Following recent acquisitions Group Averbode chooses for a centralization of their systems.

Averbode Editors is, with its school magazines Doremi, Zonnekind, Zonnestraal, Zonneland, Vlaamse Filmpjes ..., since many decades the undisputed leader in educational magazines in Belgium.  In addition, Averbode Editors also has built a strong educational fund with materials and methods, for primary, secondary and adult education. Many of these manuals are developed by our own editors, but also many materials are distributed by us. The number of own titles increased significantly by acquiring Edition Erasme/D2H from Bouge (2005), by the acquisition of the fund of Labour (2008) and by the cooperation in Cego Publishers (2008) (a joint venture with KULeuven) .

Also at international level, Averbode Editors has started its expansion. In September 2008 the Group acquired the third largest educational publisher in France, Editions Sedrap of Toulouse. Together with the already existing foreign affiliates in the Netherlands (Best) and France (Strasbourg) this acquisition opens the door to new markets and products.

Finally last year the Group put a step into the home market. Nelly and Cezar, the two main characters from this toddler magazine got their own animated series, which are shown on Ketnet, RTBF, Zeppelin and 40 other foreign TV channels. Around these characters books, operations, merchandising products were made and sold. With the acquisition of Bert Smet Productions by Averbode Group in 2009, and the character Hopla, the Group strengthened its position in this new business.

Result of all these acquisitions and changes is that Group Averbode - from an ICT point of view - had to come to a close integration of systems and databases. Not only did the systems of the acquired firms had to work perfectly together or being integrated into existing processes, we also chose to have the core of the systems to be running in Averbode because the previous years we had already invested there in order to minimize system-failures. These investments were advantageous to all the branches and acquired companies.

This idea of centralization and integration also determined the choices we made in the applications. The financial and administrative system that has been developed by AXI (Oracle, HP9000) remains the core to bill, to do the shipments in the three countries, and to overview the articles and stock management. The own ICT department developed a web-based application in PHP which allows to write orders in the branches by using data in the central database (address, item data). Every night in the branches XML files are created in which the orders are listed. These orders are charged in the Oracle database located in Averbode. The web based application is very flexible, translates the screens to the terminology of the local users and allows to meet country-specific requirements (bills and checks in France, automatic authorization in the Netherlands ...).

Because we wanted to avoid that users have to enter the same information several times in different systems, we chose for a central system. The broadening of the product range, new markets and new technological requirements (secure sites method) made that our existing web application no longer was sufficient. We therefore selected Smartsite as Content Management System (CMS).

Both marketers and the editorial teams upload information into the CMS.
For each book or learning tool sold, the marketing team has created a content item containing text (short text, slogan, long text, ..) and video (link to high resolution image and image for the website). The CMS contains several thousand articles. The price of articles (for various countries and categories of the product) is retrieved from the financial administration system (Oracle) over a permanent link. These content items fill the catalogue of the web site for different target groups and countries. The strong multi-channel publishing strategy of Smartsite CMS allows to publish in parallel single-created content to multiple channels, including an automatic re-translation to the target group (e.g. Zonnekind is called Hoj in the Netherlands).
The content loaded by the editorial teams into the CMS sites, is used mainly in the subsites (sites with the magazines, work sheets, website secure method). In order to organize the security of the payable websites, a link was made between our website and ‘Knooppunt’, a portal of the union. With ‘Knooppunt’, a joint initiative of several Flemish educational publishers, it can be determined to what content users access.

Right from the start of the project, the aim was to – besides for the website – use Smartsite CMS also in order to build e.g. catalogs by using the XML structure in Adobe ® InDesign ®. With a plug-in for Adobe ® InDesign ®, the graphic artists - from their familiar environment InDesign ® - have direct access to the data in Smartsite CMS allowing catalogs to be built semi-automatically.

Besides the website and catalogbuilder, there is a third application, creation of product specifications that uses the CMS as a starting point. Customer service employees and regional managers receive questions from customers on a continually expanding product range. This makes it increasingly difficult for them to know everything about every product. Through a link between the order processing system and the CMS, using the catalogue number, text information can be requested in a smooth way. This expansion should further be programmed.

Project planning: This project was started late 2007. In spring of 2008, the suppliers were compared and the functional and technical analysis prepared. Smartsite was retained as CMS and Service Point Belgium (SPBE) was chosen as a partner for this project. SPBE did an upload of content from the existing site to CMS and then - as from summer 2008 - the CMS was filled with information. That autumn the catalogue builder was installed by SPBE and in January the first catalogs containing information from the CMS were built. Afterwards, the design and structure of the (sub)websites were created, the link with ‘Knooppunt’ programmed (Three Ships and SPBE) and as were the registration and order flows. Mid September 2009 the new site went live.

Integrating companies and coordinating their processes, is never without a struggle. So during this project we also were confronted with a number of obstacles. The biggest problem was the timing. For all groups in all countries and all facets (website, catalogs, administrative system) the system had to be operational at the beginning of the school year. Because not all parts of the project were feasible, we had to set priorities and make choices. By making these choices, there are always things that are not executed causing some disappointed clients. Timing also gave stress at the end of the programming of the order flow where data are taken from and written to the administrative system, where parts of the content should be protected by Knooppunt and where the flow itself is on the website. The programming and changes had to be executed by the four parties and the final result was only ready when all facets were introduced seamlessly.

Also the budget was an exhausting project. At the start, a budget was fixed, although clients asked additional functionalities during development. Here we had to make choices in order to avoid excesses of the budget as much as possible.
And, last but not least, people management should also not be forgotten in new projects. If as a manager you don’t look at the project as a whole but only focus on the complaints and problems, one risk to forget what efforts were made and you may no longer see the improvements made.