David Bercovici, Project Manager, Strategic Publishing Operations, Hachette Book Group

MM: This brings me to another idea that I wanted to float by and have you comment on.

In a conversation or actually an interview with another very sophisticated DAM site, this was done in the area of pan-regional localization of content. Their CTO basically said to me that the mark of a good workflow system or the mark of a good system is that if you have a deadline and it looks like you’re going to be pulling an all-nighter, does the system help you get through the project? Or is the system primarily an impediment to making the all-nighter work?

It was a really crisp distinction. A lot of the DAM systems are “additive.” They create more work for the primary workflow, as opposed to removing or easing the burdens associated with the primary workflow. Does that make sense?

DB: Yes.

MM: I’m curious as to how you have or how you anticipate using DAM-enabled capabilities to ease the workflow burden of the primary business of creating books.

DB: Well, I would say that for the actual creation of the physical book — the actual thing that’s manufacture and shipped out of our warehouse or the audio production and so on… Yes. For that, I’d say in the near-term, that’s a little outside of what we’re doing right now.

I think once we start looking at integrations with Adobe Bridge — which we’re hoping to do later this year — that’s where we might start seeing more pickup in making it easier to create the final product. Then people would be able to have the assets in earlier. People would be able to work on them as if they’re working on it off of a share, or something like that. That’s where perhaps it will become easier.

I think where we get the greatest benefit is more downstream — where people are reusing assets to create catalogues and to create sales materials and marketing materials. Let’s say our sub-rights department wants to sell to licensees, knowing that they can just get our book files right out of our system and send them off to a licensee who’s halfway around the world. That’s where we really see — I think — improvements in the workflow. There, people are getting “instant gratification” for the content they need, rather than having to call up a printer and have them send a disk out to somebody. They can just get it right out of the system and send it on its way.

I’d say it’s more on the consumer side that we see improvements in the workflow. I think improvements in the actual production of the book files takes more than just a DAM. Something that we’ve resolved after seeing some attempts by vendors to incorporate workflow into their systems is that we don’t really think DAM is the greatest vehicle for workflow. It can certainly support it. It can be a backend for it. But I wouldn’t say we’d want to build workflow directly into it.

So I think right now, we’re looking at a lots of ways to improve the workflow of the company — XML-based workflow and things of that nature that will hopefully speed up the creation of the product, and the DAM behind that. But I don’t think the DAM in and of itself will — with the exception of what I said before about Adobe Bridge and integration with Adobe Bridge, will really speed the workflow. The creation side of it, at any rate.

MM: When you speak about an XML workflow, you’re basically saying the textual material of a book will be tagged with XML content in some sort of an XML database. And that the physical assets — whether they’re the style sheets or the graphic or multimedia assets — are also similarly tagged. So that as the book goes through its work in process, you’re basically dealing with material that’s all tagged XML content in a database. Therefore, it’s all fluid and easy to manipulate. Easy to reflow. Is that what you’re talking about?

DB: Yes. In effect, we’re looking to work within templates. Both so that we can pull out content more easily down the road — let’s say to our digital warehouse or to support some sort of e-commerce, if we ever want to chunk up our books. But also, just to speed up the process. Not so much downstream, really — but in the production process. Tagging it in such a way that you can go straight to a printable PDF file that we’re sending to our printers, based on that tagged file.

You’re sort of cutting out some of that middle work of what you were saying — having to worry about the flow of the text in the book and things of that nature. That’s what we’re looking to make improvements in.

We actually do, right now though, have tagging of our book files. So we can pull out promotional excerpts and reading group guides and things of that nature. But that’s tagging that is done later as part of the composition process. It’s not currently part of the initial creation and editing process. I think that’s what we’re looking to do, now. To move the tagging more upfront in the process, so people who are working in these templates from day one can create the print-ready files more easily.

MM: Fabulous.

As we begin to conclude our interview, what sort of things do you intend to present at the upcoming Henry Stuart DAM and [MOM] symposia?

DB: We’re going to talk about our journey in the past year. It was a little less than a year ago that we started this assessment, where we recognized that the time was really due for us to do something with our DAM — to upgrade it. Where we started bringing our users together.

I’ll be talking through how we got them involved, what we asked them, what kind of feedback we collected from them. Where we asked them to identify — in effect — what’s the content you are using? What’s the content you want to use but can’t find or can’t find when you need it? What are the barriers you’re facing to getting the content in for the people who are the owners of the content?

Then once we collected that feedback, how we were able to summarize it and put it in front of them and in front of our senior management, to set our overall goals for the project — and then moved into our vendor selection phase. Again, how we went through that process and had the users involved and had them evaluate the vendors.

I wouldn’t expect us to be presenting anything in terms of real details there with ratings and so on, but at the very least, talking about the process we went through. Then with the actual project itself, we’ve had an accelerated model for this process. So how we scoped it out and figured out what was most important to get out of this initial deployment. And how we’ve moved through that.

Right now, we’re still in the final month of our project. But I would expect that certainly by the time Henry Stuart rolls around, we’ll have been live for a couple of months, and can hopefully have a little more to say about the actual deployment itself, and how that went.

MM: Excellent.

As you begin to imagine yourself delivering this presentation, who would you describe as the ideal delegate or participant/attendee to your presentation in terms of job function, technical skills and so on and so on?

DB: Right. Anyone who I suppose is managing a DAM system or process. So, people who are in a similar role to the role that I’m in and that the people in my department are in. Those who are trying to juggle the needs of the business and the users using the system, and the IT side.

Even people who are first starting out with DAM, but also people who perhaps have mature DAM systems and are struggling with or think about where they’re going to go next with it. Because that’s where we’ve been at it for a while. We implemented our first DAM in 2000. So I think even though there’s sometimes a lot of emphasis on people who are just getting started, I think now that space has matured to the degree that anyone who’s got a mature DAM and is trying to wrestle with, “Well, okay — now what do we do and how do we get started?” I think that it would be applicable to people like them.

Then anyone who’s probably in the print or publishing business, certainly — who’s just curious of what we’re doing with our DAM — would probably also find it interesting.

MM: Excellent. David — thank you again very much for spending the time with us today. I look forward to seeing you in person there at the Henry Stuart Event in New York, and perhaps beyond.