Wyndeham Press Group adopt Vio's TrackSend software

The Wyndeham Heron web offset plant in Maldon, Essex, is the first of eight sites to benefit from an enterprise implementation of Vio’s TrackSend – the software enabling closely managed digital media file distribution.

This site alone prints around 50 titles each week and has Reveal, Autocar, Printweek, PR Week, Time, Harper’s Bazaar and What Car? on the press schedule.

Digital media files containing final versions of editorial content and adverts can flood in from multiple publishers in a very small time frame. They are then re-distributed internally to the electronic plate room for press set-up.

Pre-press controller Susan Mears manages the intensive file trafficking operation at the Heron site and acknowledges that since TrackSend went live she has gained much more production control.

“Take companies like Haymarket” Susan says. “Their Hammersmith office sends editorial files, while their Teddington office feeds us ads. Both offices now have real-time access to the Haymarket production folder in TrackSend. We can all see what’s been sent, when it was sent and by whom.”

Mears adds: “Already TrackSend’s audit trail allows my customers to review if, say, a particular area at their end is repeatedly running close to deadline and can take action. It stops finger-pointing as the whole file transfer process is so transparent. Giving our clients access to transfer data also saves us time in preparing reports.”

Pre-press manager Sean Coughlan recalls: “Until TrackSend there wasn’t really a central point for co-ordinating file receipt, or for trafficking across internal operations. We wasted so much time locating files. They come in via FTP, email, you name it. We’d download the files, then reload them to send to internal locations. But that’s all automated now, plus our bandwidth has been freed up, as we now plug into Vio’s file storage cloud and only download files that are specific to an immediate site requirement.

“Once we understood the automation capabilities of Vio’s workflow Adaptors, we created workgroups to receive files directly from the Vio cloud. Implementation was staggered over a month. There was no disruption to press schedules; it involved a few hours of analysis and the rest was handled by Vio.”

With Vio’s history in implementing digital supply chains on Wyndeham sites, Gavin Page, Vio’s European sales director, comments: “Their potential was never really fully realised. The commercial climate had changed and the bandwidth issue showed there was a clear need to review.

“Wyndeham now has a simple-to-operate, integrated, centralised file delivery and management system that is already delivering obvious labour-saving benefits.”

Wyndeham Group technical director Barry Fitzpatrick is pleased with the strategic benefits. “The Grange sheet-fed site can handle heavy laminated covers, while Heron is geared for medium- to long-run text sections. Through TrackSend, we now centrally receive all the job components and store them in the Vio cloud. The background automation sets up a job ticket number, but will allow, say, the cover files to be patched over to the Grange site in West Sussex, while the page files can be sent to Heron in Essex; yet all remain under the same job tracking reference.”

Fitzpatrick adds: “In terms of scale, we’re handling around between 35,000 and 50,000 PDFs a month, which typically mops up around 200GB of bandwidth. The Vio servers now handle the bulk of that. It’s covered by the service level agreement, and it’s our insurance for disaster recovery.”

Coughlan is now planning for imminent roll-outs. “Soon we’ll be live with auto-email ‘file status’ alerts. We’re also migrating all our FTP traffic to TrackSend. Whatever channel the customer uses, their inbound files will land in a TrackSend managed workgroup, so we can continue to fine-tune our production and provide an even better client service.”

Fitzpatrick sums up: “In this business, media file distribution is mission-critical. It made sense to centralise control, reduce costs and improve services. By working with Vio we’ve achieved this. The work started on the Heron site has effectively created a central media file repository infrastructure for the whole group.”