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Who is Dr. Josef Raabe Verlags-GmbH?
RAABE is an education company and part of the Klett Group. The portfolio includes loose-leaf publications, brochures, electronic media as well as an online portal called www.RAAbits.de. The straightforward materials relieve teachers and school administrators in their demanding and challenging daily work. The content offerings cover all areas from class preparation to school development and school law.
Starting Point
The implementation starting point of the SiteFusion CMS was initially the wish to reduce typesetting cost through partial automation in page makeup (pagination), as well as a standardization of layout and structure. As the project progressed, it also became increasingly clear that customers were expecting more personalized teaching materials in different output formats. To fulfi ll the customer requirements as effi ciently as possible, RAABE opted for an XML-First production including the appropriate and uniform processes in the form of BPMN workfl ows in a second implementation step.
Team
Initially, a core team of two individuals was formed to work on standardizing the structures and layouts, comprising a developer from our implementation partner, pagina, and a production manager from RAABE. Subsequently, a project team consisting of the production project lead, editorial department employees, as well as implementation partner pagina‘s project managers and developers, were brought on board to aid in the implementation.
Goal
Initially, the objective was to decrease the expenses associated with typesetting. However, during the implementation phase, this goal shifted in favor of converting all content into DITA-structured XML data. This process involves automation, granulation, and conversion, ultimately leading to the transfer of the data to target systems.
Rita Herfurth, Team Leader Digital Workflows/ Head of Production @ Dr. Josef Raabe Verlags-GmbH
“The combination of a provider with industry experience, a customizable CMS with publishing-specific standard functionalities, an experienced implementation partner, and a high degree of agile collaboration leads to a custom-fi t CMS for RAABE, which supports us in more and more processes.“
Why SiteFusion?
• Mapping of the complete product life cycle by the system
• Continuous development of new publishing-specific functions
• Close collaboration with the implementation partner pagina GmbH Publikationstechnologien
• High flexibility in customizing
• Customizable BPMN workflows
• Fonto XML editor (+ DITA schema)
• Possibility of connection to ERP system
Challenge
The most signifi cant obstacle was to raise awareness among a large and diverse group of editors regarding the structured content concept and the system. Besides the technical implementation, this full-scale transformation process presents a human challenge. It is crucial to educate employees from all departments about how implementing a solution like SiteFusion can improve and streamline various processes. Despite the challenges, successful implementation was ensured through open communication, transparency, and appropriate training. SiteFusion‘s focus on usability has enabled publishing house employees to adapt to the new environment quickly, thanks to the excellent user guidance of the Fonto XML editor.
Highlights
Today, RAABE employs the SiteFusion content management and workfl ow solution, which includes personalized modifi cations such as the ability to produce QR codes for PDFs, generating new tables in the underlying Progress MarkLogic database, and presenting data as tiles in the settings, among other specialized customizations.
Lisa Dobs, Applications Engineer @ pagina GmbH Publikationstechnologien
“The project has a great dynamic. It’s great fun to work closely with the publisher to integrate the publishing processes piece by piece in the CMS.“
Milestones
1 Selection & Setup
• Evaluation of CMS providers
• Decision for SiteFusion
• Basic setup of the CMS
• Content entry in Fonto XML editor
2 Structuring & Export
• Output of a rough draft to InDesign
• Export to other data formats, e.g. MS Word
3 Linkage & Import
• Mass import of inventory data including metadata
• Linking with the ERP system
4 Rollout
• Use of the CMS and MAM
• SiteFusion is “Source of Truth“ for RAABE