There are many printing companies and sellers who compare digital resource management (DAM) with desktop publishing systems. They insist that managing good customer resources is the fundamental element in a fierce competition. However, there are also some people in the industry who resist the emergence of new technologies. They do not adopt a positive attitude to welcome new technologies, but only wait and see.
Although the annual global market value brought about by resource management has already exceeded 1 billion US dollars, according to a 1998 survey (sponsored by Apple, a Canadian research firm, Gistics), the market for digital resource management in the next two or three years There will also be a breakthrough in value, which is expected to reach US$5.3 billion.
Heidelberg USA provides digital resource management solutions for all types of prepress companies, including the famous Deltabase management software. They think: “Although many people are seeking to justify the exclusion of this new technology, the huge cost savings from investing in DAM is beyond doubt. Because the DAM system can effectively manage data and easily reconstruct various types of data, Linking data to make internal production more efficient and reduce costs."
According to statistical data from the Gistics survey company, the DAM system can reduce the working hours of each employee by 46 hours in one year. In addition, the DAM system makes this task extremely simple for companies that wish to make use of content resources multiple times. Some experts believe that DAM and CTP technology have the same meaning. They believe that digital resource management and computer-to-plate technology are the two main growth points in the industry, and the relationship between them is very close, because printing companies are using two systems. No longer use film, but electronic files. With the continuous advancement of technology, more and more digital files are in contact with business users, the number of printing is decreasing, and the profit space is correspondingly less and less. Therefore, printing companies only actively develop digital resource management services and reduce operations. The total cost can get more customers and serve them well. At the same time, printing companies must improve their work processes and expand the scope of ancillary services. This is also crucial.
DAM covers a wide range of areas, and companies can profit from different perspectives. But these companies must first make appropriate decisions, understand who their customer base is, what they need, and so on. Banta, based in Cambridge, owns a DAM laboratory. They have developed a set of DAM solutions called B*, which are targeted at: product catalog publishers, publishers, printers, and prepress companies. For example, product catalog publishers need a personalized system, and the content of the catalog may often change as the product changes. With the DAM system, users can directly connect a sales system with order registration and inventory information to Banta via the Internet. The product catalog database production system brings great convenience to users.
The goal of this system is to significantly reduce the time it takes to create a page so that it can be sent to the printing press faster for printing. Perhaps five years later, when each company has its own database and knows how to use the database in a complete workflow, digital resource management will no longer have any profit points. Although DAM is still a new field, it can help you gain more advantages.
The heart of a digital resource management system is a large database that stores digital data and can index the database in the form of a library search so that the format of the file or the converted file can be easily called up later. The database is generally searched through high-speed communication links or the Internet, and low-resolution and high-resolution files are simultaneously downloaded for different purposes.
From a broader perspective, DAM also plays an important role in personalized publishing, one-to-one variable data imaging, and dynamic web publishing. Statistical databases are becoming the preferred target for many organizations. They can be used in digital resource management systems to generate personalized materials through websites or on-demand printing services.
Mike Randone has been involved in printing for 22 years. He tried to use the DAM system in his company that had just been established for 1 year. He suggested that DAM should be an independent department or a core business branch. He is a very valuable person. The area, not an integral part of the entire production process.
Some prepress companies are conservative about digital resource management. They worry that if they charge DAM and charge customers additional fees, they will lose some of their customers. Randone said: "In fact, there will not be new fees, but redistribution of old fees. If printing companies can explain to their customers that resource management can save tens of thousands of dollars each year, then customers will not object to it. The savings are for digital resource management."
Customers can also manage their DAM system terminals themselves, or outsource all their work to printing companies or prepress service providers. The price model has not yet stabilized, and most companies will tell you that their service prices in a certain area are random, such as: maintenance, storage, and recall. The charge depends on the size of the customer's stored data. The problem is that many printing companies have been providing film-based archiving services for many years, and their customers are already accustomed to this service.
There are also some companies that are eager to apply the DAM system and expect to bring more profits to the company. In response to the communication needs of some large customers (Fortune 500 or Fortune 1000 companies) across different distribution, sales, and distribution channels (including printing, on-demand printing, and networking), the commercial printing company established its own web-based Internal storage system. Customers need to pay for initial installation fees, data storage fees (in gigabytes) and ongoing maintenance costs. The regular fee also includes the cost of each upload and download.
