Their colleagues at the Regional Office in Bonn were actually the pioneers of using this new tool. Since early 2015, they took up the offer of the survey unit of the Publications Office to set up such an online instrument on their website.  In the Bonn office, Patrycija Sypel extracts the cumulated orders roughly every week into an Excel table. She then forwards this spreadsheet table to the publication office. From its premises in Northern France, the warehouse and distribution service provider Arvato then sends the relevant publications to the individual or organisation that requested it.

Is this new tool used for all the publications the Representation has to offer? "Currently we have some stock problems; there are not enough publications available. Therefore we currently have only a reduced offer of publications.", Böttcher regrets. Patrycija Sypel regularly decides, in joint collaboration with the publication officers from Berlin and Munich, Nadine Böttcher and Thomas Hoffmann, which publications shall be displayed on the online ordering tool. 

"It is up to our team to decide how many copies are available for ordering. This depends on the stock available.  For example prior to the Europe week we increased the quantities possible to order in order to avoid individual e-mail requests sent to us directly. After the Europe week we reduced the maximum quantity for ordering. ", Böttcher explains.

Böttcher is quite satisfied with the new tool: "Of course we still receive e-mails regarding publication requests for example concerning publications which are not included in the online ordering tool. Or we receive regularly e-mails which are forwarded via the Europe Direct centres or via the Publication Office to us. But nevertheless we save a significant amount of time and resources with the help of the online ordering tool."

Berlin is not alone here: Commission Representations in the United Kingdom, Belgium and the Netherlands are also using a similar instrument.

Website of Representation in Germany/Publications:

http://ec.europa.eu/germany/services/publications_de

Online ordering tool:

Germany: http://surveys.publications.europa.eu/formserver/bonn/survey.html

UK: https://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/services/publications/order_en

Website of the Representations in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands:

UK: https://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/services/publications_en

Belgium:  http://ec.europa.eu/belgium/education/publications/form_nl.htm

The Netherlands: http://ec.europa.eu/netherlands/services/publications/bestellen_nl.htm