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Eddoc Weaver helps Molenaar Edition marche before the troops in output management strategy

NIJMEGEN- October 28, 2011 - A Dutch music publishing company, Molenaar Edition, produces sheet music for brass band, harmony and fanfare. When the company started about 77 years ago, there was hardly any competition and the work consisted mainly of manual labour. Nowadays, competition is fierce. Manual labour is almost completely eliminated and the company makes use of, amongst other technologies, a very advanced website, print-on-demand functionality and has gotten rid of its printing house. To optimize service, Molenaar Edition uses Eddoc Weaver Software from the Dutch software developer, Edmond Document Solutions.

When his grandfather started the company, he would have never expected how streamlined the reproduction of music sheets would become. Sander Molenaar, the grandson of the founder, has to do things quite differently than his grandfather once did to survive in the world of fierce competition and internationally expanding markets. ‘In my grandfather’s days, producing music sheets for customers was a lot of manual labour. Today we have a catalogue of 12000 titles for bands available digitally. Each of those titles consists of about fifty music scores for each instruments or dedicated groups. Each score has about 4 to 5 pages, but there are also scores which consists of at least 32 pages,´ Molenaar says. ´Daily, customers order music titles and most of that business comes in through our website. More than half of it comes from abroad, I think about 60%, and the rest comes from our home market, the Netherlands. All orders must be processed to print jobs and in the end the music must be sent – on paper - to the customers. That’s our business, that’s how we make a living.’

’12 000 titles mean millions of pages’
77 years ago there were no databases or ICT infrastructure but things have changed over the years. ‘Now we have a database filled with 12000 titles, consisting of millions of music scores and all the supporting documents, most of which are digitally available today. It’s all scanned at 600 dpi in black and white and divided into separate sections, for instance ‘Movies & Musicals’, ‘Marches’, ‘Pop & Swing’ and ‘Real Big Band Sound’ and so on. Within each a section there are millions of music scores that we can offer our customers, including the brass bands and the like. Only the least asked for music scores are being scanned on demand. Though they are not digitally available upon demand, after they are scanned, they are placed in our digital database. To be able to deliver the documents quickly and securely, a printing house of copy machines is not enough these days. We got rid of our printing house the day print on demand was discovered as a serious alternative. Through print on demand we were able to produce cheaper music scores and without large inventories. Nowadays we print almost everything on demand.’

Format and conditions for each print
Printing on demand is not as easy as it sounds. It’s not a matter of picking up a file from the database and sending it to the printer to print. Molenaar: ‘The problem is that each separate piece of music needs its own output format: A4, A3, with or without finishing, in booklets, in cut sheet, each document has its own imposition and therefore its own finishing at the printer. In short, efficient handling and processing is very important, otherwise we don’t have a business, notwithstanding a position in the market. The solution has to be cost-efficient, flexible, fast and without storing a large inventory.

Our solution has to be agile, digital, flexible and still customizable where possible. Starting a website was just one of the elements in that strategy. The process of handling the orders and producing the sheets of music also had to be reconsidered. Molenaar: ‘We came to a point where we needed software that had to offer more functionality to make maximum use of the printer capacity. One of the problems was that each print job, which once meant each music score, was one PDF and after each print job the printer started a ‘cleaning session’ to clear the memory and so on, a bit of a technical issue. Afterwards, we estimated that those actions cost about 30% of the printer capacity in processing speed, which was far too much.

We had to find a partner who could help us solve the problem. It was clear to us that the solution was to be found in a software format. Edmond Document Solutions recognised the problems we had and offered a fantastic solution with the Eddoc Weaver software, which offered exactly the functionality we needed. Now we could set the print job ourselves and send it as one PDF to the printer. One PDF is now more than one music score. It contained (or at least it could contain) several music sores which needed the same conditions, formats and settings so that the run could be done in a much shorter time than before. The communication between Eddoc Weaver, our database and the printer was solved brilliantly. Edmond implemented an extra application between the standard software and the database to aid the jobs in running smoothly. Also, Eddoc Weaver fits nicely in combination with the website where customers can order. Though Molenaar Edition still checks the settings for the printer to avoid problems in the run concerning different impositioning, we now we can deliver the pages quickly, smoothly and very efficiently.’

Cross selling music
The agility of the software gives Molenaar Edition the possibility to deliver extra messages. Molenaar: ‘We can now extract separate text blocks out of the database and print them on the sheets of music we produce for specific customers. At this point, a majority of the messages are offers from our own company to make customers aware of the other music scores we have in the same genre or the availability of a CD for instance. We recorded a lot of the music on CD available to the customer, separate musician, or conductor to order. The CDs allow our consumers to listen to the music before starting to play or conduct it. In future I can imagine that other messages can be printed on the sheets as well. For us, it´s a nice opportunity to sell more of our services and products. This could never have been done if we didn’t have Eddoc Weaver. Cross selling in music has paid off.´

Molenaar Edition has succeeded in the transition from a traditional music publishing company to a modern multichannel company, with many possibilities offered by Eddoc Weaver. Coming from a company with about 35 people, Molenaar Edition now operates with only 9 people who can do all the work. ´In future we want to innovate further and maybe produce the music scores on paper at the location they are needed or at least in the same region they are needed. That would save us a lot of money on postage. We also want to guarantee on time delivery to the right address. Within a short period of time we will evaluate that option because we will be replacing our printer. Then we will see whether that new strategy is viable.”

Original article published in VIP/Doc magazine October 2011, issue 7.