"We are a multimedia company with printing presses." This is how Kirk MacDonald, at ppi's 11th Open Days, described both the Denver Post, where he is Executive Vice President for advertising, marketing and digital sales, and the future of the publishing industry. This was discussed in depth by 150 leading representatives of the publishing industry at ppi's Open Days, which were held on June 27-28, 2011, at the invitation of ppi Media, a manroland subsidiary.

Speakers at ppi's Open Days
Eminent speakers made ppi's 11th Open Days a very special event in the printing and publishing industry. Evelyn Köhler (Mittelbayerisches Druckzentrum Regensburg), Dr. Frank von Appen (SAP AG), Andreas Bossecker (circIT), Gavin Burnett (Gumiyo), Marco Dohmen (DQ&A), Volker Franke (Cellesche Zeitung), Stephan Garre (Rheinische Post), Kirk MacDonald (Denver Post), Ole Olsen (Digital Collections), Stephan Puls (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), Imad Sweidan (Abu Dhabi Media Company) and speakers from ppi presented best practices, successful product demonstrations, strategies and business models.

Application Services
The increasing complexity of business and particularly IT processes has faced publishers with the question of outsourcing technical processes in order to increase efficiency in the long term, whilst ensuring quality and production security. ppi Media's Application Services were installed at Rheinische Post in 2010 and ensure smooth processes, highly available systems and state-of-the-art software. The workflow at Rheinische Post is much more productive and efficient using the new IT systems and processes. Stephan Garre, publishing coordinator at Rheinische Post, said that this would enable them to concentrate on their core business. "The RP Media Group is convinced that with ppi Media it has found the right partner to ensure security, high quality and development potential in the future as well," said Garre.

A main focus was on Content-X, an editorial solution developed jointly by ppi Media and Digital Collections. Editing with Content-X was the subject of three presentations – from theory to practice. The streamlined InDesign-based workflow boasts enhanced usability and efficiency. Media-neutral texts can be published in different output channels in just a few steps, and videos and images archived and published. With Content-X, editing is intuitive and structured. "A solution that is beyond comparison with competitive products. Content-X is self-explanatory, easy to handle, lightweight, fast and flexible," is how Volker Franke, editor-in-chief and managing editor at Cellesche Zeitung, described the editorial software. AdX, too, excelled with a similar strategy. ppi Media's cross-media ad solution was presented as a user-friendly front-end for SAP's IS-M/AM booking system. For instance, the number of input fields for entering and billing ads has been reduced to an essential minimum. A further solution developed in cooperation with SAP and CircIT is the payment solution Consume to Cash, which was presented to the public at ppi's Open Days for the very first time. This payment solution for publishers is based on standard SAP components.

Prepress automation
New products presented at ppi's Open Days such as OM portal, an online portal for entering jobs for print customers, and mediaPreflight, a preflight solution, are also multimedia products that organize, visualize and simplify complex processes on clear user interfaces. Proven solutions can also meet these stringent usability requirements. And even more: With printnet OM and manroland's APL technology, many prepress and press processes are fully automated and are performed without any manual intervention whatsoever. Mittelbayerisches Druckzentrum Regensburg, for instance, has been using this combination of printing press, robot and output management since January 2010.