Internet-Based Workflow Operations Expansion

Bill Geller and Les Henderson have joined Flowman Oy to raise Flowman's international presence and establish worldwide sales channels, said the company. Both men are said to have had long and successful track records within the newspaper industry and for many years held senior positions with Autologic.

The development follows the successful implementation of Flowman Oy's systems at a number of Scandinavian newspapers, in particular the company's Software as a Service' (SaaS) technology.

Les Henderson commented: 'The market is awash with mature pre-press workflow products, which provide some distinctive abilities in certain parts of the production cycle.

However, what attracted us to Flowman is that, whilst most suppliers concentrate on offering refined versions of their current products, Flowman's SaaS outsourcing system represents a significant evolution of pre-press and new media management for newspaper and magazine publishers as well as print houses.' He explained: 'The core of the scheme is Software as a Service.

No investment is required in such areas as computer hardware, IT skills, maintenance contracts and software updates.

Users access the service via the internet and the Flowman software processes all the requested pre-press tasks, such as imposition, pre-flighting, validating, approval of proofs, colour corrections and calibration, fan-out compensation and even outputting to a CTP, or a filmsetter at multiple selected print sites.' Henderson added that all those functions are carried out quickly and accurately by the Flowman service system.

With no capital investment, contract printers can create a simple PDF page web upload service that matches their printing press capabilities and then offer it to publishing houses anywhere in the world.

Flowman said that it will also incorporate areas outside the traditional pre-press workflow and can include processing advertisement copy, integration with press controls and advertisement booking systems, for instance.

The package is tailored to suit individual customer requirements, which allows them to focus on their core activities.

Bill Geller commented: 'The advantages of Software as a Service are huge in terms of eliminating large chunks of investment and continuing pre-press IT related costs and removing the need for on-site disaster recovery systems or replication of work.

The choice of payment options is extremely flexible and could be based around a click per item charge (with an item being, for instance, a page), a monthly licence fee or a fee per publication.

The Flowman concept has been well received in the Finnish and Swedish newspaper markets and within a relatively short period it has been taken up by more than 500 titles, including regional and national papers.

Software as a Service is suitable for any high volume pagination application and so we expect magazine publishers and printers to be interested in the system, as well as newspapers.'

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