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The interactive document Moreover, on their own, word processors cannot support document template repositories, version control, workflow processes for collaboration, validation and reusability, and certainly cannot enforce document capture in digital archive for CRM purposes. While solutions exist to automate production and fulfilment (e.g. hybrid mail), such solutions do not address content and presentment. In the modern age of customer volatility, corporate rules, compliance, initiatives such as ‘Treating Customers Fairly,’ branding, reusability, control, and workflow management, MS Word® and the likes offer no reliable solution for interactive documents on a corporate scale. The Graphic Arts solution The world of the graphic arts has taken on the challenge of introducing variable information in what has traditionally been a field of static documents produced in high quality and volume. This industry is now ready to accommodate variability thanks to a number of key technological developments. Hardware now offers complex image management, colour printing at viable costs, high quality, high throughput, and the ability to process different pages in the same print stream which is the nature of interactive documents (images, text, and data). New formats have been created to accompany the introduction of variability (PPML/VDX, VIPP VPS, JLT, etc.) and naturally, , applications and the technical tools of the trade have followed. Graphic arts solutions are powerful technical solutions, designed for skilled users who maintain a thorough control of their software and hardware environments. The software solutions in place have naturally evolved to support the introduction of variability in print and can now offer some interaction with the end user. Most applications try to tackle the issue of automating what used to be adjusted by the specialist. Variability ranges from a simple image swap (same resolution, same size, same location, same format, but different content) to a more complex, total rearrangement of the document. For example, variable text—or the inclusion of variables in a text block—means more or less room on the page and, therefore, more choices. Should the image next to it be resized? Should the font be a little larger? Should the line spacing be increased? Should the margin be a little wider? As these solutions grow in complexity, they increasingly need highly trained specialists to develop and deliver output. There is always a fair amount of to-ing and fro-ing between the specialist and the end user before a document is finally available. Typically the finished document mainly contains graphical components such as images and a relatively smaller amount of text and even fewer volumes of variable data, usually limited to customer name, address, product code, preferences, etc. The finished application can be one of two sorts— often incompatible with one another. Either the finished design is to be personalised through data—and all a user can do is to supply the correct data—or the document is a template that can be customised on screen and printed once at the end of the personalisation process, offering no way of producing it in larger numbers. To our knowledge, no graphic arts solution can offer the simple three-step method of creating a new document: • Step 1. Select a template • Step 2. Personalise the template and save it as a document (or new template) • Step 3. Attach a list of recipients to create the documents based on that template Graphic arts applications are often driven by marketing requirements and as such, these solutions rarely support an end-to-end business process. Integration into the customer or business process is, therefore, left to other mechanisms outside of the capabilities of such tools, heavily impacting technical integration effort, deployment, and maintenance. It may be a cliché but the very nature of the graphic arts industry is to provide eyecatching applications to the potential buyer and, therefore, have little to offer outside of this remit. It would not be possible to build textheavy applications with such tools, such as continued contract management, or a complete letter-writing system. Graphic arts applications, therefore, often remain excluded from the formal business process world and are managed as something necessary but uncontrollable and/or outside the end-to-end business processes. The Data Processing solution Data processing solutions (aka document composition) have been developed with the primary objective of replacing complex print programs which dealt with vast amounts of variable data — in most cases transactions. Document composition solutions have a long history of ever-increasing features and functionality; the largest coverage of applications, platforms, and output formats; and, of course, the highest throughput capabilities. Though these solutions have largely been used as high volume batch solutions for complex transactional documents, most have developed a simpler access for the nontechnical user’s interactive requirements. However, the base product remains a highly technical solution, primarily designed for highly skilled users. Though these tools were not designed with the interactive document in mind (even the latest generation tools), they are probably our best candidate for delivering the interactive document. Indeed, composition solutions have nearly all it takes to tackle the challenge. They support the necessary controls and they can manage the content, the presentment, and the underlying processes. They support business process interoperability and can be reasonably well integrated within existing environments. Nevertheless, I believe they still fall short of a truly viable interactive document solution. These solutions have built their interactive document application as a separate product that ‘bolts-on’ to the core composition product. And herein lays the problem facing these solutions. To take advantage of these solutions, a document needs to be created. One still has to use the base product to prepare the base layer, aka the document template. Then you have to use the bolt-on to add the interactive component. Both interfaces are highly technical and cannot be used without specialist composition programming skills and a thorough understanding of how these solutions 5 Issue 7 January 2009 e• views Journal, Xplor UK & Ireland Edition

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of e views - January 2009

e views - January 2009 Contents Technology Management Creating a Print Intelligent Enterprise The Future of Broadband Connectivity: @ 320 kph? TPE Master Class Cover Story TransPromo and the Credit Crunch Xplor Europe News Service Directory

e views - January 2009

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