woodwing

The financial communication agency FIRST RABBIT uses WoodWing's Smart Communications to produce annual reports for many well-known corporations, and is very pleased about its high efficiency.

The annual report is the most important publication in every company and corporation. It should not only convey the dry numbers, but also impressively express the corporate image. At the same time, the content must adhere to a dazzling number of legal guidelines.

From concept to pre-press
The Cologne-based agency FIRST RABBIT focuses on exactly these contradicting demands. It describes itself as a communication specialist for Branding and Awareness, as well as magazines and annual reports. The organization spans the entire field, from concept to pre-press, and from creation to project management consultancy.

The task of the team around manager Dirk Röhricht is to present annual report information with maximum transparency, to as many shareholders and investors as possible. Therefore, the agency is partly responsible for a successful customer’s share position.
 

Platinum award
Röhricht is convinced that printed annual reports will remain the number one corporate communication medium: “It is the herald of the company philosophy and its successes.” To communicate their customer’s success, the agency draws on its experience and knowledge, using custom workflows for annual report production.
And with success: FIRST RABBIT has produced outstanding annual reports for many well-known corporations, and received many awards. In 2007, out of 3,000 entries from 20 countries, the annual report of D.Logistics received the Platinum Award for most creative annual report from the League of American Communications Professionals.

The award-winning annual report of D.Logistics, produced by FIRST RABBIT with Enterprise.

Special requirements
Until recently, annual reports were created more or less manually using QuarkXPress, without any editorial or content management system. The process features very special requirements. Information must be absolutely correct and up-to-date. Organizational demands are equally strong. On the customer side, multiple departments may be involved, such as Investor Relations, Corporate Communications and Finance.

Such a situation generates an extremely high number of concurrent corrections. All these corrections must be processed into the final document. In a traditional process, using individual applications, these change and review cycles can cost 200 hours or more. It is the greatest threat of efficiency and the deadline. In addition, security must be ensured. Not a single bit of information should reach the outside world before the publication date.

Cross platform and open source
With these highly specific requirements in mind, FIRST RABBIT decided to select an editorial system for its annual reports. The goal was to achieve a shorter and smoother review process. Each annual report should have its own up-to-date project files at a central location, where all project contributors could access each other’s work.

The team selected two products, and tested them thoroughly for two months. Finally, WoodWing’s Smart Communications was selected, and not just because of the attractive pricing. Cross platform support was a major advantage, because FIRST RABBIT uses Windows, Mac and Linux. Compatibility with open source systems like MySQL and the Apache Web server make an equally convincing argument.

Source code disclosure was an additional motivation. If necessary, the system could be easily adapted to meet the agency’s special needs. And last but not least, WoodWing’s impressive track record in the publishing industry was a decisive criterion.

Corrections can cost 200 hours or more. Smart Communications reduced this by more than 50%.

Five-day implementation
The Hamburg-based system integrator Jeberien Consulting was selected for the implementation. Röhricht: “We wanted a small company with as little overhead as possible. Jeberien successfully implemented Smart Communications in five days, while the competitor’s product would have been a 30-man-day project.”

Dirk Röhricht was very pleased with the overall result. “The entire process, including training for both employees and customers, took about three months. Support was excellent too.” Since then, FIRST RABBIT has used Smart Communications to produce annual reports for D.Logistics, HAHN, Nemetschek and Praktiker. Customers can now enter corrections themselves, which dramatically reduces production times. Publications are also more up-to-date, because the edit deadline can be moved closer toward the publication date.

Return on investment
Employing Smart Communications for annual reports resulted in a huge ROI. A happy Röhricht: “No more hours and hours of correction processing. We can concentrate again on our core business: creativity, support and high-end production.” He is very impressed with the price/performance ratio, and plans to produce many more annual reports with Smart Communications.