Adobe Success Story

Tourism Ireland
Destination marketing organisation improves efficiency and controls cost of global publication production using Adobe Acrobat software

Technology key to promoting the island of Ireland
Tourism Ireland is the organisation responsible for marketing the island of Ireland to potential vacationers as a premier tourist destination. Early on, the organisation realised that the effective use of technology would be central to its ability to meet its goals, which include producing high-quality marketing publications tailored to the needs of people in regional markets worldwide.

Benefits

• Improved efficiency of editing and approval process
• Reduced time to get publication to print
• Improved accuracy of information

Project Details

“We recognised that choosing leading-edge technologies would enable us to work smarter and deliver more engaging, customised marketing publications,” says Patrick Lennon, print and publishing officer at Tourism Ireland.

Tourism Ireland employs 156 people in key source markets, such as Great Britain, United States, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordic region, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, and Australia. The organisation also has offices on the island of Ireland in Coleraine and Dublin—and has now extended its reach to include emerging tourist markets in Japan, South Africa, New Zealand, China, India, Poland, Israel, and the Middle East.

Addressing local market needs
Tourism Ireland produces a number of publications that can contain as many as 75 pages of text, images, and tables for global distribution. However, each country in which the publication is distributed has local market requirements such as language, presentation style, and detail of content. Any publication must be adapted to reflect these needs before it can be finalised, printed, and distributed in the countries.

“It is important for each publication to be produced in a format that is suited to the country and to the people who will be reading it. For example, publications distributed in Germany often have more text because the consumer requires more detail,” says Lennon.

Finding a way forward
People’s familiarity with the ubiquitous Adobe Reader meant that Lennon, who previously used Adobe Acrobat in his work in the pharmaceutical industry, knew that Acrobat and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) were the right solution for the challenge at Tourism Ireland. Also, Acrobat is used globally by design and print companies, while PDF is an accepted industry standard.

Lennon set up a pilot project for one publication in selected markets. Key people who were working on the publication in Amsterdam, Toronto, Paris, and Frankfurt used Adobe Reader to add digital comments to the content to Reader enabled PDF files. All edits and comments were then addressed centrally and the final content sent out electronically. Previously, final documents were distributed in hard copy to each country for approval.

The result: workflows were smoother and the amount of time taken to coordinate comments and produce a final publication was significantly reduced. The whole process proved to be much more efficient. Lennon explains, “The German team used to travel to Ireland to work through their edits with the designers. Using Acrobat and distributing documents in Adobe PDF, that is no longer necessary. We’ve seen a big drop in the time and costs needed to produce the publication for Germany.”

A key publication for Tourism Ireland is the Market Book, which is produced in eighteen variations to accommodate different languages. The time needed to produce the publication has always been long, starting in January each year and running through to final publication and distribution in November.

By using Adobe Acrobat and Adobe PDF over the last two years, Tourism Ireland has significantly reduced the time spent on the project. By distributing content for review in PDF, the approval process has accelerated, and the publication passed to the printers three weeks ahead of schedule.

The team knows that converting documents to PDF helps ensure that the integrity of documents is preserved and that comments made by regional reviewers in the PDF documents are exactly what the design team will see when they receive the document.

Maximising the benefits
Tourism Ireland also wanted to maximise the benefits of Adobe Acrobat throughout the organisation. It turned to Ian Campbell of ICCS who offered certified training on Acrobat. ICCS was able to ensure that people using the solution could get the most out of the product.

The Research and Development team decided to use the Forms function within Acrobat to support research. With Adobe LiveCycle Designer software included in Acrobat, the team designed interactive forms to collect and sort data. This reduced the risk of errors, which are common when paper forms are filled out. At the same time, data could more easily be extracted and analysed.

A key benefit was that recipients needed only to have access to free Adobe Reader software to complete the form electronically and mail it back. The simplicity of using Acrobat to support their research has meant that the team now encourages other groups they work with to leverage the Adobe solution.

The Adobe software is proving more important in some of Tourism Ireland’s emerging markets such as South Africa, India, and the Middle East, so that consumers can access digital copies of publications in an easy-to-download format.

Tourism Ireland is also called upon sometimes to distribute copies of publications that have been produced by the stakeholders with whom the organisation works. Acrobat allows the team to scan and create a PDF copy that maintains the integrity of the original publication and can easily be e-mailed for order or distribution purposes.

Reaping the rewards
Using Adobe Acrobat software, Tourism Ireland has improved the efficiency of its editing and approvals process and has reduced the time it takes to get publications to print. It has brought improved efficiencies to the business enabling it to deliver a better end product.

“Acrobat has become integral to the way we communicate and collaborate,” says Lennon.

---

Do you have a story you would like to share? Join the Adobe Customer Reference Program.