As well as seeing Oldham take on the PCS portfolio of publishing solutions, the partnership will now see Oldham’s sub-editing and advert production operations outsourced and performed by other PCS customers, on PCS systems.
The two organisations, who have been partners for more than 30 years, have worked together to create a model that will enable the publisher to adopt significant change and transformation within its business, ensuring Oldham Evening Chronicle can continue to be successful for years to come, says PCS.
Oldham Evening Chronicle will receive upgrades for its existing PCS advertising and production solutions, ABS and Pulse, as well as new installations of the PCS circulation software NCS, and its flagship publishing content management solution, Knowledge.
This will see Oldham Evening Chronicle embrace a full SaaS environment for its entire publishing operation, utilising PCS’s fully managed, hosted and secure UK datacentres.
However, to create this new partner-driven model for delivering the efficiencies required, PCS has brought together some of its existing customers to allow Oldham to outsource key parts of its publishing operation to them.
PCS managing director Phil Walker said, “We have enjoyed a fantastic relationship with Oldham over the years and the next stage in their evolution will see the publisher concentrate on what they do best - creating content and providing media space for advertisers, while removing undue processes.”
Walker continued, “Being involved with our customer’s change management process is central to our approach in the industry. Oldham came to us with a challenge and we have worked very closely with them and other publishing customers of ours to solve it, which has seen us help them in their quest to reinvent their business. Ultimately, our expertise is allowing us to act as a technology hub to help Oldham move forward in the industry.”
Dave Whaley, Managing Director of Oldham Evening Chronicle said, “Like other organisations in the regional press the Oldham Evening Chronicle is facing many challenges. As an independent newspaper we find economies of scale difficult to achieve.”
Whaley added, “The implementation of Knowledge and third party outsourcing is now ongoing and we will be working closely with all concerned to build workflows that allow us to continue to be one of the last remaining on-the-day- publishers of a local daily newspaper.”
