Radio France Thinks Strategically and Selects Quintiq Solution for Advanced, Long-term Planning

'S HERTOGENBOSCH, Netherlands, August 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Quintiq, a leading provider of Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) solutions, today announced that Radio France, the French public service radio broadcaster, has chosen a Quintiq multi-resource planning solution to handle strategic, tactical and operational planning throughout the organization. The Quintiq solution will schedule all of Radio France's production personnel and resources and will support the company's long-term, strategic programming decision making.

Ordina, a Quintiq business partner, was active in the contract tender and will conduct the implementation.

Solving planning complexity

With seven national networks and more than 4200 employees, Radio France is one of Europe's largest radio broadcasters. Headquartered in Paris with numerous local stations, Radio France is the primary producer of programming for France's radio audience.

With over 60 studios in its main building dedicated to different types of program production such as news, talk shows, documentaries, drama and music, and with outside production vehicles and many different technician profiles, production scheduling is very complex. Currently, production planning at Radio France is conducted by 20 people using 10 different and separate spreadsheets. As a result, it is very complicated to share resources between the networks.

Three planning horizons and fast deployment

Quintiq was the sole vendor that could provide a standard but highly flexible planning solution that could be fully configured to Radio France's specific needs. Powered by a sophisticated optimization technology platform, Quintiq solutions can be configured with relative ease and speed to match the complex requirements of environments such as Radio France's production.

"We could have chosen a traditional off-the-shelf application but it would not have had the flexibility to grow with us," explained Thibaud des Dorides, project manager at Radio France. "With Quintiq, we benefit from fast deployment and a 100% fit, now and in the future."

The two-phase project started in late January, with the implementation of the tactical and operational planning. Phase two: long-term, strategic planning, will start soon. Both phases will run in parallel until the completion of the final project which is expected in Q4 2011.  

Standardized processes and high quality planning

With all of its resources in a single planning system, Radio France will be able to benefit from standardized, user-friendly planning processes. It will be able to improve resource productivity and resource sharing between its networks. Managers will be able to view scenarios to compare different programming options and their feasibility.

Wouter Tielemans, APS Business Unit Director at Ordina stated: "Having conducted many similar implementations throughout Europe, we have grown to understand the unique planning needs of broadcasting organizations. Quintiq will give Radio France's managers a global overview of the organization and visibility into inefficiencies and opportunities for resource sharing. We are confident the quality of the plans will surpass Radio France's expectations."

Arjen Heeres, COO at Quintiq added: "We are seeing more and more of Europe's broadcasters benefiting from the adoption of strategic planning. Strategic planning will support Radio France in staying within budget while still providing the quality, innovative programming French speakers worldwide have to come expect."

About Radio France
http://www.radiofrance.fr

About Ordina
http://www.ordina.be

About Quintiq
Quintiq provides advanced employee & resource scheduling along with supply chain optimization software software solutions. This fast-growing company, established in 1997, offers and implements software for planning and optimizing complex business processes throughout the enterprise. The company's worldwide headquarters are located in The Netherlands and the USA with subsidiaries in Australia, China, Finland, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom. Quintiq systems are implemented in 76 countries worldwide. More at http://www.quintiq.com