Summit Professional Networks: Streamlined InDesign Workflow to Support Monthly Magazine Production and XML Delivery

Keywords: workflow, XML early, InDesign, magazines

Background

Summit Professional Networks supports the growth and vitality of the insurance, financial services, and legal communities by arming professionals with the knowledge and education they need to succeed at every stage of their careers. This B2B media and information company publishes 12 magazines and 150 reference titles. The company also operates websites, mobile sites and apps, hosts a dozen conferences providing face-to-face and digital events, and provides online information services giving professionals multi-platform access to critical resources, including

• professional development

• education and certification

• prospecting and data tools

• industry news and analysis

• reference tools and services

• community networking opportunities

The organization required a streamlined workflow solution to produce content for its magazines, books, and websites. Generating both pages and back-end XML was not something that could be sustained with its in-house staff and budget. Adobe InDesign is the publishing software that Summit Professional Networks implements across its product lines. Achieving a streamlined workflow solution based on InDesign was a strict requirement. Moreover it was Summit’s goal to focus on its core competency by directing its staff to develop the brands' design aesthetics, its next generation of digital and mobile products, and the user's experience with its products. Partnering with KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. allowed for an effective resource to augment its production needs and fuel growth.

 Solution

The Publishing Lab at KGL outlined Summit’s previous workflow steps, which were based on in-house staff laying out individual articles and issues in a manual and labor intense process. KGL’s technology and production staff in Chennai India now streamlines InDesign production, employing a series of templates that enable content to flow into the page-making process. Using an elegant Dropbox-based file-transfer workflow and notification process, team members in India are alerted when content is ready for production. 

The InDesign templates created by the Publishing Lab at KGL provide the necessary layout and design components required for Summit’s content. The workflow also provides the back-end content structure, generating valid XML for delivery to Summit’s various websites.

Result

KGL paginates several thousand magazine pages for Summit Professional Networks and 2200 pages for its annual 3-volume 2014 Tax Guide, and several thousand other pages for its Professional Publishing Division’s book and e-books. Streamlining the production process with off-shore project management and design has decreased time-to-market for Summit’s products and reduced cost and workload for its in-house staff, allowing them to focus on content acquisition, development, and enrichment. The current process flows content directly into the necessary InDesign template, producing both style and structure for downstream delivery to print and digital outputs.