Michael K Howard Limited

Michael K Howard observed that customers were placing a large number of repeat advertisements that were almost identical in design, just requiring minor copy amendments. They recognised that if the company was to retain and grow not only its number of clients but also the quantity of work that could be undertaken within deadlines, they would need to improve the speed and reduce the cost of producing these similar advertisements. This improvement could enable them to win a greater number of large national contracts.

The secondary requirement was to further integrate the companies and offices within the Group, providing an infrastructure to facilitate increased communication and collaboration between Group employees.

MIS set out to identify a solution that would meet the brief without incurring major capital expenditure. Furthermore, the solution needed to be rolled out to each of the remote offices from the production studio located in the Luton head office in such a way so as to not incur the costs normally associated with establishing a wide area network (WAN).

Working with their Internet Service Provider partner, FastNet International, MIS designed a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to link each regional office to the head office. A VPN is a highly cost effective method of utilising the Internet to provide 'Private' wide area network services. Costs are reduced and performance is maintained by using ADSL connections to the ISP.

Having implemented a low cost WAN, MIS then introduced Michael K Howard Limited to a software house, Automatrix Plc, that integrates off-the-shelf applications with bespoke media production tools. This AdActive software suite enables the automatic production of runs of similar advertisements where the design remains constant but the copy changes from ad to ad. Further integration with PDF and Internet technologies allows these ads to be quickly approved by the client before being securely delivered to the newspaper or magazine publication. Production time is therefore significantly reduced, allowing the studio to process far more work and reduce production costs.

To roll this function out to other studios in the Group in remote locations, MIS implemented Windows Terminal Services. Terminal Services is a technology that delivers information across a local or wide area network with minimum impact on the connection bandwidth. This means that more information can be transferred over the WAN to more users without the need to invest in high bandwidth fixed lines. Terminal Services is highly scaleable, enabling more users to share an application without investment in additional technologies.

With the brief achieved, the Group has the wide area network infrastructure in place to support greater integration of the Group Companies, improve Group-wide communications and support a streamlined work-flow process across the entire Group via the automated ad production tools. Additional advantages continue to be identified following the establishment of the WAN, such as the pooling of studio resources to manage overflow work and the interoperability of the Group production centres to ensure continuity of business even in the event of a failure of the production function at any location.

The roadmap is in place to allow Michael K Howard Limited to continue to be one of the leading players in regional advertising. The intelligent application of technology has afforded the company a competitive edge and contributed to its business continuity.