For British publishing houses, F.E.Burman Ltd, London, is more than a prepress and printing service provider. Thanks to its own development of online project management and verification tools, the company is able to support its customers in a variety of print and data handling tasks including magazine production and commercial print and mailing services. F.E.Burman uses callas software’s pdfInspektor to check incoming PDF files.

F.E.Burman Limited is one of the best known prepress and printing service providers in Britain. Founded in 1958, the company offers comprehensive file and media management for incoming customer files in addition to the professional staging of digital print data. F.E.Burman is involved in the prepress production of many publications as well as handling the asset, content, and database management and business-continuity for some of the worlds largest international publishers.The company also specialises in the production of quick digital and offset printing mailing and fulfillment. Members of staff work round the clock in South East London to meet the needs of the company’s well-known customers, which include individual graphic designers up to well established blue-chip companies such as The Bank of England and HSBC. Clients also include publishing houses such as Time Inc., The Guardian Newspaper Group, the British Medical Journal, and IPC Media.

F.E.Burman’s success can be attributed to the fast working and processing times achieved by using the internet for data delivery, the use of the most up-to-date file server technology, online systems with integrated project management tools, and seamless automatic workflows. Many of the services F.E.Burman offers are custom built by F.E.Burman using best-of-breed tools to meet deliver exactly what is needed. This allows F.E.Burman to offer special services, such as Auditor, to customers like IPC Media. Auditor enables IPC Media to check and project manage magazines before sending them on to the final destination which includes printing as well as digital editions. This tool, which was developed by F.E.Burman is easily integrated into existing editorial and workflow systems and accessed by customers and employees via a normal internet browser. The ‘Country and Leisure’ department relies on the Auditor for print data checks. This tool allows publications such as ‘Anglers Mail’, ‘Country Life’, ‘Golf Monthly’, or ‘Motor Boat and Yachting’ to be checked before they even leave the publishing house.



“First we like to define a process and then we automate it, not the other way around”, explains Andy Psarianos, F.E.Burman director in charge of development. “Auditor allows our clients to manage their publications more effectively by centralising the final stages of checking and distributing files and therefore reducing costs and saving time. We built it with this in mind, and to us it was clear that pdfInspektor was the tool that we needed to make the validation part of Auditor work. It is fast, easy to work with, and does exactly what we want it to do accurately and without flaw thousands of times a week. It only takes seconds to check quite complex PDF files so we give our clients instant feedback therefore giving them a chance to rectify the problem immediately. I couldn’t be happier”.

Auditor uses pdfInspektor in the background to check all incoming files. It can identify and weed out files that aren’t suitable for printing immediately. The detailed pdfInspektor reports that are created during the check help customers and employees to quickly identify the problem, thereby avoiding unnecessary costs. Previously, prepress employees at F.E.Burman often had to open defective files manually, find the problem, and then attempt to correct the file. Defective files can now be identified quickly and replaced. Thanks to the Auditor and the pdfInspektor, defective PDF files that cause costly problems are a thing of the past.

“We are extremely pleased with the performance of the pdfInspektor. Without it, we would not have been able to offer the Auditor service in its current form. We also use the pdfInspektor to check all other customer PDF files. This is because using the quick and reliable pdfInspektor ensures that the PDF publication pages and ads that we receive from the publishing houses are 100% perfect for printing” says Andy Psarianos.