Thanks to his own experience with EDI at previous places of employment, and thanks to the efforts of an in-house programmer who was formerly involved in book production, says Oborski, the implementation has gone fairly smoothly.
* Automated estimating. Oborski has worked to drastically simplify the process of gathering of estimates and evaluating bids. When he first arrived at the company, he began to reduce the Hearst Book Group's supplier count, ultimately chopping it by 80 percent. He then launched development of a relational database program that would store standard pricing from the 20 percent remaining; standardizing trim sizes and other book elements helped make such an endeavor feasible. As an added benefit, the fact that the remaining suppliers would be printing higher volumes for Hearst meant that they could provide better pricing as well.