Mark Gross

In a recent survey of professionals who create and deliver training and educational content, both business and public-sector organizations point to several challenges they face in today’s content-driven marketplace: primarily, a lack of resources to maintain content,reduced time to market, and the analytics to measure effectiveness. Budget reductions can add even more headaches. Only a small percentage feel they have access to the tools that can make big differences in their overall… Show more

In a recent survey of professionals who create and deliver training and educational content, both business and public-sector organizations point to several challenges they face in today’s content-driven marketplace: primarily, a lack of resources to maintain content,reduced time to market, and the analytics to measure effectiveness. Budget reductions can add even more headaches. Only a small percentage feel they have access to the tools that can make big differences in their overall effectiveness. Show less

Content collections grow over the years, without much revisiting, so it can be easy to overlook the value of the data they contain. Even materials that might originally have only been important for specialized purposes may now have much value for new uses - surprisingly useful content, buried in large haystacks of legacy data. And with modern conversion technologies there’s new value to be retrieved which, coupled with new distribution methods, opens up new markets for older content assets that… Show more

Content collections grow over the years, without much revisiting, so it can be easy to overlook the value of the data they contain. Even materials that might originally have only been important for specialized purposes may now have much value for new uses - surprisingly useful content, buried in large haystacks of legacy data. And with modern conversion technologies there’s new value to be retrieved which, coupled with new distribution methods, opens up new markets for older content assets that that can now be repurposed for new uses. Show less

With almost a century's worth of content in its library, the Optical Society of America decided to digitally convert the material to provide members and others with more robust product offerings. Find out how OSA did it.

When the content managers of a global technology company with a sterling reputation for delivering outstanding products and services learned that the corporate focus was shifting to becoming green, in part through making content mobile, they quickly realized that a digitization strategy that scales to a global level would be an imperative. In the case of a Fortune 500 technology company, global content management processes accommodated hundreds of new product introductions scheduled for release… Show more

When the content managers of a global technology company with a sterling reputation for delivering outstanding products and services learned that the corporate focus was shifting to becoming green, in part through making content mobile, they quickly realized that a digitization strategy that scales to a global level would be an imperative. In the case of a Fortune 500 technology company, global content management processes accommodated hundreds of new product introductions scheduled for release each year, with each requiring at least six months to create customer-friendly training and documentation. The source content, from internal documents used by trainers and other personnel was created by engineers from around the world. Show less

The publishing landscape has changed rapidly over the past decade. With more and more brick-and-mortar bookstores closing their doors, today’s marketplace can seem intimidating and discouraging to publishers. But take heart! Readers are still interested in books and are showing interest in using electronic devices as their reading platforms, so the good news is that those collections of titles gathering dust still hold value, and technology might actually facilitate increased revenue.

Manufacturers face immense pressure to increase revenue and decrease costs, but reusing the content in existing catalogs, documentation and training materials rarely springs to mind as a path to either. Frequently outdated sales materials, and the relative ease of gathering competitive information online, contribute to challenges facing manufacturers who need to stand out from the crowd and dominate their markets. Take some cues from retail channels and focus on customer experience and content… Show more

Manufacturers face immense pressure to increase revenue and decrease costs, but reusing the content in existing catalogs, documentation and training materials rarely springs to mind as a path to either. Frequently outdated sales materials, and the relative ease of gathering competitive information online, contribute to challenges facing manufacturers who need to stand out from the crowd and dominate their markets. Take some cues from retail channels and focus on customer experience and content strategy, and you can open up new opportunities to add to the bottom line. Show less

It’s easy to focus content conversion efforts solely on developing new materials, especially as companies recognize the need to move from print documents or PDF publishing into more dynamic, searchable HTML web and mobile outputs. But chances are your company maintains/owns years of information created and published by multiple departments, taking up space in servers, hard drives, even bookshelves.

Government is drowning in paper and, more frequently, in scanned images of paper. With agencies receiving hundreds of thousands of new documents each year – which can sometimes range to thousands of pages – the content easily gets lost in unsearchable repositories, and staffers struggle to find the right document in a massive document databases.

Chances are, you have never considered legacy content created throughout your company as revenue-producing assets. In 2015 you should reconsider. Those thousands of words and images painstakingly created and delivered via sales teams, customer support reps, trainers and account managers need not remain fallow, collecting dust on bookshelves or taking up space on servers and hard drives.

When faced with thousands, sometimes millions, of pages of data to support manufacturing processes and operations, compliance requirements, and the needs of a complex supply chain, getting that information to the right places efficiently and accurately is difficult.

Most of the information people use in the course of a day is virtual. We expect information to move smoothly between computers by email. When someone a few weeks ago asked me to mail a letter, I was aghast. I don’t think I’ve sent more than three letters via snail-mail in the past year.

Many organizations, such as publishers, technical societies, membership associations, libraries, and government agencies all have unique collections of valuable content that are rarely seen. In these days of big data, you might be asking, “Who needs even more data?” But yes, even in age of information, there is a need for well-considered, thoughtfully curated content, and some of that might be in your archives, or maybe in boxes somewhere in the basement.

A new survey of life sciences and healthcare professionals, jointly conducted by Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL) and The Rockley Group (TRG), highlights three top data concerns of the respondents’ organizations: proliferating formats (56%), multiple channel delivery (55%), and content inconsistencies (40%). Each of these areas of concern can lead to potentially dangerous inaccuracies being distributed to the public.

“Consumers today seek out informational content on a variety of platforms,” said Ann Rockley, founder and president of The Rockley Group. “Prescriptions, for example, can be found not only on the paper insert that accompanies the medication, but digitally as well. It’s important that companies in the healthcare industry take steps to ensure that the information they provide is accurate and consistent across all channels available to the consumer. Not doing so can risk lives.”

Traditionally, a publisher accepts a manuscript in the hopes that it will do well. The publisher invests in each workflow step and in marketing and other areas, hoping to eventually recoup costs –and to profit – through sales. These are investments that a self-publishing author needs to deal with on his own, and are what we mean by assuming the risk for your own book.

In the 1990s, consumers got their first taste of ebooks, and it was a thrilling novelty. Reading a novel on a computer screen was so mesmerizing to early adopters that details didn’t much matter. Design issues like missing lines, poorly rendered text and images and typographical errors were all overlooked in favor of this exciting new way to read books.

Organizations collect enormous volumes of content. The stream of forms and documents can be endless – publication archives, training materials, proposals, repair manuals, photographs and other images. The problem is that it’s difficult to manage these papers, scanned images, word processing documents and other content, and challenging to create value from them. It’s the epitome of unstructured data, with more coming in every day.

The “big data” phenomenon has made it clear -- digital assets are indeed valuable assets. But aside from new data gushing in from the outside, organizations of all kinds own archival assets which increase in value when converted to active digital assets.

Today’s fast-paced, multi-tasking environment has changed publishing forever. If you’re in the information industry -- and who isn’t— agile content that can be ripped, respliced, readapted and across different platforms and multiple languages is no longer just an option, it’s a necessity.

The truth is that if it was easy, it would indeed be all automated, which is already the case for news feeds, financial transactions, and other standardized data flows. But when it comes to documents and books, creativity will not be bound by rules and style sheets, especially at deadline when one wants a certain look, and MS-word chooses not to cooperate. The truth is that a document can contain anything, and computer software doesn’t work well with ‘randomness’.