MCS identified workflow inefficiencies and presented an enterprise-wide IT solution to enable communication between systems, eliminate duplication and redundancy, and reduce time spent with system lag issues and stakeholder queries.
The ERP solution that MCS implemented saved us time, effort, and money, and kept our staff, contributors, and customers happy. Best of all, MCS always pick up the phone when we need them.”
The Irish Daily Star newspaper has been delivering a fun mix of news, sports, and entertainment to Irish readers since 1988. The Star employs a large, talented, multidisciplinary staff across editorial, advertising, and circulation departments. These staff manage hundreds of freelancer suppliers and advertising clients.
CHALLENGE
Newspaper publishers are complex businesses with many departments that often have different legacy systems. At The Irish Daily Star, a lack of communication between legacy systems created a silo effect, resulting in a slow-down of the efficient information flow between departments. This caused communication difficulties, freelancer payment delay, and advertising revenue collection issues. For example, problems arose due to the time lag between legacy system invoice creation and the importation and processing of invoices by the accounts department. Contributors would receive remittance statements without having yet been paid, resulting in increased time spent managing contributor payment queries.
STRATEGY
MCS proposed an enterprise-wide solution to make The Irish Daily Star workflows as lean as possible, enabling between-department-system communication, eliminating unnecessary steps and duplication, speeding up processes, and reducing time spent dealing with system lag issues and supplier and client queries.
SOLUTION
The MCS team conducted an in-depth business review process with the client which involved collaborating with key personnel from each department to map out the core processes. This gave an accurate and complete picture of processes and data flows, and it allowed MCS to determine redundancies and inefficiencies within the existing workflows.
MCS proposed an integration of the accounts, advertisement, and editorial systems. This enterprise-wide system would eliminate communication issues and speed up payments and advertising revenue collection, but it would also be flexible enough to grow and change with the business in the future.
MCS recommended an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution called Intact iQ, tailored to the specific needs of The Irish Daily Star by MCS custom developments. Intact IQ has built-in flexibility for easy customisation and additions, allowing it to grow with ambitious and dexterous businesses.
The implementation of a single solution with bespoke add-ons also ensured cost savings for The Irish Daily Star.
IMPLEMENTATION
- MCS installed the ERP solution alongside the old accounts package and imported customer details, supplier details, and the ledger.
- An MCS custom development linked the contributor editorial system to the new system, which allowed the creation of purchase invoices for contributor articles.
- The advertisement order system was linked to the new system, using Intact iQ’s Rest API, allowing orders to be pushed from the advertisement system into the new system as sales invoices.
- The company’s financial data was migrated from the old accounts system into the new system after the year-end audit was completed.
The MCS team scheduled training time with key staff during implementation. When implementation was complete, the MCS team conducted daily training on-site at The Irish Daily Star with all affected staff to ensure they had intensive on-the-job mentoring when learning how to use the new software.
RESULTS
MCS substantially improved the workflows at The Irish Daily Star by providing the newspaper with a system that is streamlined, easy to use, and empowering for users, and which resulted in
- a 60% reduction in time spent processing contributor payments,
- a 60% reduction in time spent processing sales invoices,
- full data integrity between the accounts package and other in-house systems,
- a significant reduction in the manual inputting needed to process purchase and sales ledger items.
WHY COMPANIES CHOOSE MCS INTEGRATED SOLUTIONS
Individual businesses have individual technology needs; our strength comes from our close attention to customer requirements combined with 50 years’ experience and expertise in technology design, selection, and implementation. We work closely with customers to fully understand their problems, and we find original solutions through our detailed knowledge of customer workflows. We create cost-efficient, integrated, and user-friendly solutions specific to each unique organisation’s needs.