The Ehapa Publishing Company in Leinfelden-Echterdingen was established in 1951 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Danish media group Egmont. There is hardly a child who is not familiar with the stars of the colorful comic books from the Swabian publishing house: Mickey Mouse, Garfield, Bugs Bunny, Lucky Luke, Asterix and Obelix. Today, Mickey Mouse, a magazine for children and young people, sells more than one million copies a week. But the Ehapa Publishing Company is also steering towards a promising future with "Wendy" and the Internet presentation "Fun Online". Ehapa`s success is directly connected with the quality of its electronic publishing system. Today, Ehapa`s 240 full-time employees would not be able to do their job without computers. Increased efficiency and competitive advantages Because Ehapa is in a competitive market, the publishing house implemented an integrated messaging solution for all e-mail and fax communications. They chose to implement Microsoft Exchange for their e-mail requirements, and installed Fenestrae`s Faxination for Microsoft Exchange for their fax messaging. The primary reasons for this fax solution were, on the one hand, complete integration within Microsoft Exchange, and on the other hand, its ease of use and manageability. "In no case did we want additional client software or the duplication of address directories," says Jorgen Kraus of the publishers` IT department. "In addition, this fax solution was meant to significantly reduce telecommunication costs and lower the total cost of ownership (TCO). "Following close examination of all the possibilities, Faxination for Microsoft Exchange was the only fax/messaging solution that fulfilled all these requirements." Growing communications requirements The growing communications requirements at Ehapa are accompanied by an enormous increase of non-value-added activities. A lot of time and money is spent on the distribution, archiving, and copying of data, as well as for the mailing of documents. In the past, Ehapa used fax machines not only for in-house communication, but also for maintaining contact with suppliers, customers, and authors. Some 600 incoming fax documents daily mean that a tremendous amount of time has to be spent for manual sorting and inhouse distribution. In addition, the up to 150 offers made to wholesalers each day take up a lot of fax machine operating and waiting time. Hans-Georg Hack, director of IT in Leinfelden-Echterdingen since 1994, sought a solution. This is why he consulted, among others, the company Prodacta GmbH in Ettlingen, Baden, whom he was already familiar with in association with Microsoft training courses. Prodacta developed a concept for the introduction of a company-wide groupware system with integrated fax functionality for Ehapa, whereby it was important that the existing IT infrastructure of 170 PCs be integrated with Windows NT. Although Ehapa was content working with Microsoft Mail and Office 95, the components for integrating groupware functions such as group scheduling or public folders were absent. At the same time, features such as a fax solution integrated within the mail system had to be implemented. Integratiion within Exchange After a comparison of the concepts from different manufacturers and suppliers, a decision was made for the solution offered by the Prodacta company. Their concept provided for the installation of MS Exchange, which included the entire spectrum of the functions of workgroup computing - from group scheduling and the implementation of public folders to Internet access. For the desired fax functionality, the network specialists of Prodacta recommended Faxination from Fenestrae, which had already proven its performance capability, stability, and user friendliness in other Prodacta projects. With Faxination, users of Exchange can send and receive fax messages from their desktop environment, as easily as e-mail. In addition to its fax/messaging functions, Faxination also offers the options of integrating mobile messages (SMS), or telex messaging within Exchange. "This software combination of Exchange and Faxination was and is the best solution for our requirements," emphasises Jorgen Kraus of Ehapa`s EDP department. Besides the complete integration of fax components within Exchange, another feature of this combination is the automatic scheduling of the sending of faxes with low priority during off-peak hours. In addition, according to Prodacta`s sales manager Peter Bischof, this solution enabled the "easy assignment of fax costs to individuals". Direct Inward Dialing supports the direct receipt of fax messages on the user`s PC. The important thing here was the direct integration of the system within the existing user environment of Ehapa`s employees. In addition, because of its complete integration within Microsoft Exchange, Faxination offers a low TCO. Increased efficiency There are well-founded reasons for the implementation of Faxination and Exchange. Hans-Georg Hack says: "In the past, 80% of our electronic data had to be printed out and then entered again at a later time. Sending e-mail and fax messages from PC-to-PC is more reasonable. Today, sending a fax document involves nothing more than a click of the mouse, whereas in the past, several minutes were required for walking to the fax machine, waiting, and making repeated attempts to send a document. At a networking level of nearly 100%, it makes sense to substitute paper more and more with electronic documents." Delighted employees Prodacta supported Ehapa in the migration of MS Mail to Exchange and carried out the integration of the fax solution into the work processes. In a short period, 100 users were equipped with the solution. Kraus recalls that above all, the employees in the sales department were delighted: "Publication planning and the coordination with our 100 wholesalers has become easier, many times over." The number of business partners who insist on printed fax messages is decreasing. As Kraus has observed, "More of our customers are enhancing their e-mail systems with integrated fax components." This is no wonder, as the sending of electronic documents has many advantages: the quality is better, there are no more mechanical problems, and the degree of security is higher. "It can be virtually ruled out that the recipient receives, for example, only three pages instead of four. This solution has increased employee productivity, we are saving money on dispatch and maintenance costs, and at the same time, we have secured ourselves a competitive lead." Streamlined communications What is going to happen at the Asterix publishing house? "We are providing our users with a fully integrated communications instrument," says Hack. It is planned to extend the fax solution with an OCR component so that fax data in image formats can be converted into text documents and processed. Because of the complete integration of Faxination within Exchange, its full scaleability, and the fact that Faxination can be easily expanded with additional connectors for mobile messaging, telex, or future types of messaging, Ehapa can build on past investments in the area of IT.
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