Boxit
As a logistics service provider, Boxit GmbH is the link between publishers and readers. They take care of the nationwide delivery of magazines and ensure that all print media find their way from the printing plant to the doorstep. Boxit 2022 was founded by F.A.Z. and Fiege and emerged from Medienservice GmbH & Co. KG, which had been in existence for 20 years. The main business includes logistics to the delivery partners’ depots, complaints management, printing of label stickers and the associated data processing.
Company: Boxit GmbH
Branch: Press distribution
Location: Frankfurt am Main
Company size: 20
Cooperation since: 2009 (at that time still Medienservice)
Challenge
In 2009, Boxit (then called Medienservice) was in the process of building its business. To be able to realize the deliveries, they needed a software system that could control all important processes. It had to be possible to process large volumes of data in parallel without manual checking. At the same time, it had to be possible to define individual decisions per data record without any problems. This was a necessary system component and focus criterion for the company, since changing information in individual subscriptions is part of daily business. However, this must not slow down the processing flow of the remaining data records.
Standard software could not provide a remedy for the complexity of the processes. Boxit therefore looked for a service provider who could combine all requirements and wishes into an individual software solution. The goal, however, was not pure development, but a long-term cooperation including support and the further technical improvement of the system.
Solution
After an extensive requirements analysis, we started the cooperation with the development of an individual software for automatic address distribution. Under the proprietary name “Mediaz”, this links all business areas together as a central system and covers the following aspects:
- Import and export of data records
- Planning of logistics data
- Preparation of magazines in bundles and pallets
- Generation of labels and bundle and pallet slips
- Creation of invoices and reports
At the beginning of the project, Boxit managed one customer and 10 delivery partners. In the meantime, the company handles the delivery of 120 regularly published titles for 23 customers and works with more than 80 delivery partners. Within Mediaz, around 1.8 million data records are now imported, processed and controlled on a daily basis.
Together with Boxit, we have worked continuously on improvements to the system over the past few years. For this purpose, our developers Peter, Stefanie and Andrea regularly meet with our customer to discuss current development statuses and new feature requests. For example, we were recently able to improve the matching of different spellings for one and the same target address and significantly increase the delivery rate.
Next Goals
As with many companies, our customer is focused on two central goals: increasing profits and expanding business. We have been supporting Boxit on this path for over 10 years and have further projects planned together for the future. With the continuous development of Mediaz, we contribute to a more efficient handling of work and processing steps.
Machine learning approach: We continue to work on address improvement. Currently, matching is improved by simply remembering the optimal spelling. In the future, this process will be optimized globally. A single case study will then be applied to the entire address spectrum and suggestions for improving spelling will be automatically generated for other addresses with a similar format.
Scalable architecture: A lot of time has passed and technologies have changed since the system was set up in 2009. Another major milestone in the collaboration will therefore be to port the evolved monolith in the .NET Framework to a distributed architecture with .NET Core. On this basis, extensions and scaling will be easier to implement.
Expanding data volumes: All with the big goal of greatly increasing the volume of subscriptions processed daily. Our point of reference here: to go from 10 million subscriptions transferred per month to 10 million per single import with multiple imports per day.
We are looking forward to further cooperation with Boxit and new challenges!
Our expertise in this project includes:
- Desktop Application
- Agile Software Development
- Project Management
- Needs Analysis
- Continuous Integration
- Software Tests
- Microsoft .NET Core 3.1, C# 8
- WPF
- SAP Crystal Reports
- Bouncy Castle
Jan Heuer-Theurich
Software Development
I would be happy to advise you personally on our software development solutions.
Feel free to get in touch!
