100% automation case study
A company’s product manager arrives at the printers’ two days before the deadline with a crucial
amendment for each of the products of one additional picture, a small additional table, and 6 lines
extra text. These amendments must be made for a total of 78 products on 46 individual pages spread
over the whole catalog, some of them bleeding onto following pages, which in turn require changes,
possibly also producing bleeders (domino effect). All these amendments must also be integrated into
the eight foreign language catalogs, with identical problems.
Scenario 1: No automation, manual generation
- Several DTP operators must put in massive overtime, large sections of the catalog must be
redesigned.
- Tables must be generated manually.
- The additional objects exceed the scope of the original pages, bleeding onto the following
pages, which in turn require changes, etc. - a domino effect situation.
- The eight foreign-language versions of the catalog must also be redesigned: as their text
quantity deviates from the German catalog, bleeders and space conditions must be dealt with
individually.
- The risk of mistakes increases due to deadline pressure.
- There is not enough time for correction runs.
- The printing deadline cannot be met even with the most dedicated staff.
- The deadline must be postponed. This causes problems with the printers’ time schedule; it may
be impossible to have machines available for this job during the next few days, which leads to
cancellation costs; alternative service providers must be found at short notice, there is no time
for satisfactory price negotiations.
- The catalog is not ready on time for the trade fair, the trade fair naturally takes place as
scheduled, participation in the fair has suddenly become irrelevant;
OR
- The company does without those crucial catalog amendments. The product descriptions are
insadequate or even misleading, affecting the products’ sales figures.
- Even before going to print, an expensive catalog fails to fulfil the company’s
expectations.
Scenario 2: Template-based part-automation
Thanks to template-based part-automation, the text and object frames are filled with data from
the databases after being restructured manually. However, due to the complex and time-consuming
preparations, this does not really save time:
- Several DTP operators must put in massive overtime, large sections of the catalog must be
redesigned.
- Tables must be generated manually.
- The additional objects exceed the scope of the original pages, bleeding onto the following
pages, which in turn require changes, etc. - a domino effect situation.
- The eight foreign-language versions of the catalog must also be redesigned: as their text
quantity deviates from the German catalog, bleeders and space conditions must be dealt with
individually.
- The risk of mistakes increases due to deadline pressure.
- There is not enough time for correction runs.
- The printing deadline cannot be met even with the most dedicated staff.
- The deadline must be postponed. This causes problems with the printers’ time schedule; it may
be impossible to have machines available for this job during the next few days, which leads to
cancellation costs; alternative service providers must be found at short notice, there is no time
for satisfactory price negotiations.
- The catalog is not ready on time for the trade fair, the trade fair naturally takes place as
scheduled, participation in the fair has suddenly become irrelevant; OR
- The company does without those crucial catalog amendments. The product descriptions are
inadequate or even misleading, affecting the products’ sales figures.
- Even before going to print, an expensive catalog fails to fulfil the company’s
expectations.
- The company’s presence at the fair, which entails considerable costs, must be called into
question.
Scenario 3: Rule-based 100% automation
- The product manager integrates the required images, text and table parameters into the central
database in the required languages; the scope of the changes in terms of text quantity, number of
images, tables etc., is irrelevant.
- The product manager presses a button.
- All 9 catalogs, one in German and eight in foreign languages, are available approximately 110
minutes later, 100% compliant with the company’s corporate design, in PDF X.3 format.
- All catalogs are available on time, 100% CD compliant and up to the minute.
In future, there will be no staff required to generate page after page manually in a
time-consuming and cost-intensive process. DocScape’s 100% automation liberates your product
management, which no longer has to deal with the massive inherent necessities which the production
of a catalog used to entail. From now on, it is totally inconsequential how often you amend, expand
or change your product range; whole new timeframes have opened, and the production of your catalog
no longer threatens to hold up your company.
In DocScape, you have met an efficient layout partner as flexible as your company
requires.
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 (Deutsch)
100% automation saves time, money and stress and has made media production a structured process,
which we refer to as
process-oriented publishing.
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