Issue 3 - January 2009
Ad Giants Advances Web-based Marketing System with QuarkXPress Server
By Sarah Rector
The ONE System from Ad Giants offers customers beautiful design and unlimited customisation – and positions
the company for growth
Imagine your business gives your customers online access to publishing elaborate point-of-sale marketing collateral, but your initial choice of technology prevented you from achieving your vision. That's the situation the team at Ad Giants found themselves in when they needed a scalable, robust rendering engine for the Web-to-print component of the ONE System, the company's Web-based marketing process-management system. When its Adobe® solution came up short, the Dallas, Texas-based company turned to QuarkXPress Server. With QuarkXPress Server, Ad Giants now offers a powerful, on-demand system based on industry-standard publishing tools and engaging, customisable design templates. Previously hampered by the file size and file type limitations of Adobe Graphics Server, Ad Giants lauds the rapid integration, customisation opportunities, and automation features provided by QuarkXPress Server.
The ONE System is a custom system designed to cater to each customer's unique marketing needs. Primarily built for franchised or decentralised organisations, the Web-based software lets marketing professionals quickly find, customise, and order print materials such as ads and brochures. The system streamlines processes and allows for customisation while maintaining a company's brand integrity. In June 2007, Ad Giants integrated QuarkXPress Server into One System to better serve its customers – and attract new ones. Amazingly, they rolled out a new version of their product less than three months later. Today, 30,000 to 40,000 end users can simultaneously tap into richly designed QuarkXPress templates using only a Web browser, customise the templates without any specialised design skill or software, proof the results, and place print orders.
Harnessing the Power of QuarkXPress
Previously, the ONE System was limited by its reliance on Adobe Graphics Server, which handled only Adobe Photoshop® files.
QuarkXPress Server fuses the professional design and output capabilities that come from its foundation – QuarkXPress – with its scalable server-based publishing technology to create, target, automate, and deliver beautiful, smart content that looks like it was designed by a top agency. As the industry-leading page layout software in the world, QuarkXPress provides inherent value in that designers know how to use it.
"We integrated QuarkXPress Server into the ONE System because it allows our client base, our agencies, and designers to create templates using their preferred tool – QuarkXPress – while enabling users with no previous design experience to customise templates for their particular location or business requirements through the Web," said David Farmer, Ad Giants founder and CEO.
More Power, Unlimited Flexibility
When tied to Adobe Graphics Server, the ONE System was limited to single-page Photoshop files under 90MB. Because few designers originate ads and brochures in Photoshop, the new system immediately improved the company's ability to handle multiple-page files such as brochures and product specifications. With QuarkXPress Server, clients can now upload and customise documents – gaining more value from the ONE System. In addition, QuarkXPress Server gives the ONE System the ability to handle unlimited file sizes, enabling the company to routinely manage 700MB and 800MB files containing window signs and menu boards for clients such as Wendy's International. Now, customers can upload a file with as many layers as they wish using the ONE System for store plan-o-grams with no problem.
QuarkXPress Server also offers unlimited customisation potential. In the past, the ONE System was limited to eight custom fields per one-page file. Now, templates can define unlimited areas for customisation, allowing end users to fully personalise brochures and customise menu boards or ads while maintaining brand integrity by locking down elements such as logos and taglines within the design template.
A Breeze to Integrate
When Ad Giants started looking for a new solution to enhance the ONE System, a major requirement was rapid, seamless integration. In QuarkXPress Server, the group found flexible, standards-based technology the organisation could fully integrate in three months.
"QuarkXPress Server embraces a broad spectrum of Web technology," said Farmer. "It is built to be enterprise ready – to plug in to any Web environment – and produce a scalable solution. As our business grows, we can simply add new servers."
A Scalable Solution
A significant selling point of QuarkXPress Server is the endless scalability that comes from the .NET platform.
"We needed the server to take many simultaneous hits," said Farmer. "Right now, we’re taking tens of thousands of hits – but a year from now, we're hoping to have hundreds of thousands of concurrent hits."
To expand the system, all Ad Giants needs to do is add more servers rather than reinvent the wheel.
"We wanted to build something once and be positioned for growth," said Farmer.
