How Melody helped Courrier Français grow, produce more and save time

Results and benefits

  • Reduce costs and time spent on layout by 50%.

  • Return of journalists to the field, relieving them of the burden of desktop publishing and increasing the volume of news production

  • Integration of four new titles with cost rationalization and pooling of production staff

Courrier Français, the weekly local news group

The Courrier Français group has 14 regional weekly newspapers with local information. They are present on the departments of Charente, Charente-Maritime, Dordogne, Gironde, Landes, Lot-et-Garonne, Tarn-et-Garonne and Vienne.

In 2013, while working with a prepress department associated with a printing company, the latter closed. As a result it was crucial to find a new editorial solution.

Our journalists spend twice as much time in the field
than before using Melody

Marc-Paul Lemay, Editorial Secretary at Courrier Français
a courrier français

The performance challenge

The group Courrier français wanted, through this new system, to make production more efficient and simpler, while freeing itself from all financial and material constraints due to maintenance.

So the objective was a flexible, simple and technologically fast solution.

The simple implementation within the editorial offices of Courrier Français

Courrier Français was our very first customer and when defining their expectations, they expressed their desire for a fairly generic implementation of Melody: a product that corresponds to them but that does not adapt solely to their work method or structure.

Moreover, in order to meet the group's objective, our company proposed to develop the first version of Melody with a web CMS usable from anywhere and a layout based on templates that would be assembled like a puzzle to create Indesign pages. These pages were then finalized by three graphic designers all located in Bordeaux except for La Vie Corrézienne which had its own two graphic designer.

They loved:

Since the implementation of Melody, which then integrated the management of Legal Announcements with automated layout, the group has :

  • Changed its organization three times, each time reducing the costs and time dedicated to layout (50% less than they would have been at constant scope).
  • Returned journalists to the field, relieving them of layout duties that require them to be at their desks, and increased its news production volume with a constant workforce.
  • Integrated four new titles for which it was able to rationalize costs by pooling production staff.