Press publishing house back office activities in distribution & logistics, financial and management departments is a challenging task when all tracking is not automated in an information system. Provisioning retail volumes on each publication, managing the distribution and logistics, accounting for the different fees and subscription plans in this sector is a time and resource consuming task.

SDnet is a complex software solution, whose elements are integrated in a common platform for company resources management. Due to its rapid access to any type of reports regarding customers and sub-customers, orders, sales, circulations, revenues and accounting, SDnet offers tremendous support for the decision makers. SDnet also provides quick and secure data integration of all the data already existent in the system.

The application constantly saves our customers approximately 60% of the distribution time by automating all clients, billing and publications management activities. Due to great automation and performance induced in the overall press distribution process, our customers can reduce the dedicated staff with even 50% allowing for the reallocation of available resources in core publishing activities.

As an SAAS application, access to software is provided to customers through a private network or via the Internet. This creates significant savings on software and hardware investments, IT specialized staff, and other resources, ensuring simultaneous and full control of these types of resources.

Characteristics:

• SDnet Platform combines services, technology, and networking knowledge with those related to administration, integration, management and support for the application.
• The quality of the SAAS solution is heightened by accessibility, security, maintenance, and integrity.
• The services are easy to configure so that they can be adapted according to users’ preferences.

Functionality:

• The administration and maintenance of the application is done externally, from a center location, by the SDnet technical department, thereby reducing the extra client investments for local security solutions.
• In order to prevent performance problems due to excessive uploading on the network, the system efficiently distributes the traffic so that none of the data servers is overwhelmed.
• Developed on the most advanced Web development platform, the SDnet application offers highly flexible performance and secure architecture. SAAS provides access to the registered information in the system at any moment and from any location with help from a Virtual Private Network or the Internet.
• All the information related to management and administration of the distribution function is structured and centralized into the application providing, therefore, quick access to it. Data can be accessed only by authorized persons anytime and from any location with help from a Virtual Private Network or the Internet.

Modules

The SDnet application is structured in nine modules, which makes document management and report analysis easier:

Client Module

The Client Module allows the easy management of the existing client list, the rapid identification of information concerning these clients, and logging clients according to the categories they represent (detailed sales or distribution by subscription). Furthermore, the module offers the possibility to log and use data about the contact persons inside the client companies, and the information can be printed or generated into an Excel file.

Order Module

The Order Module reduces the order management time, by distribution by issue, generating the number of copies per issue, optimizing orders, editing notifications (for delivery, return or supplementing), tracking orders (requests, deliveries, returns), drawing up reports on the generated orders and the edited notifications, and being able to transfer the whole history directly to and from Excel files.

Invoice Module

Replacing the activity of at least one person (according to the size of the company), the Invoice Module ensures the accuracy of the accounting information, by automatic generation of invoices (delivery, rectification, and return), printing the invoices, as well as the easy deleting or identification of invoices.

Cashing Module

The Cashing Module is a support in generating full reports regarding the accounting situation of each client, by visualizing the status of the cashing compared to the clients, logged data, or categories of customers.

Report Module

This Report Module gives companies the opportunity to automatically generate any kind of report on the distribution activity and real-time access by visualizing the status of orders, sales, cashing, clients and sub-clients, and by generating Delivered-Sold-Returned calendars, BRAT declarations, and classifications of sales.

Product Module

The Product Module allows stock management for each publication represented by the publishing house and ensures the capability to change products, editions, frequency or issues, by access to stock status, editing products and structuring them into categories, defining apparition issues, and logging the stocks.

Subscription Module

The Subscription Module allows handling information both on the clients – subscription distributors –, and on the direct beneficiaries. In order to get prior information on the expiration of contracted periods, it is easy to assign warning alerts, which are very useful in the fidelity process.

Label Module

The Label Module facilitates the entire labeling process due to the automatic extraction of all the information in the system, the editing of the labels for the subscription distributors or for the detailed sellers, and the generation of the information for printing.

Administration Module

The Administration Module makes possible both the administration of the application access codes, and the establishing of the client categories, of the invoicing and payment methods, and of all the important data used in the application.

Packages

SDnet offers different opportunities to access management services of press distribution according to the monthly number of copies, numbers of publications in the portfolio, or their occurrence, in order to ensure an adequate sizing of the investment in the SDnet platform.

• Publishing Houses
• Press distribution companies