The Merchandisers, with a combined weekly distribution of over 250,000, will be running off of the same Sun Microsystems server that is running their advertising and business systems, located at the Lebanon facility. Remote offices in Reading and Hanover will have full system access through a VPN.

The system is being customized to meet several very specific needs of the Free Newspaper market, particularly in the areas of pre-print distribution and the carrier payment process. Training is scheduled to take place in the next 4 – 6 weeks or so, after the completion of the custom work.

“We have been surprised and delighted with Vision Data’s performance our 2+ year relationship,” according to Valerie Stokes, corporate vice-president and general manager. “Vision Data has out-preformed our expectations at every level. Their support has been excellent.”

Thomas A Dempsey, president of Vision Data, commented: ““As recognized leaders in the rapidly growing free newspaper industry, The Merchandisers, starting with a single Vision Data product and expanding to additional products are typical of many of the papers in the growing list of over 1100 publications currently using Vision Data software systems.” For over30 years, the independently owned publishing companies have been a real strength in Vision Data’s pattern of continuing growth.”