- I am a big fan of Labrador and would choose it again

Ny Teknik Group, Sweden's largest media platform for engineers and tech professionals, reaches a million users each month, and serves nearly 60,000 online subscribers with news and in-depth coverage on innovation, digitalization, electrification, startups, industrial development, and more. 

We've recently talked to their CEO and Editor-in-Chief, Thomas Peterssohn, on their business and experience with Labrador CMS.  He explains a bit about the company: 

- Our company is built around Sweden’s leading technology and engineering news brand – Ny Teknik. 
 

Starting from Scratch with Labrador CMS

To start with, we are always curious to hear our customers reasons to switch to Labrador CMS. Peterssohn reveals: 

-  When we acquired Ny Teknik some years ago, we quickly discovered that the web platform was outdated, complex, and extremely expensive to operate. It consisted of 15-20 different systems that were mutually dependent on each other, and no one in the IT department had a full understanding of it. At the core of the platform was an installation of an older CMS that required three full-time developers just to keep it from crashing. We realized quite soon that Ny Teknik needed to phase out the entire old platform and start from scratch.

Complex and expensive systems is a very common answer to this question among most of our customers and a reason number one to switch from their old CMS tool.  

Exactly What We Needed 

Peterssohn continues by describing what they've wanted for Ny teknik. That was 'pure SaaS solutions, ready-made software in the cloud.' Further on, commenting on Labrador CMS, he adds: 

-  It was exactly what we needed. The most interesting product seemed to be this Norwegian solution, not least because they already had a hundred Norwegian publishers as clients. It was a sign that Labrador had hit the mark with their product.

Top Benefits of Using the System

Peterssohn gave his top benefits of using Labrador CMS. 

The first thing he mentions is:
- Labrador is a content management system that is cloud-based rather than on our own servers. We purchase a ready-made service, not software that we own, develop, manage, and maintain ourselves. This has allowed us to phase out our own IT department.

Peterssohn continues:
- It frees up resources that we can instead invest in journalism and business development. While it does reduce our ability to develop completely unique features for the site, our analysis is that Labrador still covers more than 95 percent of our needs.

He concludes on the benefits of using Labrador CMS with the following:

-With hundreds of media companies as clients that are similar to us, we feel confident that the system will evolve in line with industry developments. Labrador was developed by journalists, for journalists. This shows in daily use. 

Hardly Any Training Needed  

Another common denominator we've noticed when talking to our customers that also emerges from our interview with Ny teknik is the system's user friendliness that allows for light speed training of the newsrooms staff. Peterssohn confirms that:

 -Our editorial team hardly needs any training to start using the tool, which is very intuitive. Journalists and editors love the simplicity. As media entrepreneurs, we also find it easy to communicate with the team behind Labrador, which is also a fast-moving startup.Additionally, the training of the editorial team went very quickly and required almost no effort at all.

The Future of Digital Publishing 

In the end, Peterssohn gives his overall impression of Labrador and says:

- I'm a big fan of Labrador and would choose the system again. 

He also gives his comments on the future of the industry and has no doubts that solutions like Labrador CMS are the future of publishing. 

-I believe the future for media companies lies in standardized SaaS services rather than custom-developed systems. Large media corporations have hundreds of developers, and it’s highly questionable if they create enough value for journalism and the long-term media business.