Automated publishing speeds catalogue updates: News from Farnell InOne

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Farnell has published its first catalogues using an advanced new automated publication management system (PMS). The system enables Farnell's publishing team to create up to 1000 catalogue pages per day, whereas its previous software produced just 40 pages per day. The new Farnell catalogues, issued internationally to customers, feature 130,000 products.

The flexibility and speed of the system delivers direct benefits to customers through efficient provision of updated product information, improved data quality and the introduction of a parametric search capability.

It also provides the capability to upload data to the web faster, which means, for example, that new products become available more quickly and that news of obsolete products can appear immediately.

The publication management system consists of a suite of applications from The Stibo Group, which has worked with Farnell, as well as other Premier Farnell Group companies, for some time.

The implementation involved two main phases: the creation of a comprehensive product database, including searchable product attributes, and a publication management system.

The creation of the product database is a significant milestone for Farnell, intended to provide complete transparency of its products worldwide whilst enabling the company to make timely changes to data and pricing information nearer to publication date.

Commenting on the work which has gone into the first edition catalogues, Dave Howarth, Publishing Systems Manager, Farnell, says: "Our biggest challenge was getting the UK publishing and product databases right, inputting and refining all the data to ensure that the technical attributes for each product and the marketing information were correct.

That's not an easy job when you realise that there are over 130,000 products on there! For each product on the database, we now have, on average, eight attributes, which is an incredible amount of detail and has involved 150,000 man-hours to pull it all together.

The time spent underlines the investment which Farnell is making in improving its offering for customers".

Timesaving is a key benefit of the PMS implementation, as is data integrity.

If product data or marketing information is corrected in one place, it is propagated automatically across all other areas where it is used, whether it is in modular format or across already prepared catalogue pages.

This means that staff will no longer have to manually edit each version, which will make the publishing process easier and less prone to errors.

One of the most tangible results is that the publishing team has been able to issue the ten international versions of the Farnell catalogue simultaneously without complication.

Brian Powell, Director of Marketing Services, Premier Farnell Europe and Asia Pacific, is delighted with the results now being realised from the system: "It has given us a huge amount of flexibility, as we can now quickly create new versions of the international catalogues as well as produce direct mail aimed at very specialist segments of our customer base.

Before the new system, we would have had to start completely from scratch, which limited how responsive we could be to new market demands.

This is all part of the Premier Farnell 'Investment for Growth' programme, which is driving the company to provide highly customised solutions to meet the needs of each individual customer".

The PMS system is currently being used by the Farnell publishing and product teams in Leeds with plans eventually to roll it out internationally and to link it with the systems of other companies in the Premier Farnell Group.

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