Norwegian Largest Magazine Publisher Egmont Switches To Production With Ppi Media’s Content-X

Oslo-based media company Egmont Publishing Norway, which is part of Danish Egmont Group and the largest publisher of magazines and weeklies in Norway, will change its print and digital production to the editorial solution Content-X by ppi Media and Digital Collections. The decisive factor for the publisher’s choice was the professional Digital Asset Management (DAM) combined with the fact that content can be entered in a media neutral format in Content-X.

The template-based ppi Media workflow allows publishers to automate their production process for print products. As a whole, Content-X contributes to Egmont’s wish to change its processes to a media-neutral omni-channel workflow. Egmont has a leading position in the Norwegian market in television, movies and cinema, magazines, online newspapers, and publishing. The company publishes many of the country’s oldest and bestselling weekly magazines and comics like Hjemmet, Vi Menn, Bonytt and Donald Duck.

Connecting All Together

Egmont Publishing Norway works with an extensive range of content providers and Content-X enables everyone including journalists, photographers and editors to submit and edit content from any given location. A web browser and an internet connection are all that is needed. The system contains a sophisticated task management. This makes it possible to assign stories to external journalists or order images from photographers via an upload request.

Extensive Pilot Phase

Following on from some demos and workshops, Content-X was one of three candidates considered by the company until an extensive test phase started in February 2018. Its aim was to almost fully implement the solution and to produce an actual magazine. The pilot phase was successfully implemented in May and June 2018 by ppi Media, Digital Collections and BrandMaster (Scandinavian distributor of DC-X), who worked in close collaboration with Egmont Publishing Norway.

The weekly magazine Vi Menn was produced during this phase. Extensive tests were also carried out during this phase to make sure that content produced with Content-X can also be made available to other Egmont companies in Sweden and Denmark without problems.

A Gold Standard

In their search for a new publishing solution, Egmont Publishing Norway had set itself the ambitious goal of achieving a self-defined ‘gold standard’ – meaning the ideal system for content management and production. What emerged from the successful pilot phase was that the Content-X-system could provide the technology needed for being able to work towards the strategic goal of managing content in the best possible way.

“We had started defining our business needs regarding omni-channel content management as well as efficient print production by the beginning of 2017. Content-X was the contender that we felt best met our requirements. After working on a pilot project together, we learned that ppi Media, Digital Collections and BrandMaster are partners that listen to our business needs and provide constructive suggestions,” says Axel Walø, Publishing Director at Egmont Publishing Norway. He adds that Content-X is a flexible system that allows for customisation and scalability to support their needs and makes them fit to meet future challenges in the media industry.

Dr Hauke Berndt, CEO at ppi Media confirms that addressing the customer’s needs has been the overriding goal throughout the project. He says, “We take great care to develop our products further together with our customers. This is an important success factor for us. In this particular case, we were even able to bring forward certain general goals of our Content-X roadmap and implement them in a way that suited the project.”

Digital Collections (DC) is an internationally operating technology company based in Hamburg. More than 180 customers worldwide use DC’s solutions which serve the needs of a wide range of industries such as media and publishing, corporate communications and public institutions. Digital asset management systems to organise and process texts, images audio and video files are amongst DC’s core competencies. Whereas, ppi Media is the market leader in the field of automated newspaper production. BrandMaster is one of Europe’s leading marketing software and solution companies which provides online digital technology for customers who need marketing and brand management software tools to reduce time-to-market, increase control and lower marketing expenses.