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The Economics of Collaborative Authoring and Distribution
 
George   Cacioppo
  Vice President and General Manager
  Adobe Systems, Inc.
Enterprise Products Division Mailstop: W14-602
345 Park Avenue
San Jose   California  USA  95110-2704
Phone: 1 408 536 2983
 
Biographical notice:
 
George Cacioppo
 
George Cacioppo is Vice President and General Manager of the Enterprise Product Division at Adobe Systems Incorporated in San Jose, California. George's organization is reponsible for the development of the Acrobat and Framemaker products and the development of solutions targeting Enterprise information and communications needs. Until recently, George was responsible for the design, introduction, and development of Adobe's architecture for production printing, known as Adobe PostScript Extreme. Its use of Acrobat technology is enabling the industry to move from the traditional "Print and Distribute" workflows to "Distribute and Print" electronic workflows. George joined Adobe in 1992. Previously he was an engineering manager at Digital Equipment Corporation in Maynard, Massachusetts.
 
 

Challenges of Information Creation and Distribution
 
In today's economy, successful businesses recognize that information is a key asset. But information is also an expensive asset to create, maintain, and distribute. To maximize the value of your information, you must make it easily available to everyone who needs it, inside or outside your company. In his keynote address, George Cacioppo, Vice President and General Manager of the Enterprise Solutions Division of Adobe Systems Incorporated, examines the challenges you face in trying to leverage your information assets while improving your customer service.
 
 

The Economics of Collaborative Authoring
 
Technology has supplied the tools and the infrastructure to manage the creation and distribution of electronic documents. Yet, despite an array of sophisticated products and solutions, most organizations still create information in a highly decentralized, unintegrated fashion. This means your company can't repurpose or reuse much of its strategic information. Even if your company has adopted a repository management solution, your individual repositories are probably not connected. This results in a higher cost to your company in terms of additional work, time to market, and missed opportunities.
 
 

The Economics of Distribution
 
Your company's information is only as valuable as the ability of your customer or employee to access it. Unless you can make your information readily accessible to everyone who needs it, when they need it, and in a format they can use, it's virtually useless. This is true whether your user is an employee of your company or your customer. In the not too distant past, when you needed to distribute information, you typically printed first and distributed later. Today, thanks to the advent of the Internet, the process is reversed. You distribute your information and your customer prints it at the source. This helps you realize some economies, but it doesn't help your customer solve the problem of too little time and too much information. When you provide customized information, you help your customer maximize his or her time and use your information better. Your ability to provide your customer with customized information adds up to a distinct competitive edge.
 
 

Network Infrastructure Saves the Day ... Or Does It?
 
If you're like most people, you've probably figured out that Internets and intranets are the keys to solving the collaborative authoring and distribution problem. In November of 1995, only 45% of corporations with 100 to 1000+ employees had set up an intranet; by November of 1997, that figure had jumped to 98%. So, if you have a browser and access to the World Wide Web, that should solve your problem. Or does it?
 
The problem with this line of thinking is that access to the Internet has set customer expectations. Features like 7 day/24 hour-a-week customer support and easy, universal access to up-to-date information have suddenly become the standard, not the exception. Your Internet solution may not be designed to meet the demands of doing online business in today's global marketplace. Making sure your web site is meeting your customers' expectations can be a formidible challenge.
 
For example, a large investment bank with regional offices in Frankfurt, London, Johannesburg, Hong Kong, Singapore, and New York employs a number of analysts. These analysts are responsible for summarizing local market data and preparing reports based on the results of their research. To distribute these reports faster and more economically, the bank has made a significant investment in technology that enables the analysts in each regional office to post their reports to the Internet. The solution is good -- as far as it goes. Because there's no one central place to look for information, the bank's customers have to know the URL for each office to access reports for a specific region. In addition, the reports look different on each web site and are not organized consistently. The bank -- and others companies like it -- missed a great opportunity to advance its branding, as well as provide customized services to its customers. There are many global corporations that are falling short on meeting customer information needs.
 
 

Internet Trends
 
Today's trend is toward better organization and control of the Internet -- both internal and external. Almost overnight, the rebellious, undisciplined upstart known as the World Wide Web has matured into a "big business," with all the rules and standards incumbant to that title.
 
With all the different standards available for delivering information on the Internet, why isn't there just one universal standard? Why can't you just use HTML and be done with it? The short answer is that each format or standard is unique. Just as you use a saw, a hammer, and a screwdriver for different tasks in building a house, you use HTML, PDF, and XML for different purposes when distributing information on the Web.
 
We are rapidly moving into an era where information will be stored in a repository -- as components of text, graphics, sound, video, and other formats -- where it will be assembled dynamically based on your customer's needs and delivered in the format tailored to your customer's individual requirements. So, if you want your customer to be able to click through a news summary, for example, you will probably format the summary in HTML. Where it's important to control the presentation and provide high fidelity printing -- as in the case of a press release, customer testimonial, or product data sheet -- you may choose PDF as a more suitable delivery format. If your customer needs to be able to search and modify your information, XML is the format of choice. The point is you need the flexibility to deliver your information in the format most appropriate to meet your customer's needs.
 
 

Information Assets...Your Competitive Edge
 
If information is your company's most valuable asset, then providing accessibility to that information -- and delivering customized information to a specific customer base -- is the key to leveraging your corporate knowledge. Your ability to easily and quickly deliver critical business information to your customer is your competitive edge -- and your most valuable corporate asset.
Analysing SGML Documents linguistically   Table of contents   Indexes   Building an SGML-based Publishing Environment