Workflow: Companies Communicate Around the World
January 13, 2009
Last autumn the Manager Magazine presented its readers a "Swabian Lesson". This was the header of an 9-page story on the question how the tech company Bosch succeeds "where other consolidated companies fail". That is to say to earn good money and at the same time assume a "high social responsibility". The author attributed the success of the company to a "sophisticated production network": To name the manner how Bosch cross-links its global activities: New technologies, for example, are developed and tested in Germany, production of these new thechnologies is carried out at low wages in Turkey. Factory managers come, among others, from India, quality standards from Japan.
Published by courtesy of Rainer Burkhardt
How to Optimize International Workflow
Likewise sophisticated is the organisation of the internal communication at Bosch. When Franz Fehrenbach started his work as Chairman of the Board in mid-2003, he undertook the commitment to adapt even the corporate communication to the growing international structure and complexity of the group. For, whereas during the mid-nineties about 53 percent of the worldwide 172,000 Bosch staff members were working Iin Germany, nowadays the workforce adds up to 261,000 people - far more than the half of them abroad. They are working for subcontractors of the automobile industry, and produce power tools and consumer electronics, industrial and building services engineering.
With the growth of the group the magnitude of issues increased, information needs for the staff also grew. In the course of a further development of the communication policy the company newsletter, the “Bosch-Zuender”, was newly designed. The name traces back to the “Magnet-Zuender” of 1887, the company’s first “bestseller”. But in view of the constant growth of the company, the function of the newsletter today more than ever is “to inform all employees on important corporate-wide issues by unanimous messages”, Fehrenbach wrote. The newsletter has to make sure “that all employees around the world get to know as much as possible from each other.”The “Bosch-Zuender” was optically reworked, new elements, new formats and information graphics were added. Three new regional pages since then reflect the activities in Europe, North- and South America and the Asia-Pacific region. The 16-page international front section was complemented by “inserts” for different target groups, the format being similar to the local and commercial section of a daily newspaper. But the biggest challenge was the fact that the Bosch-Zuender should no more be published only in German, but also in seven other languages. By now “Bosch-Zuender” is published in eight languages, among which are Japanese, Chinese, Czech and Portuguese. The production of the „Zuender“ had to be as “sophisticated” as Bosch’s worldwide development and production processes. As a media agency we took great pleasure in developing a workflow and in designing a technical infrastructure, which came up with the complexity of the production. Editors, layouters, graphic artists, translators and picture editors at different sites were connected to a shared system. Since the first international edition in May 2005, this system has proved its worth. Since then we produce in cooperation with Bosch the newsletter every two months.
Editorial Systems Optimize Production
Companies and corporations increasingly count on highly specialized service providers for the production of their employees’ media. Admittedly – as is the case with Bosch – they have their own editorial office with fully-trained journalists, who closely cooperate with their communication department. They collect the news and write the texts. But companies like to outsource layout, production, graphics or translation services, in order to use outside expertise and experience for a professionally produced company magazine. After all, this is not their core competence. But for this procedure it is important that the workflow between principal and agent is perfectly finetuned and well-practised.
A precise planning is indispensable, as it is for every newspaper production process. Therefore we are closely linked-up from Berlin to the Stuttgart based Bosch headquarters. But we are not linked via an expensive dedicated line rather than a flexible and cheap - but safe - VPN connection. The abbreviation VPN stands for “virtual private net”: encoded internet data tunnels which connect the linked parties to each other – at the same time being protected from unauthorized access. So the Bosch editors can write copyfit into our layout design. For their research they use the worldwide web of Bosch communicators: Colleagues reporting on news, events, trade fairs and other company-related news from all Bosch sites.
For the production of the newsletter we use a highly flexible universal system. On the one hand the stability of the technical workflow must be according to that of a big daily or weekly newspaper and it must facilitate a decentralized production. Because in addition to the Bosch-Zünder we also produce the company magazine of Deutsche Bahn. Furthermore we produce the customer magazines of the logistic division of Deutsche Bahn Stinnes, Kraft Foods and the company literature of the car maker Mitsubishi. The system must not restrict creative processes and the media format.
Production on a Professional Level
„K4“ has proven to be a system that offers a good mix of flexibility, expandability and price and can be learnt easily. It is based on the Adobe layout software “InDesign” and the text client “InCopy”. As in editorial systems of publishing houses, everyone involved into the production process sees the InDesign layout, as the layouters in Berlin have constructed it. At a glance, each detail on a page is visible: Captions, info boxes, graphics or subheads. Clearly structured access rights make sure that the work is done step by step. It is precisely defined, who may do what and when. For example, the editor can no more change his text, when it has already been translated. We never need to improvise, the editorial system is safe, structured and facilitates a transparent production process for all people involved.
