WAN-IFRA: What was your main motivation for participating in the INCQC?

Erick Morales: The search for a competitive advantage over other newspapers in the region by improving our quality and our productivity by saving costs inherent in this process.

How did you prepare for the contest? What was the biggest challenge?

We needed to persuade our people that despite having presses from 1978 and technology of that age, we could still produce the quality required by the 21st century market. Our team is not using the latest technology, but we have a very committed team.

Did you use the self-check possibility?

Yes, it was a very good experience.

Every copy evaluation is followed by an individual and detailed report. Did these reports help you in your quality optimisation process?

Of course, all feedback received will provide signals regarding the path to be travelled for improving process quality optimisation. Achieving an optimal quality printing process involves the challenge of managing many variables involved throughout the process, the reports helped us to understand the balance and how they interact.

What does it mean to your company (thinking about your employees and your customers) to be internationally recognised for belonging to the world's best in newspaper print quality? And will you actively announce your success?

For our company, it means:

• Cost savings due to the reduction of waste and raw material consumption.
• Worker motivation.
• Increased awareness of quality among workers.
• Professionalisation of the production department, acquiring new knowledge.
• Speaking the same language as our suppliers so they are clear about the requirements we need from our raw materials.
• Marketing effect (commercial) of the certification, which helps to strengthen the leadership of our company.

For our customers, it means:

• They have the assurance that every day we will reproduce the same quality in each of our printed copies.
• The newspaper keeps its color advertising appeal, which means they can visualise the results of their campaigns without only imagining what the final result will be.

For readers, it means having a very attractive product to supplement the journalistic quality.

We announced our success in the INCQC on page 2 of the daily edition, where we printed the logo of WAN-IFRA.

Do you plan to participate next time?

Yes, we do. We currently have 7 stars, we are part of the Star Club of newspapers, so we hope to improve the ranking, getting better within this select group.