Catalog Production in the Digital Age

If software developers and systems integrators collaborate to bring this concept to fruition, she continues, it will afford catalog producers many benefits. For example, it eliminates redundancies and provides real-time access to vital data needed throughout the cross-media publishing supply chain.

Barriers to this utopian production model, says Manes Goodwin, lie in systems integration, where somewhat disparate business systems that often speak “different languages” must be effectively linked. It will require profound cooperation from internal departments within a catalog company (e.g., marketing, production, legal, sales, creative) and both a capital and staffing commitment to IT development. An insurmountable task? Perhaps, in this economy, Manes Goodwin suggests, but as the economy recovers investments in these areas may be imminent.