Case Study
SNP Best-set Deploys XyEnterprise’s XPP to Take Journal Publishing to a New Level
SNP Best-set Typesetters Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of SNP Leefung Holdings Limited. It is
one of the leading prepress and printing service providers in the global market, with clients in
Europe, the United States and Asia. SNP Best-set supplies a comprehensive range of services for
publishing and printing, in particular scientific journals, technical journals and books.
SNP Best-set is headquartered in Hong Kong, with production facilities in Guangzhou, China. Their
staff of 300 produces 400,000 finished pages for publication annually. Publishing and printing
services range from project management, copyediting and typesetting to imaging, as well as
printing and binding. Customers include Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Elsevier, and John Wiley & Sons,
to name a few.
SNP Best-set’s complete system is designed to meet the needs of journal customers. Journals are
developed as a series of articles by staff and outside contributors for the journal publisher. These
articles can be written with a variety of tools, from handwritten text, to automated manuscripts in
Word or, in some cases, XML formats. The articles are then reviewed by the journal publisher and
are typeset. From the typeset manuscript, they are reviewed, edited and given final approval. Once
approved, they are assembled into a journal, paginated and produced. The entire publishing
process can often take up to four days to complete.
 The Business Challenge |
⇑ top |
SNP Best-set determined that in order to meet the needs of journal publishers, they needed to provide a solution that offered both speed and quality. In today’s fast-paced business environment, one key strategic advantage is delivering the most current, accurate and timely information possible. To do this, journal publishers are demanding faster turnaround times for both article production and publishing output. SNP Best-set was using a desktop publishing platform that was neither efficient nor timely. They were looking for a way to automate production, which in turn would allow them to shorten the window from creation to final delivery.
| The Xyenterprise Solution |
⇑ top |
SNP Best-set implemented a highly automated Journal Article Production system using XyEnterprise’s XML Professional Publisher (XPP) software. The goal was to provide more efficient composition of journal articles, as well as the assembly of these articles into complete journals for print and Web distribution.
As an Asia-based company, SNP Best-set is able to take advantage of a time zone that puts them, on average, 8 to 12 hours ahead of its customers. This provides a comfortable window in which a publisher can develop a manuscript, complete it by 5 p.m., send it to production, and have it returned and ready for review the following morning. With XyEnterprise’s XPP system, SNP Bestset was able to meet these automation needs.
The system has three major components: a stage that analyzes the data for style and linguistic correctness, a conversion program that converts the data to an XML structure based on a unique schema developed between the SNP Best-set engineers and the publishers, and an automated composition and management process based on customer, product, journal and article. The process is completely automated to the point that the only manual processes in the system are exception handling and quality verification.
The system enables SNP Best-set to automatically render source XML and non-XML content into finished materials in print and PDF format. Using the XPP XyView interactive workstation, users can make changes and recompose only those lines or pages where changes are required. SNP is able to utilize XPP’s ability to publish in multiple languages (including Traditional and Simplified Chinese) - a key benefit of the XPP solution.
The system has been in full production for approximately four months, with new publications added monthly. After a small investment in time to set up the fully automated system, Best-set has seen production time cut from four days to just three hours for processing complex articles and graphics.
Best-set now plans to begin a similar automation program for the production of scientific educational textbooks. XPP has enabled this high level of automation through its powerful logicdriven pagination. By adding a high level of intelligence to the page-making process, Best-set is able to produce completely paginated articles and journal booklets, including complex tables, graphics, and mathematical formulas. This creative use of technology, combined with a highly
skilled technical staff has allowed Best-set to remain competitive, while expanding into new
markets.
XyEnterprise is a leading provider of XML and standards-based content management and
enterprise publishing solutions. Named one of KM World’s “100 Companies that Matter in
Knowledge Management,” XyEnterprise delivers software solutions that provide a fully integrated
workflow, dynamic content import and support for both structured and unstructured data. It’s XML
content management software –
Content@ – and automated XML publishing engine – XPP –
deliver proven, scalable solutions for global leaders in the publishing, technical documentation,
financial, government, aerospace and defense industries. XyEnterprise’s content management and
publishing solutions have been implemented by The Boeing Company, the Bureau of National
Affairs, Gulfstream, IBM, the U.S. Navy, Sun Microsystems, LexisNexis, and many others. The
company’s headquarters is in Wakefield, Massachusetts, with locations throughout North America,
Europe, Pacific Rim and Latin America. For additional information, please contact XyEnterprise at
781.756.4400 or visit
www.xyvision.com.
Copyright © 2006 XyEnterprise. All rights reserved. XyEnterprise, Content@ and ProServ are trademarks or registered trademarks of XyEnterprise. All other product and/or company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective holders.
