Many of our customers, as well as the industry at large, no longer view products like Pageflex Storefront as simply “web-to-print”. Yes, it lives on a website, and yes, the result is that something might be printed. But there is so much more that is happening.
As our recent webinar series has pointed out, our products can be tightly integrated with other solutions and services to enable highly automated workflows. Many of our customers pitch how web based ordering can save time and reduce errors for the user. And of course many of the products and services accessed via a Pageflex portal have little to do with print. Digital content such as email and multi-channel campaigns has quickly become a standard web-enabled communication tool, but we also see items such as apparel, ads, signage, and more. One of my favorite Storefront sites from a few years ago was a deployment that allowed people to customize cookies. Edible, not internet!
Whatever the product, what is really at the heart of a Pageflex enablement is brand management. There is an excellent blog post on the Prime Group’s site today called “14 ways to be a Brand Management Superhero”. The list touches on many of the aspects and benefits of effective brand management that go beyond defining a design, logo and approved colors and fonts. What’s interesting is that everything on the list is typically part of a Pageflex Storefront or Server implementation.
Good brand management clearly touches on more than design, but the other thing that has often impressed me is how many of our customers create Pageflex templates that support their brand while still giving their users an enormous range of customization. A number of large enterprises, often in highly regulated industries, take advantage of Pageflex for their distributed marketing and sales teams. They leverage the core capabilities of Pageflex templates, such as flex and advanced copyfitting, along with tools like document actions. The result is a document that supports extensive changes in content without ever risking all-important brand and design standards. Or as a customer said to me once “we like our users to think that they’re doing all of the customization, but they’re really not”.
We're curious to hear how you manage your brand or your customers brand. If you'd like to take it to the next level, consider our new Virtual Instruction Led Training (aka VILT), which will focus on going beyond the basics with flex – a critical piece of the puzzle when managing a brand.
