integrated Color Solutions (ICS), with the Enfocus PitStop library, and Vio’s own Digital Workflow Suite to manage and automate the delivery of the ad to ANL, Vio has created Vio Certified Soft Proofing (VCSP) – the world’s first end-to-end, colour-managed, preflighted and Certified, digital supply chain for colour advertising. The breakthrough was Associated Newspapers accepting, after three months’ rigorous testing with a group of colour advertising suppliers, that VCSP digitally-delivered soft proofs are every bit as good as traditional contract proofs. The solution enables advertising prepress suppliers not only to collaborate rapidly with their colleagues and clients on ad creation, but also to ensure that only correctly preflighted and Certified ads are proofed, and that only approved ads are submitted to the publisher together with all the relevant submission information. Richard Horwood, Chairman of Vio, said: “Everyone in the advertising supply chain benefits. The cost of sending colour ads is substantially reduced, stimulating more colour advertising to the publisher. Advertisers and their prepress suppliers save money on the materials, labour and courier costs of traditional contract proofs, and save time by turning around multiple proofs more quickly in the ad approval process. By combining this with preflighting the ad against the publisher’s specs before being sent, the content is also Certified approved for publication, and the approved ad file is automatically delivered to exactly the right place. It couldn’t be easier, and the savings are huge.” Commenting on this new solution, Glenn McFie, Technical Services Director of Associated Newspapers, said: “We listened to our advertising customers. They told us they would send in more colour advertising if we could find a way of reducing the cost without compromising the quality and security of a proper contract proof. The VCSP solution achieves this, and we have therefore accepted that from now on it will be the alternative way for advertisers to send us full colour ads.” Speaking as a prepress supplier of ads to ANL, David Bedding, Pre-press Director of TfG (The Facilities Group), part of Saatchi & Saatchi, added: “The VCSP solution is enhancing the way we produce and despatch colour ads in addition to saving the expense of using a preferred ANL supplier and the timescales involved therein. This also solves the problem of the time it takes to get proofs delivered to our clients for comment and approval. Using 2 VCSP, we can now collaborate with our creative agency colleagues and the advertising client on three or more high quality colour proofs for an ad in a single day – a process that previously would typically have absorbed at least a half a day for each proofing cycle. “Being involved with Vio and ANL at the early stages of this project we were able to help guide and develop VCSP to the point where it became a product that could be brought to the UK national newspaper market as a viable proposition. Although the ability to deliver files electronically has been with us for a number of years, we have always needed to courier the final contract proof to the publishers, this often arriving after the publication has printed. Furthermore, the validation process employed by VCSP gives us quality assurance and confidence in the proof allowing our staff and clients to make accurate colour assessments when developing a campaign.” Jeffrey Silverman, CEO of ICS commented: “We are delighted to have contributed to this transforming event in the advertising supply chain. Our Remote Director software has now been proven on both sides of the Atlantic to dramatically reduce the cost and time of proofing cycles for our customers. By combining this with the leading preflighting and automated delivery solutions, Vio has created a ‘must have’ solution for everyone serious about streamlining and enhancing colour advertising production.” Saskia Desmet, Director of International Sales at Enfocus stated: “Vio’s licensing of the Enfocus PitStop library has enabled Certified PDF workflows to be integrated into solutions such as VCSP. This type of integration is extremely important in the industry as it allows more controlled delivery of Certified, production-ready files into publishers. That can only lead to major savings in both time and money.” Further information about Vio Certified Soft Proofing and other Vio Digital Supply Chain solutions is available at www.vio.com.