The Cole Digest, November 15, 1995

Finding just the right pieces to meet a publisher's heartfelt needs is ultimately what an integrator must do.

My colleague Pete Wetmore has been talking with newspaper system integrators to determine exactly what it is that they do. This is the last installment of a three-part series on the topic.

Some publications start out with a problem -- say, the newsroom front-end is stroking out daily -- and want help finding a solution to only that problem.

"We find there are two classes of clients," said John Attas Jr., president of CPS Technologies, a company with a long history of manufacturing proprietary systems (remember Zylogics? Dymo?) that got into integration 2 1/2 years ago.

"One class knows exactly what he wants, will come to us and say, for example, 'I want a DewarView system -- I want a price, I want your ideas.' That will require a site survey. They will tell us specifically what they want, but they don't know how much of it they need."

"Class of client No. 2 has a problem and has no idea in this world what the solution is," Attas said. "Eighty percent of our customers are in that class."

When the problem is system-specific, such as display ad makeup, looking for an integrator becomes somewhat easier. CPS Technologies, for example, has a reputation for match-making among systems and output devices, so Time Warner hired CPS to replace all the imagesetters for its magazines.

"The magnitude was very large," Attas said. "Here was a $16 billion company being helped by a $3 million company."

In fact, lean and mean is the hallmark of a number of integrators. Mike Gold, president of one of the older firms, CNI Corp. of Newton Centre, Mass. -- it's been mating systems for six years -- gloats about the advantages of being diminutive. "We're just like DEC without the $3 billion debt," he said.

But as in love, the little guys will tell you size isn't important -- knowledge is. You're going to pay your integrator to know what's out there and why it's the best choice for you.

"In six years," Gold said, "we've gone from XyWrite to Word, no OPI to eight flavors of OPI. We've gone from hardware RIPs to Adobe hardware RIPs, to software RIPs from three companies.

"If you ask me, a year from now whose color monitors we're going to be using, I have no idea."

Gold calls this selecting "the best of breed." Neither CNI nor any other integrator has pledged allegiance to any third-party supplier, so they are positioned to offer a customer a range of choices -- and if your prospective integrator says otherwise, you're looking at a lothario.

"Loyalty to the products we use is earned every day, it's not dictated by a contract," Gold said. "The minute a product fails to meet our customers' needs, it's out the door."

When that door slams, though, the integrator has to have an alternative in mind. Keeping up on the market place is a challenge for any integrator. Here, size can be a factor, as the bigger boys pointed out -- DEC, for example.

All integrators are struggling to keep up. "I read incessantly," Attas said. "I get about six inches of magazines a day. I have to."

Not that what he gets is necessarily laden with golden prose. The good stuff, he said, "is usually in the first four pages or the last two."

Thanks Pete.

Onward.

\dmc

[THE COLE DIGEST is written by consultant David M. Cole, editor and publisher of the industry newsletter THE COLE PAPERS. The DIGEST is made available to PressLink subscribers every Wednesday at no extra charge. Send comments by e-mail to cole@plink.geis.com. The COLE DIGEST is the property of The Cole Group, a California sole proprietorship. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written permission of The Cole Group is prohibited. Copyright (C) 1995, The Cole Group. Opinions expressed are those of The Cole Group, unless otherwise noted.

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