Businesses involved in manufacturing, wholesale distribution, electronics, automotive, healthcare, industrial, MRO, petrochemicals, aerospace and many other industries, all need catalogs, flyers and brochures to sell their products. In today’s ebusiness world online product catalogs have become one of the most powerful tools for growing your market share because they are readily available and any lag time caused by print distribution has been virtually eliminated.
New tools have emerged that make dynamic publsihing of content much faster and easier that with traditional desktop publishing tools. At eSided we specialize in the design and implementation of offline and online publishing solutions for small to medium sized wholesale distribution, manufacturing, and directory publishing companies using XML authoring tools.
What is XML?
XML authoring, also referred to as single-source publishing, is a publishing system with an integrated composition and pagination engine, and an infrastructure where information is authored, managed and published from a central repository. This combination of enabling technologies allows information to be formatted and re-used for multi-channel publishing, for example, digital formats for publishing to a website or for email distribution, and postscript, and PDF formats for paper-based publications.
An XML publishing environment removes the need for traditional page layout desktop publishing systems (DPS) through the use of automated pagination capabilities of XML programming language. Complex tables, multiple levels of running headers and footnotes, tables of content, indexes, graphics and text controls, combined with the power of page descriptions provide ultimate control and speed in publishing complex long documents like catalogs, directories and other labor-intensive publications. Other benefits include streamlining multiple language publications, automating derivative publications, and programmatically enforcing consistency across all publications.
Key Advantages of XML Publishing
Depending on the volume and complexity of an organization’s publications, the ROI from converting to XML publishing can range from 35% to over 60% within the first production publication cycle. Because XML publishing uses a controlled set of programmed styles it reduces or eliminates the demand for highly skilled graphic design personnel. Since mid-market businesses typically have small marketing departments and limited graphic design personnal and resources, the benefits in terms of speed, combined with cost-reductions, greatly outweigh any potential compromises on the creative side.
Document standardization. Through the use of document type definitions (DTDs) and schemas all documents can be designed to adhere to corporate guidelines.
Instantly update multiple publications. Single-source publishing means updates to source become immediately available in all derivative publications. Sending updates and announcing new products through multiple channels just got easier.
Flexible layouts. Unlike traditional desktop publishing systems where a separate version of the document is required for each different view, by separating the style of a document from its content and structure, XML publishing systems can distribute different views using a single source of information. Full catalogs, niche catalogs, catalogs with specific pricing or product groups, are all created with the ease of a mouse-click.
Easily upgradeable. XML publishing systems are platform-independent so they can be upgraded with relative ease.
Streamlined e-commerce. In business-to-business supply chain management, companies are continually look to streamline electronic commerce solutions and XML has emerged as a perfect mechanism to handle the requirements of exchanging product and transaction information.
Eliminate duplicated data entry. Easily update your catalogs with product and attribute information and entirely new product groups from electronic sources without need for redundant data entry.
Steps to implementing an XML publishing solution:
1. Data Conversion Plan. A data conversion project plan ensures that all of the dependent tasks (metadata/taxonomy design, content structure, etc.) are managed properly.
2. Data Migration. Collecting, cleansing, formatting and uploading data and information from multiple systems and sources.
3. End User Needs Assessment. In-depth interviews with key individuals and departments to gain an understanding of the user environment.
4. Document Design. Developing style sheets and page attributes including headers, footers, advertising space.
5. Process Mapping to New Publishing Environment. Restructuring the content production procedures begins with mapping existing production processes to the new publishing environment.
6. Implementation and Testing.
7. Training to Support Knowledge Transfer. Support users with training interwoven with each task from initial requirements gathering to final user acceptance testing.