How useful are publishing workflow systems to periodical publishers?

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Permalink Reply by Bart Mariner on May 18, 2009 at 9:13am

Hi! Sachin.

A workflow system is always useful and to your question the answer is yes. It helps to reduce errors and smooths the process of gathering content, editing and publishing it. That's so because of a simple feature. A workflow based on people habits or agreements relays on people to its fulfilment. But people may forget thing or may be absent, and a computer-based workflow never forgets.

The extent of usefulness depends mainly on the size of the publication. A staff of three people for a 24 pages monthly publication will find it less useful than a group of magazines with a total staff of 300 and 1000 freelancers. Providers of such systems -the company I work for is one of them- have usually adopted the modular approach in order to simplify the setting-up of the installation and also to reduce the investment needed in a given phase.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Lonier on May 28, 2009 at 11:36am

1) Version control. When people start working on stories and layouts, a system keeps track of the latest versions.

2) Copyfitting. Fitting headlines in the layout view of a text-editor beats pica casting.

3) Backup (business continuity). Imagine working for three weeks on an issue stored on your workstation hard drive that goes blizzzzp a day before release to the printer.

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Permalink Reply by Duncan A. MacRae on May 28, 2009 at 2:51pm

My experience with workflow systems has been both good and bad, and had little to do with the systems themselves, but the manner in which they were introduced to users.

The good experience was marked by the initial development of a relatively simple customized system to govern a small part of the workflow process. Once it had been field-tested successfully and accepted by users, the system was expanded quickly to accommodate other workflow stages, and user confidence remained high.

The bad experience involved a multimillion dollar enterprise-level workflow system that was unveiled without proper testing. Inevitably, users balked at adopting the new system and its effectiveness and functionality were hindered, even as it was improved by user feedback.

I cannot overemphasize the importance of having users buy into the day-to-day use of any content workflow tool. It is common for organizations to think only in terms of functionality, but usability is paramount. Early failures will drive people back to old procedures and leave them hesitant to embrace new tools.

To get back on topic, I do finds these tools useful on the whole. In complete agreement with Michael's comment above, version control was a tremendous benefit when working with simultaneous reviewers and editors.

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