Going all soft - Print 21 magazine article

There are many ways of being creative with software, and not just by using the familiar design tools that feed the printing industry. Simon Enticknap looks at some recent software applications on the market and, in the process, becomes more than usually excited at what they can do.

Software is not a subject about which I normally get too excited. The sight of a great big chunk of perfecting press churning along at top speed can still raise the hairs on the back of my neck; trying to get CS3 to do what I want is more likely to have me pulling out my hair. Recently though I've been digging around in the world of automated software systems and it's clear there's enough going on here to elicit the occasional 'wow' and to feel that small tingle of enthusiasm. It's not what you might expect - or not what I expected at least.

Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the first use of the term 'software' in computing circles. Since then it's fair to say we've all become hooked on what it can do, dependent as we are on a myriad of different programmes to create, organise, calculate and visualise our daily activities. While it is still possible to print with nary a bit nor a byte in sight (see our story on the Australian Print Workshop in page 12), it's also true that the industry is where it is today because of the software that drives it. And that's not just the creative stuff that produces the raw fuel for the printing industry, the likes of InDesign and Photoshop, Quark and Illustrator.

Today, automation exists everywhere, taking over all our daily tasks, from auto-piloting to auto-parking. It has become an entrenched aspect of the print room where it means faster make-readies, fewer human errors and greater repeatability. Many in the industry will be familiar with packages that come under the heading of Management Information Systems (MIS) or maybe Digital Asset Management (DAM), possibly even the much-vaunted Job Description Format (JDF) workflows. These are well-known tools designed to help manage the production capability of the modern printing business, but they are also just the tip of the software iceberg.

Out in computer-land, there are literally dozens of applications just waiting for the opportunity to do your job for you. Much of it involves taking on the tasks that humans used to do except doing them faster, more accurately and without the need for tea breaks. Intelligent software applications have come a long way in the past few years and our software slaves are now a lot more sophisticated, powerful and cheaper to employ.

All aboard the enterprise document
Some of the most advanced software packages are in the field of 'enterprise document automation' where they are used to put together millions of different documents very rapidly without any human intervention. Each document is unique to the intended recipient and it is assembled in a way that is far more complex than mere humans could ever manage by themselves.

We're talking about transactional printing which, by its very nature, is the most highly developed form of variable data printing. No two credit card statements are alike, every electricity bill is created as a unique artefact, never before witnessed or imagined. It is a form of printing that is synonymous with the development of computerised data systems and digital print engines, and it has resulted in extremely advanced means of generating distinctive, unique customer communications.

And yet household bills would have to be one of the dullest forms of communication doing the rounds; there's not much creative buzz in a bank statement, by its very nature. Even here though, the software systems that generate them - or rather the developers that make the systems - are doing their best to brighten up their act and create something more attractive and appealing.

In his office in Sydney, John Turner of Exstream Software has dozens of examples of brightly coloured, well-designed documents that look more like sales brochures than bills; branding is sharp and well-defined, the information intelligently laid out employing graphs and diagrams. Credit card statements feature promotions and small ads - the so-called transpromo - designed to appeal to the demographic and spending habits of the recipient - and it's all generated on the fly. Interestingly too, it's all generated from overseas. The examples of transpromo print in particular are from Japan and while John Turner says "there is a desire to do it in Australia" it's not at all clear if and when it might take off.

Leaving aside the tantalising marketing benefits of transpromo, Turner says there are good reasons why businesses should invest in creating well-designed, legible documents with information that is relevant and targeted. Documents that are attractive, easy to understand and impart information that can be readily retained by the user help to reduce the incidence of follow up queries and ensure that when a call to action is required, the end-user does what they are asked. Today's systems make that objective easier to achieve by being able to present information in a variety of different ways and by making sure it is targeted and consistent across an organisation.

Turner points to the example of a major bank that routinely issued dozens of different types of documents for its home lending division, regardless of whether or not the customer needed to view them all. Using Exstream Software's Dialogue document automation software, the bank was able to reduce the amount of documentation printed, make sure that customers only got what they required and maintain a consistent branding across all output - all done automatically and on-demand in response to specific requests for information.

In Australia, Dialogue is used by both transactional printers and their customers, such as banks and insurance companies, for generating customer documentation. This demonstrates another aspect of automation and its increasing sophistication - the fact that it can realign existing relationships in the production process, make it easier for clients, for instance, to take on some of the tasks that they might previously have relied on their supplier to provide. The whole web-to-print phenomenon is another case in point whereby the customer performs some of the functions of a salesperson in order to generate estimates, quotes and job specifications via a software interface rather than a human face.

This is an important lesson for all printers to bear in mind; new software opens up opportunities but it can also deliver your business into the lap of somebody else, maybe even your customer.

Just too DAM good
Another area in which software automation is transforming established work patterns is in the 'pre' prepress job creation field encompassed by digital asset management, job ticketing, collaborative work spaces and customer approvals. If you thought that DAM was just about archiving, then perhaps it's time you took another look - there's much more going on here. Here are just some of tasks that should no longer be part of your working life, and if they are, then think about getting an intelligent software slave to do it for you:

* Spending time searching for old files and, in particular, looking for artwork and images used in previous jobs
* Copying folders over from one job to another, effectively doubling the size of your stored files each time
* Manually updating old jobs with new artwork, such as when your most important client decides to tweak their logo and reprint all existing material
* Archiving of old files - and let's face it, who can be bothered to do this anyway? But you should, if only because it frees up server space and provides essential back-up. After all, these are your assets and that means they should be valuable to you.
* Attaching files to emails in order to send to customers for their approval. Stop it now, it's positively prehistoric. FTP is not much better.
* Opening half a dozen different programmes in order to perform simple tasks; it's time to get yourself a single interface and close all those windows
* Racking your brain trying to remember why particular changes were made to a specific job then scrolling through lists of emails trying to track down who did what and when and why. As Kevin Rudd likes to keep reminding us - it's time to stop the blame game.