Tim Post, project manager of the Merrill/Daniels company’s information management system, said: “We do not think that resource management is a kind of value-added service. We have positioned it in the entire production value chain. Without significant investment, our customers cannot Resource management, we have invested a lot of manpower and material resources in this area.Four years ago we began to get involved in DAM, and although it has had little success so far, it is this attempt that has allowed us to gain a foothold in this new market.We have committed There are many mistakes, but now we know what we need to do to better serve our customers."
Merrill/Daniels is perfecting their systems to be compatible with world-famous markup languages ​​and communication protocols. Their systems are Content Managers. The latest features of the system include job planning and a workflow reporting system.
The more services a resource management system provides, the more additional profit points it gets. Once you really own the DAM system, it becomes easy to carry out other service projects. Primary Color is a sheet-fed printing company with a total assets of 30 million US dollars. They have prepress centers in two cities. They designed a personalized solution for their customers, based on the Sybase engine, using common software. The original intention of the company to carry out digital resource management began three years ago when a major customer asked them to provide a resource library. Larry Meilleur, head of Digital Transmission at Primary, said: “This big customer is a nationally renowned advertising agency who is willing to pay for hardware and T1 lines.â€
Today, customers are required to pay an initial installation fee of US$5,000, which includes all the costs associated with establishing a personalized Web site interface and defining digital images. Add another $20 for each QuarkXPress file for an additional $20 per scanning repository. All resources stored in the repository belong to customers. No monthly maintenance, registration, and archiving fees are charged.
Meilleur said: "Initially, we didn't think that DAM was a profit center. Our motivation was to be able to track all the digital media and build an internal resource bank so that anyone in the company could easily find and call our stored data. All scanned images, advertisements, or LOGOs, but for our process, it's really time consuming to do this job. Most of our customers work in the highly competitive entertainment and advertising industry in Los Angeles. In addition, we also provide customers with services that cannot be provided by others, thereby increasing their value, and at the same time relying on our full range of services to provide customers with a win-win situation.
P&H, a prepress service provider in Minneapolis, uses Xinet's WebNative product to convert images stored in film format into files that can be viewed online.
Paul Herzing, P&H’s system manager, said: “It's really controversial to provide resource management in the form of a value-added service, especially for some of our big customers. But we believe DAM’s own powerful capabilities will illustrate Everything.A customer asked us to store images so that they could easily find the directory staff, including some freelance writers.The company did not manage these libraries on its own, sending low-resolution images to freelance writers or others. Let's develop this DAM repository so that people can download it for free when they need images. This is a feature that the customer didn't have before, so it does bring some benefits to us.â€
P&H currently uses their DAM system as a sales tool to attract more online customers for their image archiving services.
Mr. Herzing said: "We have prepared a site for potential customers on the WebNative server, only the customer can log in to this address. The site has the company's icon and some pictures, customers can easily respond to these pictures. Compared to standard paper documents, this form can bring more intimate customer relationships to our company. The site will demonstrate how these services operate in a real environment."
Etheridge is a 100-year-old printing company with a long history. Its owner Howard Etheridge believes that the value of the company's database management is his advantage over other competitors. Because it can not only show its potential customers the advanced level of their technology, but also simplify the process.
Impressions Ltd. is a medium-sized commercial printing company that introduced the DAM system to improve its internal processes. In particular, the company uses Imation's MediaManager production line, which focuses on managing prepress graphics for tasks such as job flyers and needs assessments. The system includes a number of process management functions, such as tracking customer's production schedule and judging the composition of each individual job. Once different stages in the production process have been identified, all production information can be collected and fed back into the system for management tasks such as evaluation, accounting, statistics, and so on.
Jim Proulx, Manager of Impressions’s Systems Department, said: “Resource management not only helps us find resources easily, but also helps customers find the information they need. We think about why we cannot add an interface to users if we can use resource management internally. Also use it?"
Toppan USA (New York) is a commercial printing company that has established a relationship with Impact. Impact provides resource customization, configuration storage, and invocation services to various departments within an organization. Impact's web-based enterprise system is based on the IBM database system.
Peter Grant (Toppan's Senior Director of Sales and Marketing) said: "We are aware of some big customers, some of them multinationals, who need to distribute their resources nationwide or even globally. However, due to the complexity of these images, complete this The work depends on the cooperation with Impact.Sure, if your resources and capabilities are sufficient to provide a complete set of services within your company, you can act immediately because it will show more additional Value, but I guess there is still only a handful of companies that have such financial and material resources.As a printing service provider with a turnover of tens of millions, we think it is the company’s core competition to be able to provide timely printing services within the customer’s budget. At the same time, we must respond to customer needs in a timely manner, otherwise they will choose him