Ask, and ye shall receive.
Management at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel decided to ask a cross-functional group of employees to formulate plans for making their work areas run more smoothly.
What they got in return was nothing less than a blueprint for restructuring the paper's pre-press area to improve communication between those who sell advertising space and those who build the ads, while at the same time reducing errors and better serving the customers' needs.
For years, Advertising Sales Representative Wendy Jones would send her ads to the pre-press area in the paper's Deerfield office without ever really knowing who the people were that made it ready to go into the newspaper. And for years, employees in the pre-press area would put the ads together without ever really knowing the people who sold them or how they did it.
"The biggest problem with the system was a lack of communication," Jones says. "The person doing the ad was working in a vacuum."
The Sun-Sentinel's centralized pre-press system is now making way for a decentralized system, where teams of artists, ad builders and associate ad builders work together in each of the paper's six major offices.
"Virtually all ads sold by sales representatives in a particular office are now built in that office," says Pre-press Manager Mike Sacks. "That means there are fewer mistakes because of better communication and better quality ads because now you have a feedback process."
One of the keys to the decentralization, Sacks says, is consistency. Under the new system, artists, ad builders and associate ad builders are working closely with the same team of sales representatives week after week. As a result, the employees assembling ads have become much more familiar with the needs and wants of clients.
"We now have continuity that has cut down on a lot of complaints and a lot of rework," says Advertising Sales Manager Lou Butler, who served on the team charged with restructuring pre-press. "The advertisers have more consistency in their ads."
Butler says the new system is also giving advertising sales representatives an opportunity to be much more involved in the production of the ads. "Before, we were disassociated with the people who finished off our ads," Butler says. "Everything was done on the phone, and it was always with different people. That created a lot of paperwork and a lot of miscommunication."
Sacks says that under the centralized system, as many as 10 employees could work on one ad between the time it was sold and the time it was ready to be sent to the pressroom. "Now, the maximum number of people working on an ad is three," he says. Employees who built the ad under the old system, Sacks continues, rarely had the opportunity to make corrections. Instead, another pre-press employee was assigned to make changes. "As a result, the ad builder who made the mistake may never have known there was an error," he says. Now the ad builder is following the ad throughout the process.
The decentralized system makes employees more accountable and responsible for their work, Sacks says, allowing them to take more ownership in what they do. "With decentralization, the employees are managing their work and the supervisors are supporting them," he says.
Richard Malone, vice president and director of operations, is pleased with the results---and the process. "Technology made this happen, teamwork made this happen and flexible management made this happen," he says.
This article was adapted from articles that appeared in Between Editions, the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel's employee newsletter.
©1997 Newspaper Association of America. All rights reserved.