WoodWing editing system - Expertise for our customers

The WoodWing Studio editing system simplifies the workflow in media production: different areas such as editing, graphics and project management work together here. All work steps take place directly in the system - content can be easily adapted and then played out in various channels. This leads to more effective processes and an average saving of 50 per cent in effort and costs. The system's workflow is based on InDesign and InCopy. This means that WoodWing can be used independently of an installation on the computer.

Customised solutions for our customers

We at RYZE Digital have been working with WoodWing since 2006 and are convinced by the solution and the success of the editing system confirms our early decision. We currently have around 40 customers who use WoodWing Studio. We use the product in the magazine and reporting areas. What makes it special: RYZE Digital also docks in-house developments such as newsroom planners and table workflows to the system. This customised solution, the RYZE Online Publisher, offers our customers flexible solutions. As we also use WoodWing internally, we can deepen our expertise throughout - and always offer our customers the best solution.

Thomas Hofacker from the IT team at RYZE Digital spoke to us about the benefits of WoodWing and our agency's extensive expertise in this area.

WoodWing has been in use at RYZE Digital for over ten years. What are the unbeatable advantages of this editing system?

Thomas: WoodWing is based on standard software, which is a huge advantage. Most agencies work with InDesign and therefore don't have to change if they want to use WoodWing. This means that the system can be introduced quickly in most cases. In day-to-day work, another advantage is that all stakeholders work on centralised documents in WoodWing. This ensures greater clarity, as there is no need to coordinate processes by email or send around different versions of documents. Overall, processes are therefore streamlined and efficiency is significantly increased. This is also reflected in the figures: effort and costs are reduced by an average of 50 per cent.

WoodWing is also a very stable system. You don't have to implement every InDesign release directly for it to work reliably. In over ten years, we have never had a significant failure. However, if things do get stuck and we can't get any further in IT, we can rely on WoodWing's support. Another plus point: different service providers can be flexibly integrated. For some customers, we simply act as a system integrator and another agency takes over the further support of the system. In most cases, however, we are involved in the entire process.

Let's assume that the end product is a print magazine. What does the workflow look like?

Thomas: At the beginning of a new product development, there is always a workshop where we ask all those involved in the process the question: What have your work steps looked like so far? This helps us to find out how we can optimise the editorial system for the customer. Our claim is always: the system must adapt to the user, not the other way round. To achieve this, we look at each customer individually. Of course there are standardised workflows, but the focus is always on the uniqueness of the requirements. The evaluated workflow is then transferred to the system using status steps. The individual processing steps are marked with the status. This makes it possible to quickly recognise how far the corresponding file has been processed. This enables the user to track all text and graphic versions.

What role do individual customer solutions play in the WoodWing editing system? What experiences have you had in this area?

Thomas: Customised customer solutions play a major role in our work with WoodWing and we are now very experienced in this area. We usually find that we can fulfil all requirements in tenders. If this is not the case, we quickly find a customised solution. But we are not blinded by our business: if we are convinced that another editing system is more suitable than WoodWing, then we offer it to our customer.

What expectations do you have for your future work with WoodWing?

Thomas: We want to continue to offer our customers the best experience when using WoodWing. And we want to continually expand the system with the functions that are still missing. In theory, this could be the case with the next customer because they have a new requirement.