Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 44)

distributed document creation C R E AT I O N Take the document at its most fragmentary level—its individual content elements. Each unique element represents an activity to create, manage, and approve—ideally making it available to any document or system in the organization. When these activities fail, are disconnected, or even performed in the wrong order, you can get: • Legal risk due to inaccurate information or late delivery of a document • Dilution of the company’s brand through inconsistencies in messaging and branding • Customer confusion which can require more resources for support resulting in delayed customer action which can take the form of late payment or a decision to not purchase a particular product DISTRIBUTED DOCUMENT Does it mean too many cooks in the kitchen? | By Denise Davert The list of elements that goes into a document (text, graphics, data, logos) is nearly as long as the line of people who have a vested interest in the ﬁnished product. That includes everything from the individual content elements, to the overall message, to the methods used to produce and distribute the document. Each of these areas represents a myriad of activities that must occur in a speciﬁc order, done with explicit applications, performed by specialized stakeholders. One could argue that it’s the disparate systems that have been the problem, but I disagree. I see two major obstacles that have been cleared. The ability to truly transform/normalize data to make it useful across multiple systems, and the facility to connect people and processes together regardless of location—the Internet. We’ll always have dissimilar systems. It’s the inability to tie different applications and processes together that has been the barrier, and we can now do that. The Internet provides a standard platform for information exchange, and when you get down to it, that’s what documents are all about—from their development to their actual use in the hands of the intended recipient. The tools that are emerging to connect and manage these activities are targeting the business processes of documents including workﬂow, collaboration, and decentralized document generation in the form of enterprise-wide correspondence systems. The common thread? All of these can be boiled down to hard dollars. Companies today have the infrastructure to avoid these problems and their associated costs by simply connecting people and processes. Good workﬂow and collaboration systems can manage everything from individual task distribution during document development to customer support and feedback. Distributed document creation allows individual processes to be performed securely, in a timely manner, and by the appropriate person. Each company is unique in the processes they will ultimately want to include in this bigger workﬂow, but my advice is to ﬁrst become aware of everything that is available. Perform a formalized audit of all the processes used to create and distribute your documents. My guess is you’ll discover some processes and people that you may not know about today. Once you see the entire menu, you’ll be able to determine where workﬂow and collaboration can improve the system. Bon appetite! Denise Davert is Vice President of Marketing of Venturabased Elixir Technologies Corporation, a leading software developer for document composition, resource management, print stream conversion, document archival, and web-based support for document production, workﬂow, and collaboration. For more information, visit www.elixir.com. 44 Innovate Spring 08 http://www.elixir.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008

Innovate - Spring 2008 Table of Contents 10 Tips for Successful Open Houses The TransPromo Path Escape the Complexity Putting a Price on Value A Welcome Boost to Hospitality Team Approach Earns Accolades Bound Together New Highs in Image Quality Transforming the Business of Processing Photos Predictive Maintenance Making the Right Choice Diving into Digital Book Production Doing More With Less Distributed Document Creation

Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008

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