Swiss Companies Switch to K4 Publishing System

Hamburg, Germany (PRWEB) December 14, 2005 -- Printer and Publisher Rheintaler Druckerei und Verlag AG (RDV) will produce the magazine Marketing & Kommunikation as well as its dossiers with SoftCare's K4 Publishing System. With this decision, RDV replaces its previous system WoodWing Smart Connection Enterprise (SCE) with K4, both based on Adobe InDesign and Adobe InCopy. Another Swiss company, Arnold Design, switched its production from Smart Connection Pro to K4.

Marketing & Kommunikation (MK) is the leading Swiss magazine for integrated communication and the official organ of many different communication associations. In spring 2005, the company decided to implement an editorial system to gain speed and efficiency in its workflow.

As printer and publisher, RDV needed a system to cover both areas with the required flexibility and as little effort as possible. "We bought Smart Connection Enterprise in May 2005 on the recommendation of our former IT service provider. After several months of testing, we decided to switch to K4," says Urs Staudacher, Head of Prepress at RDV.

The fast installation and easy use of K4 were highly appreciated by RDV staff members. "From our previous experiences, we were pleasantly surprised that K4 was so easy and fast to install. We expected a longer and more complicated installation phase when choosing a larger system. But far from it!"
RDV with K4 feels now well-prepared for the future. "With its open interfaces, K4 offers numerous possibilities to automate standard processes. This leaves us lots of room for future enhancements."

Swiss K4 system integrator Topix AG, who has already successfully implemented the system at diverse sites, played an important role in getting K4 at RDV up and running so quickly. "Topix offered us a coherent concept for areas such as editorial office, network and prepress. In addition, Topix proved to be an extraordinary competent and fast support partner. In the future, we will work closely with Topix for all our IT concerns," says Urs Staudacher.

Arnold Design AG Visuelle Kommunikation, an agency for editorial and corporate design based in Zurich, also switched from Smart Connection to K4. From next year on, Arnold Design will produce the customer magazine Bulletin of Credit Suisse Group with K4 and will gradually realize other corporate publishing projects with K4.

"After a detailed evaluation and intensive test period, we are now one hundred percent sure that we have backed the right horse. Technical preparations went smoothly even when connecting external bank service provider with the internal editorial office. It became obvious that security issues concerning access via the various firewall setups were a far bigger challenge than the technical implementation," says Lukas Huggenberg, Project Manager at Arnold Design.

"Our customers want a system which can be easily integrated into the existing environment and ensures high production security," says Dieter Herzmann, Managing Director at Topix AG. "An editorial system ought to support users unobtrusively in their daily work and take care of file handling and versioning efficiently. We recommend K4 to our customers because the system masters these demands brilliantly."