Enterprise software developer, SSA Global, recently merged with Infor, provided its global sales force with up-to-date printed materials in many versions and many languages—including European languages written with Cyrillic characters and Multibyte using a digital collateral on demand system.

Objectives

• Create, maintain, and produce a variety of customized sales collateral in many versions and languages
• Reduce creation and printing costs and production time
• Maintain corporate brand internationally

Significant Results Reported by User

• Extensive annual cost savings
• Materials available in all European languages, as well as Turkish, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese
• Production and fulfillment available close to where needed from a global network of printers

The remit called for up-to-date printed materials in many versions and many languages. But, at the same time, SSA Global wanted to keep costs and production time as low as possible. To speed fulfillment and meet local needs, the company also wanted to enable local organizations to create and produce the materials close to home.

SSA Global and Cordeo used the XLdoc Publish-on-Demand solution to create, maintain, and produce a wide range of customized product brochures, leaflets, customer cases, and other documents. The system provides an online tool to customize brochures and other materials, add images and logos, and manage text in various European languages including Slovenian, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Slovakian, Serbian, and Turkish. Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and Chinese versions are also available. Using a worldwide network of digital printers, the system efficiently produces small quantities of color documents, on demand, and close to where they are needed.

The application used is the XLdoc suite, which provides an online ordering application, access to materials, budget control and reporting tools, catalogs of available documents, and variable addressing tools, among many other functions.

To customize and order literature, SSA representatives access the materials through a website. There they select a template, upload images if necessary, select the desired language, and make limited copy changes. They also specify quantities and locations for distribution of materials. Then, the document ordering module generates XML orders for the printer and downloads the PDF file to the FTP server.

The software sends the PDF file to the appropriate local print shop. As a result, SSA Global is able to put relevant, usable, and comprehensible materials into its sales reps’ and customers’ hands quickly, responsively, and affordably. The company has managed to reduce the production time for sales collateral documents while reducing its production costs by approximately 60% to 70%.

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