Pre-press Case Study

Overview:

This Auction House is the world’s leading art business – a name and place that speaks of extraordinary art, unparalleled service and expertise, as well as international glamour. Founded in 1766, this Auction House conducted the greatest auctions of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, and today remains a popular showcase for the unique and the beautiful. The Auction House has 85 offices in 43 countries and 14 salerooms around the world including London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Geneva, Milan, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Dubai and Hong Kong.

Problem:

The work involves making clipping paths (cutouts / silhouettes) around the images that they print in their catalogs, populating/laying out catalogs and display online on their website. Their in-house studios work towards achieving these goals. However, this non-core functioning activity was sapping them off their resources that could be better utilized for marketing driven and high level studio activities.

Type of Customers/Subscribers:

Customers for the Auction House vary from rich to big business tycoons.

Solution:

The solution was to provide this prepress service of clipping path and ensure that the studio was free of this non-core repetitive activity.
Also the other studio work that consumed a lot of time was making catalog layouts. Part of this work needed to be transferred to offshore studio to help cost benefits to their overall in-house studios.

Implementation of Solution:

Powerweave was sought by the Auction House to provide this solution. Initially before the work was to begin, trials to match the process were undertaken. These trials went for 2 months and regular clipping path work was seamlessly integrated. New server based technology for file transfer was used to ensure coordinated transfers took place. The web file transfer technology – MassTransit is a legacy system with the Auction House – the only system used to transfer files over continents and different offices over the world.

This was a simple 3-step process –

(1) Receive Files: Powerweave received files over MassTransit and the web-based transfer system generated automatic mails to both parties ensuring auto-communication.

(2) Downloading Files: Powerweave then downloads the files and stores in a systemized folder structure.

(3) Clipping Paths: Studio Powerweave works to the guidelines set for each clipping path and executes them to perfection.

(4) Uploading Files: Powerweave then sends back the files to the Auction House via MassTransit to be used for catalogs and web.

Though this process may look simplified, however, the intricate details that were followed helped gain understanding of the client’s work and strict guidelines.

Catalog Page Make-up

(1) Receiving Files: The files for page make up were sent via MassTransit.

(2) Layout: Powerweave followed the instructions to the last minute detail to ensure that the service was impeccable.

(3) Finished Files: Powerweave then transferred the files back through MassTransit. In all cases of page make-up none of the files are returned back because the work was found to be accurate and to the set standards.

The most important factor was time. Since India is 5.30 hours ahead of UK, it has a tactical advantage of delivering before the client is in office in the morning. This advantage was utilized completely and projects delivered without loosing on stringent deadlines.

The daily communication and operations were managed between single point of contact at Powerweave and Maritime Publisher. This allows clear communication and less disparity in understanding instructions, further honing an error-free work.

Results:

The direct result of this was reduced costs and accurate work. This allowed to client to focus more on its other marketing and management efforts knowing fully that an outsourced studio was just like working in-house.
Powerweave has successfully migrated the image management and pre-press process offshore to manage about 500,000 images annually.
Powerweave has moved and migrated to the next level of catalogue page creation using a combination of custom data and image workflow tools. About 80,000 pages are published annually.
We are now working with them in implementing the technology and setting up the services to publish print catalogues on the web and digitally from a common data repository.