The Importance of Dynamic Publishing for Customer Engagement

Accessing content online has become a ubiquitous part of daily life. Users regularly seek information on computers, smart phones and tablets. This increases the importance of ensuring that content, the public face of a brand is consistent wherever consumers view it - that includes on paper.

Data shows that almost everyone uses the Web. This has prompted enormous investment in all things interactive. The importance of digital for modern businesses is undisputable. Online articles and vendors might give the impression that the world is entirely digital. It is simply not true: Paper is the nasty little secret of the Internet age. Despite the availability of massive amounts of easily accessible storage, fast Internet speeds, impressive amounts of emerging technology and constantly connected mobile devices - people still enjoy reading things on paper.

A recent study by the CMO Council shows print collateral dominates marketing budgets. Why? Marketing executives with strained budgets must be selective and they know print is effective.

Deloitte's State of the Media report further supports this. The data shows that 60 percent of respondents prefer reading printed magazines and 57 percent viewed magazines ads as the most influential form of advertising. Organizations can even use print to improve the performance of interactive marketing campaigns through use of short links and QR codes that direct readers to online materials. Further, laws and regulations in many areas require printing of invoices and contracts. For product manuals and instructions, business documents and payment reminders, print is still king.

Print continues to be important, and print will remain important for the foreseeable future. Ultimately, what does that mean? Every organization, no matter its size, must be concerned about seamless multi-channel delivery. Content must appear identically everywhere consumers view it - paper, e-mail, Web browser or fax. Inconsistencies across delivery channels can make an organization appear schizophrenic to customers, leads, partners and suppliers resulting in lost business opportunities.

Content consistency is a necessity, but the answer is not recreating repeatedly with slight customizations for each channel. Manually duplicating content is not only time consuming; it is expensive and error prone. Further duplication can have a large negative impact on productivity because it can require multiple - an individual competent with print layouts, another responsible with HTML and maybe more depending on the output channel. Content changes over time multiply the negative impact since organizations must updated each version with the same modifications.

Fortunately, there are solutions that enable multi-channel delivery without manual duplication. RenderX provides a suite of tools like XEP Engine that allow users to convert digital documents in XML format into printable formats such as PDF, PostScript or HTML. Companies can leverage the RenderX platform as the foundation for sophisticated solutions like dynamically creating documents from several content sources and generating output in multiple formats. The RenderX site provides examples of the tools in action.

RenderX tools, built on patented XML to PDF technology, excel at addressing a number of business challenges.

• Database Reporting - RenderX can dynamically generate reports for output to the web, a document or even directly to a printer.
• Dynamic Publishing - RenderX tools can consolidate content from multiple sources into a single personalized document for print or electronic output. The platform is also fully capable of handling the complex typesetting that is often required to produce items like bills and invoices. RenderX's sophisticated technical architecture enables users to easily manage massive volumes of content without breaking it into batches or being concerned about system overloads.
• Guides and Manuals - Organizations can use RenderX to produce anything from the simplest document to the most complex manual. EnMasse, RenderX's XML formatting server, can be used if high volume production is required.

However, the benefits of RenderX technology are not limited to these use cases. RenderX solutions can generate PDF documents or other print formats from web pages, help organizations comply with federal accessibility guidelines, format very large reports (e.g. 100,000+ pages) and solve countless other challenges businesses face transitioning document content between multiple electronic and printed formats.

Multi-channel delivery is an absolute necessity for successfully engaging customers and partners. Creating content consistently and delivering multiple ways can be complex, but it does not have to be. Organizations can take advantage of the wider range of capabilities provided by RenderX's products and components to combine text, tables, graphics and images to create highly professional print documents and enhanced electronic content for distribution everywhere.