DOCUMENT Magazine - June 2008 - (Page 31) customer. The software uses business rules to control the presentation of personalized data, such as purchases, account activity or demographic information. Such business rules also control the use of color within text and graphics throughout the documents. To create color documents, organizations need to match the output from the document composition system to the digital printer. Nearly all the document composition systems on the market support some type of color output, but each product offers different levels of support. Depending on the application and digital printer, organizations select highlight colors, four-color process (CMYK) or specialty color models, such as LAB. >> Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite (ES) is an integrated set of server software components that blend document generation, electronic forms, process management and document security. LiveCycle Output ES renders documents on demand in PDF, PostScript, PCL or Zebra Label format. >> Document Sciences xPression provides a comprehensive set of components for document design, assembly, composition, output processing and delivery. The solution’s components use open data structures and published APIs to integrate with corporate portals, web-based applications and content management systems. >> Elixir’s Opus products provide a complete solution for document design, composition and print or web output with the ability to compose a wide range of TransPromo documents. The product includes data-driven graphic tools for creating 2-D and 3-D graphics and supports CMYK and RGB color spaces, as well as Xerox spot-color palettes. >> Exstream Dialogue provides a single environment for the rapid design and production of high-quality, personalized documents with marketing campaign management and tracking. Dialogue Designer includes features for creating 2-D and 3-D dynamic graphics, data-driven transactional tables with headers and footers and overflow pages for variable page documents. Dialogue provides full support for highlight and full process color, as well as fifth color support for VDS output. >> PrintNet Designer is designed for TransPromo applications with an emphasis on personalized document composition and production. The design interface supports imposition, data-driven tables with headers and footers and dynamic graphics with support for RGB, CMYK, HSL and LAB color spaces. >> Pageflex Storefront is a turnkey solution with integrated workflow for rapid development of web-to-print applications. Creative agencies and marketing departments use Pageflex Storefront to create graphical documents with embedded marketing content triggered by customer data. >> XMPie PersonalEffect software creates highly personalized promotional documents integrated with personalized electronic media, such as web pages, text messages and email. PersonalEffect uses Adobe InDesign and Dreamweaver as its design tools. Designers have full access to the features and functions of InDesign for creating highly personalized marketing and TransPromo documents. The Modern Paintbrush In addition to the expanding selection of software, organizations also have a growing number of digital color printers from which to choose. The most common digital color printers are laser printers and inkjet printers. In general, laser printers provide higher image quality at slower speeds, while inkjet printers provide lower image quality at higher speeds. Digital color laser printers heat plastic toner particles and fuse the image to the surface of the page. Laser printers operate at resolutions up to 1,200 dots per inch (dpi) and generate crisp, clean images that rival output from commercial offset printers. However, rough abrasion and folding may cause the toner to crack or chip away, creating striations in the image. In production operations, color laser printers produce between 60 and 120 pages per minute. Inkjet printers use small drops of ink to form an image on the page. The ink soaks into the paper, creating a lower quality but more durable image, which is less vulnerable to mail processing equipment. Inkjet printers generally operate at resolutions up to 600 dpi but may have higher resolutions in the direction of paper travel. In production operations, color inkjet printers produce between 500 and 1,000 pages per minute. Vendors offer two different types of inkjet printers: continuous inkjet (CIJ) and drop-on-demand inkjet (DOD). CIJ printers produce a continuous stream of ink droplets from each nozzle in the print head and use electrical charges to direct or deflect individual droplets. DOD inkjet printers use piezoelectric technology to eject an ink droplet as needed to form an image. Adding color to transactional documents provides and 30% faster payments than with traditional black-on-white documents. 73% better comprehension Painting the Whole Picture Due to the wide range of software and hardware options, Madison Advisors recommends careful consideration of organizational requirements before selecting a solution. Since an organization’s customer communications strategy consists of multiple components, organizations must collect digital color printing requirements from the enterprise. Therefore, organizations need to build an enterprise-wide document strategy. When advising our clients on their document strategies, Madison Advisors often recommends that they approach document composition solutions and digital color production as integrated parts of the overall solution, as opposed to point solutions for a specific application. Organizations may need multiple solutions as part of their overall document strategy to address near- and long-term goals. Richard Huff is a principal analyst with Madison Advisors and specializes in the assessment and implementation of content management and publishing systems. For more information, please email Mr. Huff at richhuff@madison-advisors.com or visit www.madison-advisors.com. ■ www.DOCUMENTmedia.com june.08 document 31 http://www.madison-advisors.com http://www.DOCUMENTmedia.com
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