24 | Magazine World | December 2007 fipp.com
feature
outsourcing
GENTNER GETS
THE MOST OUT OF
OUTSOURCING
Gentner Verlag is a mid-sized German publisher producing more than 70 trade
magazines and organising a range of international trade shows. Gentner’s
Hans Oppermann tells Magazine World why outsourcing is key to keeping costs
down and profi ts up
How much of the day-to-day running of your order to save money and attain a better quality of
publishing house do you outsource? service. It’s not just about cutting costs, though.
We started our outsourcing strategy in 2001/2002, It is vitally important to carefully define the
mainly as a consequence of the sharp decline in service level needed at the beginning of
media spending in Germany. But even in those the process to obtain the desired quality
times, outsourcing meant more to us than simply at the end. We found it very helpful to use
cost cutting. It was a strategy to rebalance our detailed requirement profiles and appropriate
internal cost structure by turning fixed costs (ie. specifications to find the right contractor.
employees) into variable costs (ie. costs per page).
How does this work? Do you have internal
What sorts of things do you outsource? managers in charge of various operations
We outsource our bookkeeping and finance, who take responsibility for outsourced
graphic design and layout, back office and services?
administration of subscriptions, controlling, Before outsourcing, we had normal departments
and human resources. We don’t even have and regular employees who were fully responsible
an HR manager any more – we work with our for their specific field of business. Today, we only
contractor’s HR manager. Today, it seems to be have one or two internal managers who run this
far more common in Germany to outsource a business. Their major task is to communicate the
subscription’s back office, the graphic design goals of their divisions with the contractor and
department or the personnel accounting. But to control performance. As a matter of fact, these
giving the entire bookkeeping and financing to a managers have to focus much more on strategy
contractor is much more radical – and of course and goals than they used to. As a result, stronger
much more critical. managers are required at the borderline between
the publishing house and contractor.
Why did you decide to outsource?
When we started our outsourcing strategy, we What is the most important aspect involved
were completely focused on these peripheral in successful outsourcing?
functions. It was our goal to hand over these At the beginning of the outsourcing process, we
non-core functions to specialised contractors in assumed that the most important critical success
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