All

As you might have heard journalists are now extremely likely to strike at Express Newspapers. Industrial action is due to start at 6am tomorrow (April 4^th) and last for 24 hours. This is the first of 3 planned stoppages.

Express executives’ position is that the group’s titles – Daily Express, Daily Star, Sunday Express and Daily Star Sunday – will publish as per normal. There is no reason to doubt this: historically, newspapers have simply utilised agency copy and it’s worth noting that non NUJ staff (IT, print workers) are not joining the action.

Ninestars will be instructed to process as per normal, and escalate via agreed processes should there be non-delivery of any kind.

Dave.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/03/dailyexpress.dailystar

As of publication date March 11^th, all material processed for NLA eClips will be via Ninestars in India.

I would like to use this opportunity to thank the Financial Times in Manila for all the hard work and dedication shown over the past three years in helping establish the eClips product. Put simply we would not be where we are today without them.

PCAs will not be impacted by this change, but attention should be given to the fact that there will now be no “post processing” of articles. PCAs should continue to send malformed articles for reprocessing as per the existing process.

Dave Goddard – Production Editor – Digital

As of January 1^st 2008, the NLA realigned resources with the intention of supporting clients more effectively. The eClips Account Managers now report to Susan Dowley, the Sales and Marketing Director. As such, the Account Managers are now increasingly focussed on the commercial aspect of the eClips service and are less involved from an operational perspective. During business hours, Account Managers continue to be the first point of contact for PCAs regarding any issues with the eClips service whether it be commercial or operational. The account management work related to eClips user and organisation management continues to be the responsibility of the Account Managers. However, some operational issues will be escalated internally to appropriate members of the NLA Service Operations team following the Service Operations Client Support Process (overview here). The Account Managers will continue to monitor any internal escalations to ensure that clients are satisfied with the service they receive from the NLA.

As a result of the reorganisation, a change to the out-of-hours support process is being made. From today, Account Managers will no longer be required to support eClips out-of-hours. With the creation of the NLA Client Support Tools (http://cst.nla-eclips.com) clients are now able to obtain answers to most production questions or potential technical issues without the need to ring the NLA support number. All clients should always use the NLA Client Support Tools before ringing the NLA out-of-hours. No other changes are being made to the out-of-hours support process. The client support process still requires an email to be sent to support@nla.co.uk if a technical issues arises outside normal working hours and if the issue is urgent, the existing NLA support number should be called if a PCA requires further technical assistance.

A new Incident Management (IM) process has now been established alongside these changes to out-of-hours support. The IM process will ensure that clients are notified within 30 minutes from the occurrence of a client impacting incident. Updates on the resolution status of an incident will be provided every 30 minutes and a notification to clients will be sent when the incident is resolved. The following day a full analysis report will be provided ensuring that eClips clients understand the cause, resolution and any operational changes made related to the incident. An overview of this process can be found here.

To summarise, here are the key points related to this announcement:

• Account Managers continue to be the first point of contact for PCAs (during business hours)
• NLA Client Support Tools are the first point of reference for troubleshooting potential service issues outside business hours
• Out-of-hours eClips technical issues not solved by reviewing the Client Support Tools should be escalated to the NLA via the support process already in existence
• NLA out-of-hours support number is now staffed by NLA system engineers outside business hours
• Improved incident response and communication processes are now in place under a formal Incident Management process

If you have any questions or concerns with these changes, please speak directly with your Account Manager.

In direct response to a request raised through the eClips user group, the NLA Service Operations team has now developed a notification tool that can be used to determine when 1st edition eClips content processing has been completed.

This notification tool is now available on the Client Support Tools website.  It will be updated each day by the NLA production partners to ensure the timely notification of content production status for 1st edition content.

If you have any feedback or questions regarding this new feature, please let your account manager know.

The eClips KPI report for January is now available here. Please review the content of the report at your convenience.

Overall, the performance in January was fantastic! Most KPIs were exceeded and some of them significantly. The highlight statistic is that 99.9% of core 1st edition content was delivered by 1AM for the entire month!

If you have any questions or concerns about the eClips service, please let me know.

Kind regards,

matt groshong | operations director | newspaper licensing agency | 160 queen victoria street london ec4v 4bf
direct line 0207 332 6041 | switchboard 0207 332 6036 | fax 0870 333 7131