If All Dot-Coms Could Talk
PrintTalk, DMIA group work to facilitate industry e-commerce standards.
BY PHIL BRITT
If seamless, end-to-end e-commerce for print transactions becomes more common this year, one group to thank will be DMIA's XML Industry Standards Council. The council, which includes representatives of 17 companies in the association, operates as part of PrintTalk, a community of print management and e-commerce providers that seeks a common communication standard for its members' products.
Communicating Throughout the Channel
PrintTalk embraces the use of Job Definition Format (JDF) and Commerce eXtensible Markup Language (cXML), a specification derived from the XML standard of the international World Wide Web Council. Financial services firms, telecommunications companies and others use XML to exchange information electronically. cXML enables programmers to create their own formatting tags, enabling transmission of data between different applications and organizations.
Manufacturers could use cXML to develop e-commerce applications involving ordering and inventory information, and distributors could use cXML to develop their own applications for end users. Both sides would differ, but the underlying platform would be the same, allowing for successful communication throughout the independent channel.
JDF handles in-house communications between disparate systems within a printing plant (including printing, press and prepress systems), while PrintTalk's cXML specification aids external communications among distributors, manufacturers and end users. One critical advantage of the universal language is it doesn't pigeonhole end users into switching their hardware or software. Industry adoption of PrintTalk and JDF is in its early stages, but some industry experts are looking hopefully toward advancements.
Taking Important Strides
"Are we there yet? No," says Nic Greco, vice president of Printegra (formerly CFC Print Solutions and Datagraphic), a manufacturer based in Peachtree City, Ga. Greco is DMIA's representative on PrintTalk's board of directors. "PrintTalk is a standard we can abide by, but it's still in its infancy," he says. "Most of the focus so far has been on JDF."
Greco says universally agreed-upon solutions don't exist yet inside or outside of printing plants. "PrintTalk has not proliferated because, in the past, the biggest buyers of printing were Fortune 500 companies," he says. "Now, bigger print manufactures are pushing real hard for this." Distributors and manufacturers regard the evolution of an industry e-commerce standard as important for their businesses, Greco says.
Track Viewers' Actions
An important e-commerce marketing trend is the ability to track--unbeknown to viewers--every action they take as they click on links, so you can customize future messages based on viewers' behavior. Here's what to look for in a company offering this ability, which is known as "email profiling," "behavior tracking," and "action tracking":
* Data expertise. Collected information about viewers will be stored in your database, so companies that have experience handling large, changing databases have an advantage.
* Focus and perspective. Look for a company with a solid history in email deployment, a sound understanding of direct marketing and a vision of email marketing's future.
* Case studies. Most email marketing companies originally develop their profiling tool for specific clients, so they should be able to share real-world experiences.
Think Like a Publisher
Companies that send electronic (or print) newsletters should think like publishers: attract, acquire and retain subscribers to give your publication momentum. Update your marketing plan with ideas about adding fresh prospects to your subscriber base, and try to turn those prospects into customers.
Add an Online Show-and-Tell
Customer-focused stories explain how various types of companies use your products and services to help their businesses. Consider placing text and images of your most impressive, problem-solving applications online, and direct prospects to those case studies.
DMIA's XML Industry Standards Council plans to release to PrintTalk examples of exact repeat purchase orders, purchase orders with copy changes, acknowledgements, shipping information and vendor invoices. Initial XML schemas for these documents will be released later this year. The plans will provide the basis for distributors and manufacturers to develop their own applications, Greco says. Meanwhile, PrintTalk's board will keep an eye on the industry's progress in moving to seamless, end-to-end e-commerce.
"XML would facilitate interoperability so we wouldn't have to do so much customizing," says Julie Pritchard, president of software provider TopForm® Software Inc., Norcross, Ga. "We're further along than other solutions providers. We want to provide end-to-end solutions."
TopForm already exchanges data with some industry partners, including Minneapolis-based e-procurement provider Four51 Inc. Customers enter ordering information with Four51 software, which interfaces automatically with TopForm's order entry, warehouse and email systems. Other firms, however, still transmit data to TopForm via ASCII files. TopForm processes XML data in real time, but ASCII data must be batch-processed later, resulting in manual acknowledgement of orders that slows down the entire process. "Real time is always superior," Pritchard says. "With real-time communications, obviously, your staff is more productive" because it doesn't need to input information manually.
The Time is Now
XML isn't the industry's first attempt at standardized e-commerce. In the early 1990s, the industry tried Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) with little success, says Ross Barker, president of Forms Management Data Systems Inc., a 24-year-old management software supplier in Reno, Nev. He says he spent 18 months working on EDI specifications, but now is encouraged by groups like DMIA's council and PrintTalk. A universal format for repeated documents alone would handle about 70 percent of the industry's needs, Barker says. "There's a lot of time to get the specs defined," he says.
Factors favoring an XML standard in the printing industry
include more printing pros who are proficient with the XML platform, increased
need to reduce costs and enhanced automation throughout the printing process, Barker says. XML is "greatly needed for efficiency and profitability of the industry, " Barker says. "It can help bring the industry into the 21st century."
