When it comes to reaching publishers in Latin America, MEI’s go-to distribution partner is Informática Dalai SA de CV. With many high-profile software installations under its belt, Dalai has become a valuable resource for helping customers in its region build efficient electronic publishing workflows.
Download a PDF of MEI's partner spotlight
Dalai specializes in developing end-to-end technology solutions to enhance productivity, control and profitability for newspaper, magazine and online publishing organizations throughout North and South America. Based in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, the company was founded in 1990 and has grown to serve nearly 75 organizations in 18 countries, including many leading newspaper and magazine publishers in their corresponding markets.
As the only integrator of the K4 Cross-Media Publishing Platform in Latin America, Dalai functions as the face of both vjoon and MEI for a large portion of the globe. Dalai’s interest in K4 was first piqued when MEI started selling it on this side of the Atlantic, thanks in part to a strong, long-standing relationship — MEI and Dalai have worked together for almost 20 years. But the strength of the software itself was enough to convince Dalai that K4 was the best editorial system for its market.
“We knew that if MEI chose K4, it was for a good reason,” said Juan Aguirre, executive director of Dalai. “When we started using it ourselves, we quickly realized that it is rock-solid software. It’s a full-featured product, not just a few tools thrown together. It’s scalable, capable and stable.”
Those features helped Dalai secure its first K4 customer in 2006, when the company implemented the biggest K4 newspaper installation in the world at Mexico City’s Excelsior. The company reached another milestone in 2009 when it sold K4 to Editorial Televisa, the world’s largest Spanish-language publisher. Most recently, Dalai sold the system to Mexican newspaper Sintesis and began a K4 pilot program at El Mercurio, another Mexican daily.
K4 isn’t the only MEI product Dalai distributes in its region. The company also supports several customers using MEI’s layout products, including Page Director® ALS, Page Director CLS, AdForce® and ClassForce®. One of its most notable ALS sites is Excelsior, which has been very pleased with the product’s automation capabilities and uses it to save several hours of production time every day. Another paper that has benefited from Dalai’s services is Mexico City’s El Economista newspaper, which replaced an entirely paper-based dummying process with AdForce. Thanks to MEI software, El Economista staff has improved flexibility in production and can more easily manage last-minute page changes.
In addition, Dalai has developed its own software, including its Commercial Advertisement Management System for booking ads and its Executive Vision add-on module for K4. Currently in use at Televisa and Excelsior, Executive Vision is a browser-based business intelligence solution that helps executives and managers analyze daily K4 operations. The tool accesses and extracts complex data from the database, then generates a visual interface to track and report key indicators of progress such as closing hours by section, average deadline compliance and articles produced.
“At its core, Executive Vision is a response to the manager and publisher wish to obtain actionable, hard numbers from newsroom operations,” Aguirre said. “We believe it is a novel approach that responds to bottom-line-focused publishers.”
For example, Televisa has used Executive Vision to improve production at one of its most popular titles, TV y Novelas. Data analyzed from K4 uncovered a huge delay in the weekly magazine’s proofing stage. By changing its schedule based on these findings, TV y Novelas was able to cut approximately 10 hours per week in production time.
Aside from developing its own solutions, Dalai is unique in its understanding of important business factors specific to the Latin American publishing market, especially in North America. Aguirre said there are some exciting advantages to working in the region.
“Clients down here are often very intrepid and willing to try new things, maybe because they figure they are making a technology jump anyway,” he said. “Another difference is less of a focus on workforce savings to justify tech investments, as salaries are much lower here.”
Of course, Latin America faces many of the issues affecting the rest of the industry. Like publishers around the world, Dalai’s customer base is determined to track down the best technology to optimize their workflows for flexible, fast output to multiple media.
“Every day, we hear about our customers’ intentions to mix workflows for different output channels, as well as create integrated newsrooms,” Aguirre said. “What we do is provide a stable, strong solution. Some clients take the bait from other vendors who only offer very attractive vaporware. It’s often just a show, nothing solid, and those vendors will eventually be hard-pressed to provide something they really can’t produce.
“We’re very committed to understanding customers in depth, not just superficially. We want to engage in a long-term strategy and relationship to develop a solid plan for the future. Our approach is much more hands-on, with a lot of consulting, not just showing something flashy.”
As Dalai continues to reach out to new publishers, Aguirre said he believes that his company’s personalized, in-depth approach is the most important thing it can offer to clients.
“For these kinds of projects to work, you really need a team of professionals,” Aguirre said. “In addition to great, solid software, you need people with experience, commitment and honesty. You have all of those things in MEI and Dalai.
“As software and technology get more and more complex and capable of achieving more, you need a higher level of professionalism in the human part of the equation. I believe providing that is our advantage.”