HCS implements Cumulus
at Henry Schein,
leading to an estimated ROI of $350,00

Henry Schein, Inc. is the largest distributor of healthcare products to office-based practitioners in the combined North American and European markets. Henry Schein sells 90,000 products to around 450,000 clients. More than 31 million catalogs, order stuffers, flyers, newsletters, e-mails, and other materials are distributed annually. HCS Technology Group is a leading development, training and solutions company, specialized in providing Information Technology Project Management, installing and customizing solutions for customers like The Museum of Modern Arts and Martha Stewart Living. HCS Staff are Canto Certified Partners as well as Apple Developer

The Challenge:
Improving workflow and speed of production of print catalogs for Henry Schein, and reduction of cost. Main Catalog contains around 90.000 products and is distrib•uted in 125 countries once a year. Several other catalogs highlight special offers.

The Situation:
Media assets were handled off-site by a service bureau, the process was time- and money consuming, direct access to the assets was non-existant.

The Solution:
HCS Technology Group installed a workflow solution for Henry Schein that allows handling assets inhouse. The assets (thousands of digital images) are fed into the HELIOS file server system by two asset managers. Markzware FlightCheck helps to check if the files have the desired format. Cumulus HELIOS Companion connects the file sytem to Cumulus. 25 people then have access to the assets and edit them. Assets are then converted to PDF and checked again by Markzware FlightCheck software and send to the printers via Cumulus Web Publisher Pro.

The workflow at Henry Schein after the Cumulus integration:
Apple Xserve and Apple XRaid were installed. Apple Xserve contains the software. Cumulus Workgroup Server is connected to the database via HELIOS Companion. The assets in Cumulus catalogs are viewed using this Cumulus Option, and lowres pictures are imported from the HELIOS server. Editing and layout are mainly done in Quark XPress, then pages are converted to PDF and sent to the printer. The result: Workflow speed has increased drastically, no more downtime and the considerable cost for the service bureau has been eliminated. After 4 months the cost of the installation was returned, Henry Schein estimates that ROI was $350,000 in the first year.

Why Henry Schein chose Cumulus:
Excellent scalability and ease of development. Also, the support provided by Canto made Cumulus the chosen solutiom.

“Canto Cumulus bridges the gap between the art and the craft, and Cumulus defies the limitations.”
Craig Cohen, President of HCS Technology Group

www.canto.com