Computer Management--Proactive Management

QUEBECOR WORLD RETAIL
Boston, MA
The Problem: Specializing in retail inserts and Sunday magazines, Quebecor World Retail is no stranger to the hazards of last-minute production bottlenecks. Michael Pender, director of information systems, reports: "Given the number of acquisitions Quebecor World has made over the years, one of our challenges has been the disparate group of custom-developed planning and scheduling applications across our Retail Network. Many of these systems were not integrated, which resulted in duplication of efforts as data was entered into the different systems or, in some cases, tracked manually. Given the breadth of the Quebecor World Retail Network, there were significant opportunities for errors, as well as inconsistencies, between the systems. There was a lot of redundancy."