It has been an interesting start to 2009. It is clear that the financial crisis continues and the world awaits the outcome of President Obama’s stimulus package to see how this will affect the US and global markets. As many commentators have hypothesized; while access to credit is a real issue, it is the consumer coal face where change will start. Changes in consumer spending flow through the entire business ecosystem from B2C through to the B2B sector.

So in a market such as this, how do you drive forward?

I think the answer to this question lies in how businesses are affected and are subsequently seeking to deal with the crisis. The effects are first felt in a reduction in sales revenues. This is a natural market reaction to a crisis – ‘hunker down’ mentality. This leads to additional emphasis on sales execution and a review of costs.

At Author-it we have been heavily focused on these issues in our client and prospect discussions. That is; how can Author-it help our clients with sales execution and how can we cut their costs? Obviously there is an investment to be made in purchasing and implementing Author-it, so we have been ruthless in presenting our case for real dollar cost savings above other gains. Here’s some scenarios to illustrate this point:

Issue: Authoring teams (of all persuasions) are under significant pressure. Teams are being asked to do more with less people and still expected to complete projects on time.
Solution: Author-it allows 40% + gains in authoring efficiency through advanced reuse, single sourcing and multi-output publishing. More output from less.

Issue: Authoring teams are becoming a distributed mix of permanent employees and contractors. This makes collaboration, authoring, edit review and approval very difficult.
Solution: Author-it Live allows web based, ‘anywhere, anytime access’ to content for authoring, review and publishing. Huge time and efficiency gains.

Issue: Localization budgets are under pressure but there is still a requirement to sell in global markets and therefore deliver localized content.
Solution: Author-it Localization Manager can cut localization costs by more than 50%. This is a real cash saving.

Issue: Sales teams need to produce more revenue. This means more sales proposals and therefore more administrative load.
Solution: A number of clients (and us of course) use Author-it to generate custom sales proposals at a small fraction of the time and effort required using traditional methods. This means better quality, compliant proposals and an increased chance of sales success.

Issue: Authoring applications are siloed meaning it is difficult or impossible to leverage content assets across an enterprise.
Solution: Author-it is an enterprise authoring and content management application. Its ease of use and intuitive UI means it can be used by all business units allowing content to be shared and reused throughout an enterprise. Huge efficiency gains across the enterprise.

The above scenarios focus on addressing the core issues many companies are experiencing right now that is how to; cut costs and increase revenue. I believe it is by focussing on ROI and these key areas that both software purchasers and vendors can come together and mutually work through the worst effects of the current market.

Posted by Steve Davis, President, Author-it Software Corporation