Kontan (Gramedia) selects WoodWing SmartConnection Enterprise for their brand new financial daily

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA (February 26, 2007) — Kontan, part of the Kompas Gramedia Group, one of the largest publishers in Southeast Asia, has selected WoodWing Software's industry leading Smart Connection Enterprise™ Adobe™ InDesign®/InCopy® based publishing solution as its editorial system for their brand new daily newspaper as well as the existing weekly and monthly magazines.

Kontan has been the leading Indonesian language monthly and weekly financial magazine for many years. On February 26, 2007, a brand new daily newspaper will be launched, also called Kontan. It will contain business, investments, and lifestyle news news will be targeting the upwardly mobile financial executive. The circulation will be 100,000 copies per day.

Kontan is part of the Kompas Gramedia Group, Indonesia's leading publishing group and is also well known for its other titles such as Kompas, Warta Kota, Bola, and around 100 national and regional newspaper and magazine titles.

“We are very pleased that Kontan has chosen the WoodWing SmartConnection Enterprise™ over our other competitors after having done extensive research into the best solution for both their existing magazines as well as their newly launched daily newspaper," said Remco Koster, Managing Director of WoodWing Asia Pacific. "Kontan is also the first customer in the Asia Pacific region that uses our recently launched SmartLanguage™ Tools, SmartHyphen® and SmartSpeller® for the Indonesian language, guaranteeing accurate hyphenation and justification as well as greatly reducing spelling errors."

Officials from Kontan and the Gramedia Group said it was Enterprise’s power and versatility that most appealed to them.

"It was clear for us that WoodWing SmartConnection Enterprise™ is the solution for the future because of its complete functionality, open architecture, and usage of the latest technologies such as Adobe InDesign® Server, enabling us to subedit and copyfit via the web," said Yopie Hidayat, Managing Director and Managing Editor of Kontan. "We were equally impressed by the amazing speed of implementation, which made it possible to get our new daily newspaper off the ground so quickly whilst at the same time moving the existing magazines to the new system as well."

Serious Technology, the WoodWing partner for Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, is handling the entire project management, including training and installation. Serioustec's professionals trained the Kontan staff on the use of InDesign and InCopy, as well as Smart Connection Enterprise.

“I am very impressed and pleased with John Fong and the other Serioustec project members who have done an excellent job with this project,” Koster said. “They set up the magazines in a very short time, whilst setting up and testing the brand new newspaper and its complex workflow processes at the same time. Everything took only two months from start to finish, including the brand new newspaper, and everything is running very smoothly.”

“Smart Connection Enterprise offers a host of benefits to any newspaper and magazine operation, and that will certainly be the case with Kontan,” Koster added. “Their newspaper workflow will be highly efficient right from the start, which will help make the new newspaper a success. At the same time the workflows of the existing magazines have been streamlined for efficiency and improved design quality.”

About WoodWing

WoodWing Software specializes in software solutions for the publishing industry. WoodWing excels in innovative and flexible editorial solutions that help efficiently produce print and online publications. The company’s flagship product, Smart Connection Enterprise, differs from traditional editorial solutions because it has been engineered from the ground up, utilizing the latest technologies offered by the Internet age. Newspaper experience that goes back more than 20 years, combined with the latest technologies, has led to a powerful editorial system with a core based on XML and open technology. WoodWing has offices in The Netherlands, Kuala Lumpur and the United States. Customers are served through select partners, and in the U.S. through WoodWing USA.

Contact:

Remco Koster (remco.koster@woodwing.com)

WoodWing Asia Pacific Sdn. Bhd.
Level 40 Tower 2, Petronas Twin Towers
Kuala Lumpur City Centre
50088 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Office: +60 3 2168 4336
Fax: +60 3 2168 4201

This release was published on openPR.