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Wijeya Newspapers Limited was incorporated in 1979 with the primary object of printing and publishing newspapers and periodicals. Mr. Ranjit Wijewardene, the chairman of the Wijeya, founded the company.
The company commenced its operations by publishing three weekly tabloids. From its inception, objective of the publication was to provide high quality reading material at affordable prices to the readers of Sri Lanka, a nation with the highest literacy rate of 86% amongst its South Asian neighbours.
In addition to a number of magazines, Wijeya Newspapers Ltd. publishes broad sheet dailies and weeklies; ‘Daily Mirror’ and ‘Sunday Times’ in English and ‘Lankadeepa’ and ‘Irida Lankadeepa’ in Sinhala.
However, the publication had a number of challenges e.g. early closure of editorial and advertisements to keep the publishing dead line, lack of control on Sinhala font which resulted in its inability to publish its content on the web, high cost of using Macintosh workstations.
In 2002 Wijeya started looking for an integrated software solution that will enable it to overcome the present problems and raise the quality of its publications. The search ended as Wijeya found Summit Information Technologies in India, a leading software and services company in India providing solutions to media industry for over a decade. By this time, Summit’s font software Indica had defined standard in Asian publishing industry, and was gaining acceptance of its enterprise solutions for editorial and advertisement management.
Wijeya found solutions to all of their problems that were stopping its aggressive improvement and growth plan from Summit. With Indica providing start-of-the-art font support, publishing Lankadeepa and Irida Lankadeepa using MS Windows became a reality.
The editorial software, NewsPro offered end-toend solution from wire services, bureau services to editing, placing them on pages, to dynamic page lay-out management. NewsPro helped manage text, graphics and photos in the same workflow. Instantly the publications quality improved, editorial team could afford to work late since pre-production readiness could be achieved upto 2 less hours every evening. The work flow introduced by Summit’s NewsPro helped reduce errors, omissions and proper control in the News Room. This meant more time to include breaking news, validate the news items for authenticity and accuracy.
Soon Wijeya added Summit’s digital asset management software AssetPro to complement the sophisticated editorial system. Developed to meet the specific needs of the media industry and seamlessly integrated with its editorial system NewsPro, publication could effortlessly create its digital libray and reference it with a single click from the editorial software. Referencing became instant.
Experienced with the benefit of IT enabled editorial and digital asset management systems, Wijeya wanted to extend the productivity and efficiency improvements in advertisement management. Summit’s AdPro software for display and classifieds, seamlessly integrated with the editorial software NewsPro, offered a state-of the art solution to Wijeya. The advertisements can be booked from any location on real time space availability basis, ad materials accepted and tracked / managed, scheduling resulted in generation of advertisement space on due date, positioning as per contract on correct page and page-location, work flow populating the day’s page, leaving the remaining space for editorial content. Wijeya can now take advertisements late in the day and still publish it on the following day. Post production publication auditing helped Wijeya produce error-free bills. Customer satisfaction rating went up resulting in reduced bill collection time.
Ability to use the same software for all its publications in English and Sinhala came as a blessing to Wijeya. Satisfied staff of Wijeya now thanks Summit for bringing in the IT-enabled workflow system that seamlessly manages core business processes of Wijeya for all its publications. Reader’s survey revealed that Daily Mirror, The Sunday Times, Lankadeepa and Irida Lankadeepa are considered most authentic and reliable publications in the country. Summit shares this place of pride with Wijeya.
Commenting on the experience, said Mr. Lal Jayawardene, executive director, “Our computerization project with Summit has gone very well. We have lived up to our stated objectives of providing high quality reading material at affordable prices to the readers of Sri Lanka. Summit’s software implementation helped us solve our existing problems while making way for continuous improvements in our publications”.
About Summit Information Technologies Ltd
Summit Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd., software products and services company based in Gurgaon, India is a leading solution provider to the media industry in Asia. Summit’s enterprise applications NewsPro, AssetPro and AdPro, supported by its Asian language technology product Indica is marketed and serviced by Summit and its partners in Asia.
Wijeya Group
• Established in 1979
• Provides high quality reading material at affordable prices
• Most respected English and Sinhala Publications in the Island State
• 14 separate Publications in three languages
• Combined daily circulation 200,000
• Combined Sunday circulation 350,000
• Web publications with best fonts
• Strives for continuous enhancements and innovation in media publication
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