The majority of large organisations pay significant attention to their content, but are looking at additional channels for publication given the meteoric rise in use of smart devices, tablets and e-book readers. Organisations are increasingly seeking to move print publications into digital formats to improve distribution effectiveness and reduce costs.

This demand is exposing a capability gap between traditional Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions and processes for producing large and highly designed publications such as brochures, reports, catalogues, books, guides and manuals. The typical production process involves subject matter experts writing content and a design team producing publications, a process which for large publications can take weeks or months.

“For all the focus on online publishing and the increased use of ECM solutions over the last decade, print publication costs in organisations are still greater than online costs,” says Simon Rawson, expert on content management strategy and Principal at PowerMark Solutions. 

“Design teams typically take content from source documents, which may or may not be stored in an ECM, and use desktop publication tools such as Adobe InDesign to produce a range of publication formats. Publications are prepared manually, and files are generally stored outside an ECM (hence the title ‘the content ECM forgot’). This bottleneck in production is being highlighted now that organisations are also seeking to produce electronic publication versions through the same process. An additional concern is that manual handling allows human error to creep into the equation.

“There are very few tools which automate design and publishing processes,” says Rawson. “The only one I am aware of which can be integrated into an existing ECM to take advantage of content workflow is an Australian product called Typefi Publish.”

Chandi Perera is CEO of Typefi Systems, developer and vendor of automated composition software Typefi Publish. Typefi Publish is used to streamline publishing processes by organisations such as government departments and United Nations organisations, and in a range of commercial sectors from book publishing to manufacturing. Perera agrees that there is little reduction in demand for highly quality publications. 

“Our clients are experiencing a rise in demand for EPUB versions. However each e-book reader has its own idiosyncrasies. The range of devices means there are 30-40 different formats you need to cater for, ranging from simple, non-interactive devices such as the Kindle, through to interactive PDF with embedded video designed for tablet and desktop devices, with smaller screen format smart phones in between.

“In particular our government clients also have a requirement to publish PDF, EPUB and HTML in accessible formats. This is very hard to do without rationalising and automating design and publishing processes.

“Accessibility aside, reducing production costs through automation is the primary reasons our clients come to us,” says Perera. Typefi’s customers see an immediate reduction in time and costs. Jake Boulton at Rhino Rack estimates “production time has dropped from a month to three to four days”. 

Geoff Stringer at Lonely Planet estimates that it saves $800,000 to $900,000 per year of its publication costs, while increasing the number of publications it produces. Jon LaBarba at manufacturer Wayne-Dalton estimates production time for product instruction guides now takes 80% less time.

“All organisations should consider accessibility in their online and print publications,” says Rawson. “In government it’s mandatory by policy. What’s not widely appreciated is that under the Australian Disability Discrimination Act, online accessibility compliance is also a requirement for companies in general as of December 2013. As they are required to ensure physical accessibility and things such as ramps and disabled toilets, organisations will similarly need to ensure their websites are accessible.

“Accessibility of websites and online services is not difficult to achieve, but as with rationalising publishing processes, organisations need to ensure accessibility starts at the point content is first created.”

Ian McCrabb of Systemik Solutions in Sydney agrees. Systemik Solutions offers content writing services targeted at commercial and government sectors. 

“We are seeing good demand for our services to migrate or rewrite content to ensure it is accessible at the point of entry. In our case we deal with documents which were originally written in Word and converted directly to PDF, or content in legacy ECM solutions. We are seeing the demand shift from writing documents in MS Word originals into the rich text editors coming with ECM solutions. We have even developed a plug-in for SharePoint and Drupal which directly supports authors in the production of compliant content, especially where there are tables and tags.”

www.typefi.com