Analysis:Quark Content Management-Make Your Digital Assets More Profitable

Quark Webcast highlights content management solutions, efficient managment and effective access to consolidated digital assets, leveraging content for best marketing effectiveness.

Quark logo

Last Thursday, 18 August, Quark’s Scott Allan led a web pre­sen­ta­tion of the basics of Quark’s Content Managament (QCM). Attended by a web audi­ence of over 200, it was an infor­ma­tive overview of QCM and how it fits into enter­pris­es, enabling company-wide dig­i­tal con­tent con­sol­i­da­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion and con­tent cre­ation, asset accu­ra­cy and brand management.

When speak­ing of dig­i­tal asset man­ag­ment, the talk placed it into a mar­ket­ing con­text. Marketing is fre­quent­ly the last area of an enter­prise to be auto­mat­ed, and dig­i­tal asset man­ag­ment can also be thought of as mar­ket­ing resource man­ag­ment, pro­vid­ing not only more effi­cient asset access to design­ers and con­tent cre­ators but also accu­rate infor­ma­tion to mar­ket­ing and mar­ket­ing feed­back and analy­sis activities. 

QCM aims to cor­ral all these facets into a uni­fied whole, allow­ing cre­ators to cre­ate, col­lab­o­ra­tors to change con­tent based on per­mis­sions grant­ed by design­ers and admin­is­tra­tors, pro­vid­ing ready data for mar­ket­ing to gauge the effec­tive­ness of cam­paigns and feed­back for future activ­i­ty planning.

The Sum of The Parts

QCM is intend­ed as a cus­tomiz­able solu­tion to pro­vide con­sol­i­dat­ed dig­i­tal asset man­age­ment to the enter­prise, for user groups from 25 to 250 mem­bers in size.

The core of QCM is a union of Oracle data­base, Quark soft­ware such as Dynamic Document Server, and a work­flow engine. This core pro­vides access to a wide vari­ety of doc­u­ments (QCM works with just about every file type, from QXP doc­u­ments to Illustrator/Photoshop files to class­es that can be defined by the enter­prise) to a vari­ety of clients. Designers can access con­tent from with­in QuarkXPress, but oth­er review­ers and col­lab­o­ra­tors can use a vari­ety of access meth­ods, from cus­tomiz­able stand­alone clients (an API is pro­vid­ed for cus­tom devel­op­ment) and even just your every­day web browser.

The avail­able solu­tions include a Rights Manager, which over­sees dig­i­tal rights man­age­ment, a Content Manager, which allows check in and check out of files, pro­vid­ing ver­sion infor­ma­tion, a web-based Media Portal, which pro­vides access via web browsers, and a Review Manager, which facil­i­tates time­ly and quick review by mul­ti­ple review­ers simultaneously.

The sys­tem over­all pro­vides for quick access to accu­rate con­tent, search­able by many terms via meta­da­ta searches.

Perhaps the most intrigu­ing inno­va­tion is that review­ers and con­trib­u­tors do not need QuarkXPress to par­tic­i­pate in the cre­ation and review process. QCM is not QuarkXPress! The abil­i­ty to cus­tom devel­op inter­faces and the abil­i­ty to use a stan­dard web brows­er with QCM allows every­one to play. The abil­i­ty of design­ers and admin­is­tra­tors to set per­mis­sions and priv­iledges ensure that the only things that get changed are what par­tic­i­pants are autho­rized to change; con­tent can be edit­ed but lay­out and design remain sacro­sanct. This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant in Brand Managment, where accu­ra­cy in con­tent can be con­trolled to max­i­mize its effec­tive­ness when used by the mar­ket­ing side of an organization.

Nimble with Formats

Another notable prop­er­ty of QCM is its abil­i­ty to deal with just about every for­mat thrown at it. Commonly used file for­mats are sup­port­ed, and enter­pris­es can define thi­er own file classes.

Not only that, but any sup­port­ed for­mat can be con­vert­ed into any oth­er sup­port­ed for­mat, on the fly. Individually selec­table media pro­files allow quick con­ver­sion of files when being includ­ed in lay­outs and publications.

The Lenox Story

Making the point was the sto­ry of Lenox Collectables, a direct-sales gift­ware com­pa­ny. Faced with the dilem­ma of doing more and effec­tive mar­ket­ing with the same amount of man­pow­er, they sought a dig­i­tal asset man­ag­ment solu­tion, and opt­ed for Quark.

According to Quark’s pre­sen­ta­tion, they expe­ri­enced great results:

  • A reduc­tion in search and retrieval time of more than 80%
  • An increase in accuracy
  • A sav­ings of $122,000 over 12 months for 4‑color ad prep
  • A sav­ings of $28,000 over the same peri­od for black & white ads
  • All this despte the increase in dig­i­tal asset inven­to­ry to over 1 Terabyte

The Upshot

DCM is a nec­es­sar­i­ly sprawl­ing sub­ject. By com­ing up with a mul­ti­part solu­tion (enter­pris­es can pur­chase as much or as lit­tle of QCM as they need) Quark pro­vides the enter­prise with a cus­tomiz­able way of con­sol­i­dat­ing dig­i­tal assets, mak­ing them access­able to who needs them, rein­forc­ing accu­ra­cy and allow­ing every­one who needs to play to get in on the con­tent game by pro­vid­ing for many ways of interfacing.

Quark seems to see QCM as a strong way of mov­ing away from being seen as a one-product com­pa­ny, and it looks like a very cred­i­ble effort.