Mary Lee Schneider, president, Premedia Technologies Group, R.R. Donnelley & Sons, kicks off the Sept. 11-14 conference with a presentation titled "Knowledge vs. Assets: What Really Matters." In this interview, Schneider lays out priorities for brand managers in the upcoming year.

  TSR: What will be the highlight of your keynote address?

  MLS: The whole area of "workflow" has stepped up a notch because today, every aspect of production - from photography to plate to print - is digital. Everyone expects everything to be digital. Reducing end-to-end production costs through linking the different digital processes together is where the focus is today.
TSR: What drivers have made that happen?

  MLS: Companies have to become more efficient. Everyone is doing more with less. They have to turn to automation and give up old models. There has been a sea change in how the buyer looks at processes. It's not about the tools themselves, but about the whole workflow. Customers can no longer afford to have different groups putting out mostly the same product through different venues. They expect to take days and weeks, not just hours out of their schedules.

  Therefore, rather than looking at day-to-day processes for individual workflow efficiencies, our customers are interested in reworking their entire business process. They know they have to take out a clean sheet of paper and re-architect all their processes, not just tack on something new to the existing flow. They expect to have all of the processes linked, to be able to "push a button." "Lights out" printing will be the norm, not the exception.

  TSR: Where do you see digital asset management fitting into the infrastructure of workflow integration? Is it part of the upstream workflow or is it downstream? And how big a system do companies need?

  MLS: We like to say that we excel in helping customers with multiple challenges. They have multiple images that are used multiple times in multiple channels across multiple geographies. DAM-based workflows enable customers to share assets across their enterprise as well as to ensure their brand is represented consistently in every market they serve. An aerospace company might require content and asset management as the underpinning of its entire manufacturing process. We need to link that process to their communications needs. Therefore, DAM/CMS is built into every aspect of production - both upstream and downstream.

  "Do we need a DAM?" sounds like a no-brainer. People would love to have every version of every image and every piece of text easily available all the time. But careers have been made and lost because people said they would implement the one total all-encompassing global intergalactic DAM system for their organization. One of the things we've learned over the past five years is that creating the "mother of all databases" can often be a showstopper, as trying to capture every piece of content and make it available for every potential use/reuse often results in analysis paralysis. It also results in companies taking on a huge investment for a system that is hard to calculate an ROI on.

  TSR: What kind of metadata should companies collect?

  MLS: If you know you're going to re-use an image many times, it makes sense to store the image and collect a lot of metadata. There is only value if you can make money from the assets. You have to ask, "Where's the incremental value?" It's very easy to overspend with very little reward. If you can answer why you're going to do it, how that piece interacts with all of your other pieces and what the payback will be, then do it. Otherwise, don't!

  TSR: Who is going to provide asset management? Will systems be home grown, purchased "off-the-shelf," use an ASP model or some combination?

  MLS: Each scenario has its place. If, for example, you are a stock photo agency whose complete success or failure is contingent upon being able to store, manage and make accessible tens of millions of images that will never go out of date, then perhaps you need to consider developing and maintaining your own proprietary system. But if you're taking a practical approach - and your content is rapidly changing with a one- to two-year shelf life, why wouldn't you "rent" by partnering with an ASP provider who can host, manage, and make your content available to those people across your enterprise who require access to it? The upfront and on-going costs of such a system are less expensive that the build-to-own model. It just depends on your business needs.

  TSR: What do you see as the major trends coming over the next year?

  MLS: First, everybody is a publisher, even though they may never end up with a product such as a magazine or book. I would argue that a pharmaceutical company, for example, becomes a publisher when they create physician insert material or marketing campaigns or packaging material. Every body needs to communicate a message to a target audience. And hopefully they've all made the transition to digital assets. We provide solutions in which digital asset management is the structure that holds all of the pieces together. Companies know they need to work with partners like ours who know what they're doing and have done it successfully many times before.

  Secondly, there's a focus on end-to-end workflows. Direction is coming from the business managers and the procurement folk, not the technology managers. People are getting very clear on what they need to own and what they need to outsource. Companies are also developing better business models around what does and doesn't work, and combining knowledge within the corporation around processes.

  Lastly, globalization. Offshore has come late to this industry. Digital processes have repositioned a whole industry, not just day-to-day jobs. You don't have to print nearby. Anything that can be done outside the building can be done anywhere. Standardization of processes and practices has made that possible.
TSR: What new products or processes are going to take the industry to the next level?

  MLS: People have to expand to stay alive. Companies understand they have to move upstream and downstream from their traditional niches. For example, Donnelley aggressively moved into digital photography to control costs for re-use of images in multiple venues, such as billboards, brochures and so on.
The radical shift over the next five years to offshore production, standardization of processes and practices, and standards compliance within software products will provide the infrastructure needed at the next level.

  TSR: Brand management and quality control are hot topics this year. Are these assisted or threatened by upstream workflow automation?

  MLS: You either embrace the technology or get swallowed by it. You can't duplicate workflows in each part of the world, especially upstream workflows. Upstream knowledge management creates opportunity and it may be in areas that you never expected. For instance, Donnelly is now one of the largest photography providers. Investment in automation is only going to come from companies who have vision inside. You need leadership from the top, people who have clear expectations and a vision of what changes are going to look like. It's all part of the challenge. Either you change or you disappear.

  Since every company is a publisher, the ground-breaking work is not necessarily coming from traditional publishers. Brand is differentiation, and companies have to automate because time is money.

  When you do it well, you give power to the creative folks in all aspects of your business. You create value for both the bottom line and the top line. You don't focus just on cost control. You create more products and more versions of the same products. You focus on the things that drive value. Whatever the type of publishing you're doing, you do it better with automation.

  The barriers are people who are resistant to change. Barriers to front-end, lights-out workflow are not technical. The big challenge is the people change aspect because new workflows require that people work in completely different ways. At the end of the day, the only thing that stays constant is change. But the questions have never changed. If you don't have a business reason, don't do it. It's all about the business need. The right thing to do is not to invest in technology because it's cool. Every production environment is different. The goal is the best solution for the customer.