It is important that the layouter’s telephone does not permanently ring for every knickknack. During the production process we are able to react very flexibly to each modification. We can quickly reschedule, if suddenly issues must be weighted differently, or if an unexpected “story” supervenes. It is not necessary to inform every single editor of the new text length after the layout has been changed: Immediately after the change the editors in Stuttgart are informed by an automatic message on their monitors.
Even if the deadline of the newspaper is unexpectedly advanced for some days, the system helps us to streamline production. And this without everyone being overflown with alert E-Mails, or texts to be shortened frantically and without all this confusion leading to hectically found but boring headlines.
State-of-the-Art Technique Facilitating Advantage in the Marketplace
And just this flexibility is of great importance. For a small agency it is a vital issue to be more creative and faster than the big publishing houses. Therefore we need high commitment and state-of-the-art technique. The investment into K4 payed off quickly – and also for our customers. Since then we are able to offer internationally operating corporations a high-professional editor’s office.
The advantage of outsourced production processes is that specialized agencies bring together bright minds of different disciplines. In addition to the art director we employ a number of specialized info graphic designers, picture editors and journalists, who admittedly do not work exclusively for the “Bosch-Zuender”, but who are permanently available for certain subjects or pages and produce new ideas. Often they meet in front of the wall with the pinned pages of the “Bosch-Zuender” and discuss whether the China map shall be completed by mountains and important cities or how to visualize best the 100 years history of Bosch in the U.S.A.
Likewise in our offices in Berlin translators are doing their work. We exclusively employ freelance native-language journalists – to say it in our company jargon: the “UNO General Assembly”. During their one-week employment they make sure that the news, interviews and reportages have a high journalistic level. Because finally a newspaper will only be read by Chinese or Brasilian employees if it has a high stylistic level and also addresses them emotionally. For further requests the journalists are in contact with the Bosch communicators abroad. Our shortest official channel is the official one. Once the pages are complete, they are sent to the communicators who take over the technical and functional editing. From there the pages come back to us, followed by image processing in our offices and afterwards the printing data are sent to the printing companies. Trucks and planes spread the newspapers all over the world. From the first discussion of issues and subjects to the delivery not more than eight weeks have passed.
Inspiring Example: The Newspaper Editorial Office
For Deutsche Bahn we also rely on VPN (Virtual Private Network). We are responsible for the entire production of their company newsletter DB-Welt. We established a complete editorial office and six branch offices all over Germany from Kiel to Munich employing editors, picture editors, layouters and coordinators who work like a classic editorial office. DB-Welt has twenty different first section pages and eight different editions with a four-page regional section each. It is published eleven times a year with a total print run of 210,000 copies. Six times a year we produce 30,000 copies of the eight-page international edition in English of DB-World. Here too, we rely on the open system K4. With the assistance of this infrastructure the editorial office is able to work close together with the Editor-in-Chief of German Rail. At any time he has access to the current layout. The approval of the pages can thus be extremely streamlined and enable a very efficient workflow.
Since the beginning of last year we offer our customers a new feature: The end products are not only available as paper copies, but also as e-papers. For this purpose we “docked” an additional software to the K4 system. Low expenditure is necessary to generate the e-paper as well as Internet pages from the printing data of the system.
Certainly we are a little proud of the fact that the quality of our newspapers is noticed by others, too. In 2006 and 2007 DB-Welt was awarded the “Best of Corporate Publishing Award (BCP)” of the Forum Corporate Pubshing. We are also successful with the “Bosch-Zuender”: In 2007 it won the Astrid-Award in gold and the “Inkom” Grand Prix, as well as in 2006. Also in 2006, the “Bosch-Zuender” was awarded the “Deutscher PR-Preis” (= German Public Relations Price) of DPRG and the BCP Award in silver. As the best multilingual corporate newsletter the Bosch-Zünder was finally priced with the “Grand Prix 2006” of the “Federation of European Business Communicators Associations” (FEIEA). Without the sophisticated workflow and the technical infrastructre of K4 this would not have been imaginable. Therefore the newspaper makers were as happy about these prices as may have been Franz Fehrenbach about the recognition of the successful organisation of his worldwide corporation Bosch in the Manager Magazin.
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