Corporate Electronic Publishing

Many companies create a large number of print documents for sales purposes, ranging from manuals, field guides, and catalogs to newsletters and presentations. Frequently, these documents are converted into electronic formats for use on the Internet and presentations.

Some companies seek to reverse this process. They want to create the original documents in electronic formats such as Lotus Notes and HTML and to publish them worldwide in a variety of electronic forms as well as print.

They want to change the way they create and revise these documents in a consistent and coherent way. To do this they need to develop a broad-based plan for this change.

The challenge is to corral the players and put together a paradigm that all can use. This will typically require what the business lingo calls "Buy in," "Sign off," and "Commitment" from the managers involved. The objective is for the company to focus on a single database of marketing materials that all users can draw from.

The issues involved in this process include:

1. Controls--Who do you give access to, and who manages what is put into and taken out of the database?
2. Formats--What data formats must be used for the creation and viewing of the information?
3. Distribution--What distribution channels do you use for each audience and type of document?
4. Audience--Who will get the information at each stage?

The Hourglass Model

This flow of information can be viewed as an hourglass. At the top of the hourglass designated staff members will author documents using a wide range of authoring tools--from word processors and spreadsheets to layout applications like Quark. These documents will pass though a choke/control point in which they can all be viewed in Lotus Notes, HTML, or some other agreed on common format.

At the choke/control point documents will be reviewed and their content "synchronized and harmonized," i.e., dates, prices, and specifications will be made consistent across all current documents, and the company messages will be rendered in the same terms and made coherent.

After documents pass through the choke/control point they will be distributed to their designated audiences in the format and distribution medium most appropriate to them--print, Web, Lotus Notes, etc.

The first level of recipients will be the company's own sales staff. The same hourglass model can be applied to the audiences at lower levels--resellers, customer service reps, and customers, with sales staff doing the authoring of customized proposals and catalog sections.

Here is a partial list of the data formats, viewing outputs (media), and authoring and conversion tools that might be considered in the development of such a plan for a particular company.

Data Formats

1. Text: ACSII, HTML, SGML SCRIPT, Word Processor, Spreadsheets
2. Adobe PDF: portable document format
3. Image formats: GIF, JPEG, BMP, PS-postscript, EPS, TIFF, PSD-Photo Shop layered
4. Audio formats:
   • Public Domain: AIFF, WAV, SND
   • Proprietary: Real Audio, Xing Streamworks
5. Video formats:
   • Public Domain: Quick Time, MOV, MPEG, AVI,
   • Proprietary: VDO, Xing Streamworks (MPEG), Vosaic, Vivo, Vxtreme, CU-See-Me, Street Technologies, RealVideo
6. Archive format: ZIP files, stuff it, TAR, BINHEX
7. VRML: .wrl

Viewing Outputs (Media)

1. Print/Paper
2. Telephone/Fax
3. Computer Mediated:
   • Desktop Native Media: Viewing document with authoring tools, e.g., MS Word
   • CD-ROM
   • Networks: LAN/Intranet/Internet
     • Lotus Notes
     • FTP
     • Browser Enabled
     • E-mail
     • Online Chat
     • Streaming multimedia
4. Audio
   • Audio Tape/CD
   • Radio
   • CD
5. Video
   • Television: Broadcast, Cable, Satellite
   • Video Tape Recorder
6. Other Electronic Appliances
   • Pager
   • PDA/ Consumer Electronic Devices

Authoring tools

1. Lotus Notes DB
2. Lotus SmartSuite
   • Lotus AMI Pro/WordPro
   • Lotus 1-2-3
   • Organizer
   • Freelance
3. WordPerfect
4. ClarisWorks
5. Microsoft Office
   • Word
   • Excel
   • PowerPoint
   • Access
   • Project
6. Adobe
   • PageMaker
   • Quark
   • PhotoShop
   • Page Mill
7. PaintShop Pro
8. Netwin VM
9. Adobe Acrobat
10. Web authoring tools
    • MS FrontPage, HTML Assistant for MS Word,
    • Netscape Navigator Gold
    • Hot Dog Professional
    • BB Edit

Data Format Conversion Tools

1. Image Format Conversion tools
   • DeBabelizer
   • GIF Converter
   • PhotoShop
2. Document to HTML Converters
   • Lotus Notes
   • MS Word
   • Beyond Press (Quark to HTML)
   • Microsoft Office 97 Professional
   • Lotus SmartSuite
3. Audio Converters
   • Sound Foundry
4. Video Converters
   • Adobe Premiere
   • Cosa: After Effects

This is the start of the description of the process and set of options that a particular company may consider for this purpose. While I don't typically write about corporate publishing, I find that these questions have a lot in common with the issues that a publisher must face when considering how to integrate print with electronic publishing. I will try to expand on this discussion in the coming weeks and elaborate on the common concerns of corporate and commercial publishers.

Please e-mail me if you think I've left important formats and tools off this list.

Past installments of Multimedia Web