Data Driven Ordering for Initial Print Books & Journals, & Book Reprints

Situation (Challenge)

With publishers increasingly in search of ways to save time and resources, many are evaluating how they can use their core business system to automate their print ordering and notification update process.  Publishing more than 6,000 titles a year worldwide, in a variety of formats, a leading University Press (The Press) is no exception.  As a publisher with a SAP core business system in place, The Press currently sends order information for print-on-demand (POD) orders to its print vendors via EDI signals.  The time and resource savings of this process drove their desire to extend this EDI integration to their longer run, non-POD print ordering processes.

Solution

The Press turned to Sheridan to establish an automated process that would work with their core business system to send book reprint orders (orders in which Sheridan had previously printed the title and had the files on hand) and to receive order and shipping notifications that would automatically update their system.  After successfully implementing the automated process for book reprints, The Press then worked with Sheridan to introduce a process for their book and journal initial print programs too.

Implementing Book Reprints and Initial Prints

The Press and Sheridan worked together to link their SAP system with Sheridan’s order intake and print management system, Sheridan Select^TM.  When an order is entered in their SAP system, EDI data signals flow to Sheridan Select with the order details.  Sheridan Select processes the order and triggers a print order acknowledgement (POA) notification to be sent back to The Press.  For reprints, Sheridan retrieves the files from archive and begins production. Production for initial prints is a little different because the new files must be sent to Sheridan.  When the files and the purchase order are received, the production process begins.  Upon shipment of the order from Sheridan, a signal from the production plant is consumed by Sheridan Select marking the job as shipped.  An automated shipping notification (ASN) return signal is sent back to The Press’ SAP, and the system is automatically updated with the shipment information.   

Adding Journal Initial Prints

After the successful integration of The Press’ book SAP system, their internally developed journal management system was linked to Sheridan Select for placement of initial print journal orders.  When an order is initiated in the journal management system, EDI data signals flow to Sheridan Select with the order details.  Sheridan Select processes the order and sends a POA notification back to The Press.  Once files are received by Sheridan, production begins.  Similar to the book process, upon shipment of the order from Sheridan, a signal from the production plant is consumed by Sheridan Select marking the job as shipped.  An ASN return signal is sent back to the journal management system, and the system is automatically updated with the shipment information.   

Results

The data-driven intake and response process between The Press and Sheridan significantly reduces or eliminates manual touch-points for The Press – saving them time and resources.  Universal automation programmatically processes incoming orders directly from business systems replacing the need for personnel to generate an order and submit it manually.  In addition, with automated POA and ASN return signals, The Press no longer has to manually update their core business system with this information.

Products and Services Used

• Sheridan Select
• Sheridan Printing

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