And there's more, lots lots more. Andrew Lomas at Creative Folks in Sydney knows all about how useful these systems can be because he sells them. He showed me a package from Opix, a Swiss company that specialises in what it calls Enterprise Media Management. The programme is called Opix Media City and is called a MAM system (Media Asset Management), not just a DAM, in reference to the sort of convergence that is going on across images, audio and video files, print and electronic media. Media City offers a DAM component for storing, organising, updating, retrieving and converting data files but it also includes workflow management, job ticketing, scheduling etc all within the same environment. Lomas describes it as the 'middle bridge' spanning customer relationships, approvals, production processes and archiving.

It's amazing how cheap it all is as well. Software long ago became a commodity but in terms of sheer functionality you can get terrific bang for your buck these days. Andrew Lomas says the average installation of Opix for half a dozen users will cost about $50,000, great value given what the system will do for you. It's like taking on an extra member of staff to manage all workflow, scheduling, back-up etc but without the need to pay super or holiday pay.

Bringing order to chaos
Creativity doesn't have to mean mayhem and chaos. If you look at the 'creative' industries that feed the printing industry (publishing, marketing and advertising) then ultimately that's what they are - industries with their own purpose and drive to make money. That necessarily means organising a workflow, delivering product on time, managing costs etc - all the things you expect from a widget manufacturer.

Another recent entrant in the software market in Australia has taken on the task of bringing a little order to the creative factory. UK-based Sohnar has introduced its Traffic management system that is designed to deliver the sort of functionality that printers might be familiar with in an MIS package but with the focus on designers and copy-writers, creatives and art directors. Bruno Calfapietra, sales manager for Sohnar in Australia, says it's not unusual to find these types of businesses using five or six different programmes to manage their affairs; Salesforce for CRM, Excel for timesheets, maybe a manual job bag, Word for estimates, InDesign for invoices and Microsoft Project to schedule everything. Traffic brings all these different elements together and customises how they are handled for each business. Estimating, invoicing, scheduling, tracking of customer contacts are all handled within the same environment.

This creates it's own challenges; with print, for instance, it's possible to automate estimates and quotes by calculating time and materials, but how do you quote on creative thinking? It can happen in the most unexpected ways. I knew one advertising guy who used to bill for the time he spent in the shower because that was where he had his best ideas. Traffic addresses this problem by offering several layers of job management from an overall project level down to individual jobs, master stages, scheduling and specific work requests to handle those urgent jobs that come in unexpectedly but still need to be managed and billed for within an overall customer relationship.

Calfapietra agrees that Traffic, which has been directly supported in Australia by Sohnar for about a year and now has around 30 installations, is not really suitable for a print environment unless it has a graphic design department. But for those which do, it may well be a means of bringing a bit of method to the creative madness and introducing the type of management tools that the rest of the industry has already adopted.

The return of the integrator
Remember the good old days of the integrator, the guy (or gal) who would come in and tie together all the bits of equipment that, as a result of PostScript, were supposed to talk to each other. Supposed to, that is, because in reality, the theory of using non-proprietary equipment combined with an open standard (PostScript) for outputting digital files didn't always live up to expectations. In fact, the crashes could be spectacular.

Hence, the role of the integrator whose job it was to design the systems, put the pieces together and make sure they worked seamlessly and glitch-free. They were the gods, the gurus of the prepress. Funny though, you don't seem to hear much about them these days, mainly because with the advent of CTP and the emergence of a mature, stable technology, the days of digital prepress as a black art have become a thing of the past. Today's operators expect plug 'n' play and, by and large, that's what they get.

But the integrators didn't go away; they simply changed their roles. These days the integrators are living upstream in the creative process, advising clients on how to pull together all the disparate functions that go towards creating a piece of printed communication (or even an online document, it makes little difference). That's what all these programmes do in effect; Dialogue, Opix, Traffic are all about bringing together different tasks and eliminating stand alone systems.

A good integrator in this field can save you time, money and major hassles - so how do you find one? Andrew Lomas at Creative Folks says the key is to look for a supplier who is "open, flexible and responsive."

"You need to form a partnership with them because, at the level they are operating at, they are more like a business partner. They're not just a technology partner but are looking at the fundamentals of workflow, job management, customer relationships etc."

Like all partnerships, it is important to define responsibilities, says Lomas. In order for a system to function properly, the client must be prepared to work on it as well, to keep it well-maintained and follow correct work practices.

"It's all too easy to blame the software when something goes wrong when maybe it's the implementation that is at fault," he says.

Lomas advises reviewing your systems annually and to keep updating them in the same way that you might review your business systems and work practices - the two are closely related. A good integrator will be able to anticipate not just what your customers want now but what they will be requiring in the future even if they don't know it now.

"After all, that's the definition of good customer service - being able to respond to your customers' future needs," added Lomas.

It would be great to find a software programme that is able to predict the future (let me know if you find one) but in many ways these current programmes are the predictors of where we are going anyway and what the graphic arts workplace of the future will be like - integrated, fast, secure, efficient and streamlined. I can hardly wait.