Removing risks in coursework generation and production by linking POD & DAM

Take as a sample case a situation related to training course materials. The coursework author is in charge of keeping the course content up to date - let's assume that course content might change as new techniques are adopted or as new legislation is passed. The author is making fairly frequent and ad hoc changes to the final content of the course books. Meanwhile, trainers who deliver the course are planning their workload, and as part of this they are ordering training course materials to be printed, to be handed out to the students. The assigned print manufacturer receives these orders and, ideally, prints the latest content received from the author, before inserting it into binders with tabbed separators, etc.

Between the three parties - the author, the trainers and the print supplier, there is one issue - the timely presentation of the latest course material to the printer so that it can be delivered to the trainer for onward presentation to students in the course itself. And this is typically where the risk of late delivery of content comes in.

You see, once a trainer has received an out-of-date set of course notes and either had to deliver the course knowing the content was out of date, or has had to cancel and re-schedule a course, their confidence has taken a knock and their trust in the process, not to forget the trust of the students in the training organisation, is injured, possibly irreparably. This hurts the training organisations revenues by reducing booking numbers and giving credits.

So where does the risk lie? The author will be working on some DTP tool and producing a file - usually of significant size since its content justifies the value of the training course for the attendees. And the author is usually distant from the print supplier, meaning that there has to be a physical or electronic transfer process. That means either a courier or a file transfer by email, ftp or similar. The trainer ordering the printing of course materials will be doing so in a separate process - either an emailed requisition or an e-commerce approach.

Here comes the issue. Because the print supplier’s staff receives the content and production request via different channels, the order is separated from the content. Realistically, the order will quote a reference number for the content in order to avoid trivial mistakes. But some mistakes will be made. Typically some holdup in delivery of content, of its being misfiled by printing staff means that a previous revision is used.

And this risk is magnified with the increase in rate of change of content or reduction in the time between the order and the printing deadline.

The alternative that mitigates this risk is to combine the storage of content with the ordering system – a hybrid of DAM and e-commerce - so that with every order comes a link to the latest delivered content, and to make that content delivered by the author directly into the target of that link. The benefits of this approach are many, chief amongst them that as the trainers place orders they can see course content and confirm to themselves that the correct version is being ordered, and the print supplier's staff have direct access to latest content without the need for it to be delivered via a separate process, meaning they cannot lose of misplace the current content.

I've seen this scenario in a number of business cases over the years. And if you are thinking that I am oversimplifying the picture to make my point then I humbly agree. Where this type of production is done at pace there will be significant safeguards and process to reduce issue to a minimum. But, it's undeniable that these mistakes do happen to some degree and the approach still holds water in terms of reducing the risk of error and increasing the confidence of the trainers as consumers of the service and representatives of their training bodies.