FUNKE
Funke Mediengruppe teams up with Vitec Visiolink to become the leading regional media group
On the way to becoming Germany's leading regional media group
Funke Mediengruppe has entered into a collaboration with Vitec Visiolink who will deliver digital platforms for their 12 regional newspapers. Their enhanced digital focus is one step towards becoming Germany's leading regional media group.
The German media powerhouse employs about 1500 journalists and 4500 media experts all over Germany. They distribute regional newspapers in Berlin, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Thuringia while also being one of the major players in the magazine business.
“At FUNKE Mediengruppe we aim every day to deliver premium local and regional journalism to our readers – whether they prefer to read our printed newspapers, our websites or in the ePaper. Especially in the ePaper, we have seen steady growth over the past years with a reach of more than 93.000 readers at the end of 2018,” says Christian Ullrich, former Head of Mobile Apps & ePaper at Funke Digital, the digital sub-department of Funke Mediengruppe.
Collaborating with Visiolink
Funke Mediengruppe’s increased digital focus led them to a crossroads where they had to decide on a future business partner to handle their distribution of digital newspapers, Christian Ullrich says:
“None of the ePaper solutions we have been using until now managed to meet our requirements for a premium reading experience, a high-performance, scalable back-end integration, and future-oriented analysis and marketing features. The use and maintenance of the different solutions were comparatively expensive, and the heterogenic processes prevented an efficient, strategic advancement of the ePaper. But unlike other suppliers, Visiolink fulfilled all our requirements to a good or a very good extent.”
Funke Mediengruppe recently launched their first four out of a total of 19 ePaper apps, and Christian Ullrich has been very happy about the cooperation with Visiolink so far.
“After having decided to go with Visiolink, it took us just three months to introduce new ePaper solutions with four daily newspapers in Berlin and Thüringen. In every phase of the project, we could safely rely on the close and trusting cooperation with Visiolink. It was incredibly fun to work together with such kind and competent contact persons,” he says.
Working together with such a huge media company as Funke Mediengruppe undoubtedly sets high demands on its business partners, and Visiolink was put through thorough testing by the German media giant.
“Having 19 ePapers, 144 regional editions, and more than 2.000 pages produced daily, a seamless integration of the ePaper into our production processes is crucial for us. In cooperation with Visiolink, we did not only realize an extremely fast and stable processing of our content but also a unique process control that gives us a quick processing status of our publications already in the evening,” Christian Ullrich explains.
Future ePaper goals
In 2019, FUNKE Mediengruppe is going to implement the new Visiolink solution in their remaining locations - Hamburg, Essen and Braunschweig, and Christian Ullrich is sure that the collaboration with Visiolink will strengthen the digital editions in terms of new features and insights about the product.
“Our main focus will be to ensure an efficient use of the new solution for all processes – from the supplement management to customer care – in all locations. The standard Visiolink solution offers many interesting functionalities – from push campaigns to interstitials and crossword puzzles. We will test many of these, and in case of success, introduce them on group-level."
"Last but not least, through the integrations with Google Analytics, Visiolink gives us thorough insight into the use of our content for the first time. Many colleagues can’t wait to see how many times specific articles are being read. The new analysis dashboards are surely going to be introduced in every location from the very beginning," Christian Ullrich concludes.
