Quark CEO arrives in Australia to fire up the publishing revolution

On a quick trip to Australia, CEO Raymond P. Schiavone took time out to introduce long-standing industry guru, Graham Freeman, as the new senior vice president for the Asia Pacific region,.

Those from the Australian industry are likely to be familiar with Freeman, (pictured below) who worked at rival company Adobe for 11 years, locally and in the US. Leaving to work at Arbortext, Freeman met Schiavone, who was then ceo of the company and the two decided to join forces. "We worked well together and when Ray talked about his vision for Quark it was really compelling," Freeman said. "It was a chance to get in and build this business under Ray's leadership."


Only three weeks into his role and Freeman is enjoying the new terrain. Taking up the role of ceo in November last year, Schiavone is still somewhat new himself and determined to breathe fresh air into a company that has gained itself something of a bad reputation in the past.

"When I started, it [Quark] was a secretive company that had only recently realised the value of customer service," he said. "Competition from Adobe woke us up and made us realise we had to listen to customers. We let our own success get in our way; we were arrogant and slow on new innovation. I'm here to change that."

Part of Schiavone's (pictured below) plan is to focus on dynamic enterprise publishing, a new market but one that he believes is definitely worth nurturing. "This market is in its infancy but is growing at a rate of 24 per cent a year and there's no dominant players," he said. "We want to take Quark's strengths and incorporate them into something allowing you to do multi-channel publishing."

What users need is a way to assemble content easily, according to Schiavone. "Content should be able to be dynamically assembled and that's what I want to do," he said.

"As a company, our challenge is to innovate again and we can spend a lot of time and money putting new features in; but it won't make things more productive. I want the whole process to be more productive the whole way through."

Schiavone says that one thing Quark is working on is - what he calls - the 'finally' features, providing customers with solutions to all the annoying things they want made easier and quicker to use. Just what these features are remains a secret and is still being workshopped, but Schiavone and Freeman both assuredly say that Quark is here to listen to its customers.

"You hear from people what they don't like and if you don't respond then you create real customer angst," Freeman said. "They need to know that the company has the right attitude to want to change it."

Change is something that doesn't often happen in the publishing world, according to Schiavone. "We don't do publishing any different today than 100 years ago," he said. "Now, you will see new faces and leverage of our past strengths with the most skilled people in the market. Quark is back."




Pictured: Graham Freeman, senior vice president; Raymond P. Schiavone, CEO and Joe Bizinger, channel manager.




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