MEDIAMINE NEXT GENERATION NV

Product Information Lifecycle Management, Publication Lifecycle Management, Database Publishing

MediaMine NG is a solutions company that specializes in the optimization of product information lifecycle management and database publishing. To gain or maintain market share, companies often struggle to provide accurate, on-demand and customer-specific product information across print and online channels, and cultural and language boundaries to target audiences.

This is where MediaMine’s product information lifecycle management comes in to make the optimum use of information at every point in its lifecycle and at the lowest cost with a structured approach to publishing across all media, in multiple languages and locations. Founded in the summer of 2003, as a start through of the former MediaMine, we have decided on organic growth and high customer service and satisfaction as our strategic aim. MediaMine`s product information lifecycle management transforms the complex process of publishing a heterogeneous collection of information into a user-friendly, cost-effective and sustainable process. Product information lifecycle management reduces catalog production costs and time-to-market, and improves data quality and consistency by automating the delivery of information.

Product information lifecycle management integrates the process of creating, retrieving, updating, publishing and storing product catalogues. It is a comprehensive ``create once, use many`` foundation for building printed brochures, catalogues, data sheets and digital e-business solutions. We organise product information lifecycle management and publication lifecycle management solutions on a unified platform.

Our current product information lifecycle management implementation optimizes the product information and publication lifecycles in over 30 languages, 40,000 products, 50,000 images and 25 countries.

The MediaMine product information lifecycle management solution manages and stores multilingual product and marketing information and publications in a structured and reusable manner. Information is shared, traced and audited across national borders, languages and publications. With product information lifecycle management, product information rationalization is accelerated during acquisitions, mergers or re-branding.

Our product information lifecycle management also generates multiple, customised publications for print, web, e-commerce and e-business applications, reduces prepress costs by more than half, and makes catalogues ready for printing in a matter of days.

Product Information Lifecycle Management Solutions

The MediaMine product information lifecycle management solution, which automatically generates printed brochures, catalogues, datasheets and e-business solutions, is based upon five components:

Product Information Manager

The Product Information Manager is a configurable software solution enabling customers to create high volumes of multilingual, multiprofile rich product information. An integral part the product information lifecycle management solution, the Product Information Manager is a platform on which products are enriched with additional attributes, marketing texts in multiple languages, rich media, product relationships and taxonomies after being triggered by ERP data.

This part of the product information lifecycle management has a workflow engine that speeds up the time consuming process of launching new products by ensuring that information is up-to-date throughout the product information lifecycle. Personalized to-do lists and status reporting functions of the Product Information Manager enables seamless collaboration across organizational and geographic boundaries.

The Product Information Manager, which supports all languages and 2-byte characters, is an invaluable tool for product marketers, brand managers, marketing agencies, sales representatives, distributors and customers for driving multi-channel sales and identifying cross-selling opportunities.

Publication Manager

The Publication Manager extends the value of the product information lifecycle management solution`s Product Information Manager by enabling end-users to generate on-demand printed product information (catalogue, product sheets, mailings) in a brand consistent and cost-effective way.

Integration Manager

The Integration Manager enables companies to integrate the product information lifecycle management suite with content management systems, ERP, CRM or other legacy systems on the back-end, and with CMS, e-Business, procurement and reseller systems on the front-end

As long as the system to be integrated can provide or receive information from external systems in a digital format, the Integration Manager integrates the different components of the product information lifecycle management suite and third party components in a matter of days.

Print Publication Manager

The creation of printed product collaterals is labour intensive, expensive, slow and prone to error.
Having a central product information repository as part of product information lifecycle management allows the process of publishing marketing materials across all media channels to be automated. The Print Publication Manager reduces costs and ensures that product changes flow seamlessly through all channels, directly to the end user.

By merging up-to-date content with a variety of templates, the Print Publication Manager can automatically generate complex printed catalogues, product leaflets, datasheets, brochures and web catalogues. The Print Publication Manager can also syndicate product information to web content management and commerce systems.

Media Manager

MediaMine’s product information lifecycle management supports images, documents, spreadsheets, sounds and video. The Media Manager allows users to create automatic thumbnails for common file formats and low-res files for e-publishing, extract and manage media file meta data (copyright), make advanced searches, and upload MS Office, common image formats, documents, video, animation and technical specifications on a file/document basis. With this product information lifecycle management tool, users can also resize, change colour space, crop, zoom, etc.

Project Tracks

MediaMine’s product information lifecycle management suite enables the customer to define, create and maintain multilingual product information, and publish this information stored in the central repository across different marketing channels. Its flexibility and ease of use for key users, content users, and external users like resellers, distributors and end-consumers enables companies to get up and running with an initial configuration within 1 to 3 months..

