"Management" Systems

I remember when about three jobs back, the company I was working for at the time invested in a "digital asset management system." Since they were a medical publisher who often reused images, this made sense. By the time I left the company, which was more than half a year later, several trainings had been held but DAMS, as they called it, was not up and running. I hear that they're finally using it.

At my most recent company, they invested in a "file management system" called K4. K4 is product supported by MEI (Managing Editor, Inc.) that is being used by more publisher all the time. It works with Adobe InDesign and InCopy and allows files to be trafficked via the K4 File Manager as opposed to manually, via paper, as was traditionally done.

After working with K4 for two years, I can say that there are pros and cons to this as to all content management systems. For the company I worked for, the major benefit was version control and file security: many little files and/or packets were being trafficked and often lost, necessitating work to be redone and more time and money spent. So in this sense, K4 allowed process streamlining and efficiency.

On the other hand, since the company was a custom publisher dealing with client demands and last-minute changes, and many non-tech savvy editors, in order to make a deadline we were often forced to revert to the tried-but-true paper trafficking. We were also a cross-platform company--editorial were on PCs while art/production were on Macs--which caused needless font and art problems.

I am still a proponent of CMS and held repeated K4 trainings for my staff and the rest of the editorial department. And although day-to-day workflow will be affected by deadlines, one should not give up on long-term efficiencies that can be improved with new technology.