Case Studies

By kind permission of Loudoun Magazine

CAN'T HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

There can be few more collaboration intensive business than publishing. Editors, journalists, and production staff find themselves in constant planning meetings driving the creative process, always to what seem like impossible deadlines.

But the situation facing award winning US regional publication, Loudoun Magazine, was even more drastic when the company timetable to relocate to corporate headquarters in Leesburg, Virginia, left an entire editorial team with nowhere to work.

Fortunately, the group's Loudoun Business magazine was already involved in a trial project with Telework Consortium, a non-profit organisation which undertakes academic and laboratory research on technology that will help promote 'telework', or people working from home using broadband.

The trial involved using one Macintosh computer and a web-cam. The available software provided video and audio, but if more than one connection was made at a time, the user’s bandwidth was rapidly consumed, degrading the quality of all connections. It could not cope with a group meeting that requires all participants to see and talk to each other.

Then Telework found that Marratech offered a better work environment for the magazines because it allowed collaborative virtual meetings with multiple participants in addition to one-on-one video sessions, superior audio and whiteboard capabilities.

Marratech installed a server at the Telework offices while local service providers set up magazine staff members with wireless broadband or cable access from their homes.

Said Loudoun Magazine managing editor, Rita Mace Walston: "We had people working from five or six remote locations and working on their screens rather than looking over somebody's shoulder. As a result, a magazine, which usually takes three weeks to complete, was finished in two.

"We also ended up saving money because we didn't have people travelling back and forth to the office."

All employees said there was a learning curve of less than one working day to become comfortable with the Marratech software, but most have settled into the daily routine of everyone logging into the Loudoun Magazine 'room' on the Telework server and communicating through it

Brett Phillips, CEO of parent company Amendment I Inc. said: "Ours is a real world business with real world deadlines. The Telework project’s integration into Loudoun Magazine’s operation and its adaptability to an operating environment about which it simply could not know very much has been the greatest and most pleasant surprise."

He estimates that magazine employees working on the program are saving more than 1,700 miles a month in commuting on local highways and if the entire company used Marratech, it would eliminate about 20,000 commuting miles every month.

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