To ensure this objective is met, MediaMine NG has selected RUP (Rational Unified Process®) to structure its project management and software development approach.

The Rational Unified Process® is a software engineering process providing a disciplined approach to assigning tasks and responsibilities within MediaMine. Its goal is to ensure the production of high-quality software that meets the needs of its end-users, within a realistic schedule and budget.

Project Tracks

To ensure a fast rollout, MediaMine`s product information lifecycle management works with two parallel project tracks:

• Project track 1: Building a prototype;
• Project track 2: Building the production environment.

The objective of the first project track, building a prototype, is twofold and can be defined as:

• Establishing a working test environment. This environment is used to model and develop parts of the full solution. The set-up of this prototype enables the project team to conduct the necessary risk assessment during the elaboration phase of the development whilst giving the project maximum visibility to its stakeholders.
• Ensuring the maximum possible knowledge transfer between MediaMine NG and the customer project teams.

The objective of the second project track is to establish the working production environment for the customer`s customized solution. This two-track project approach must guarantee a fast delivery of the full project and full visibility towards its stakeholders. In addition, it enables the different project teams to build up the necessary knowledge at the beginning of the project, which in turn will minimize the potential risks associated with these types of projects.
 
At Xerox, MediaMine is managing 3,000 main product lines across 33 European offices, and incorporating 25 languages. This has given Xerox:

• Integrated marketing communications that offers customers personalized product information
• Improved product management and publishing processes
• Substantial financial savings due to a reduced time-to-market
• Pan European brand consistency
• Information available for 3rd parties to customize and print their own marketing materials

For Thomas Cook, MediaMine digitised and migrated exisiting product information, and defined the actual catalogue production. This has given Thomas Cook:

• Shorter Production cycle (time-to-market)
• Operational savings from drop in prepress and transport costs
• Improved print production with reuse of materials for different catalogues and brands without compromising brand identity

Discovery Phase, Planning Phase

MediaMine NG has a very close working relationship with all of their customers to providing the best possible solution to the most burning of needs.

The Discovery Phase

For the first step, the MediaMine team will assist you through a Discovery Phrase. This is a joint effort between your organisation and MediaMine to identify your current product information handling processes and the consequent publication requirements. This process also enables us to better understand your business and technical issues and requirements that are associated with the potential improvement process, which will be realised through the implementation of the MediaMine product information lifecycle management solution. 

The Planning Phase

From this, MediaMine will present an initial proposal of the potential solution, translating needs into a short-term, immediate and quantifiable solution. An in-depth review process together with the client must guarantee that expectations are synchronized by all parties involved.

Consistent marketing information throughout the international organization

• Consistent internal information flow
• Consistent information flow towards resellers
• Consistent information flow towards end-customers
• Current implementations manage multi-lingual, multi-profile marketing information and publication (print, e-business, website, etc.) flows in over 33 languages and 25 countries from one central product information management repository

Shorter time to market

• New catalogue production from several months to a couple of weeks
• Constant up-to-date info on all e-business sites (websites, e-business and e-commerce platforms)
• On-demand and campaign focused creation of printed marketing productions on the spot

Massive cost reductions

• Customers claim over 1 million Euros of annual cost savings
• Up to 60% saving on prepress agency costs
• Up to 40% reduction in product management headcount  

MediaMine Partners

Partners

At MediaMine, our goal is to achieve customer satisfaction through the delivery of a complete solution that transforms the optimal use of the product information lifecycle management solution into a company's best competitive advantage. In addition to our growing customer base, MediaMine has built a couple of strategic alliances with complementary, best-of-breed software and service providers, leveraging our core competency in new product information lifecycle solutions.

Progress Software

Progress Software simplifies the development, deployment, integration, and management of the world's best business applications. Progress and its 2,000 application partners offer more than 5,000 Progress-based business applications that precisely fit customer needs and deliver competitive advantage. Customers purchase more than $5 billion annually in cost-effective software and services from Progress and its partners.

Freedman International is an outsourcing and consulting services company. They offer services to leading organizations, advising and implementing solutions on issues of centralisation, streamlining and standardisation of marketing communications. Their aim is to discover, explore and implement more efficient and effective solutions for improving international marcom programmes. From design to delivery, they help clients` brands work harder, faster, better.

Two other companies with which MediaMine has partnerships are Neroc'Mediaware and  Neroc'VGM

How To Get In Touch With Us

Contact Info

Address: MediaMine Next Generation NV
              Sint-Elisabethstraat 38a  
              Antwerpen, B-2060 
              Belgium
  
Telephone: +32 3 270 16 59
                                     
Fax: +32 3 663 77 73                                           

Email: info@mediamine.com

Website: www.mediamine.com