For years the print production process has remained largely unchanged. Rounds of typesetting and authors’ corrections, delivered by phone or email. Time needed to brief your agency and to check and re-check the results. We’ve all been there and felt the pain!

At Luminous we don’t like to stand still. We believe in doing things a bit smarter and so we developed a suite of editing tools to help make our clients life easier.

SmartEdit enables our clients to edit copy on every page of a document themselves, be it an annual report, magazine or brochure. The system keeps track of all document versions, comments and corrections. All authorised project members have full web-based access to all documents and the ability to edit charts as well as copy. Whenever a document is edited, a copy is saved to the server and all revisions are logged. The flexibility of the system allows multiple users to work on a file at any one time – but protects individual pages being worked on simultaneously.

This is a true ‘write once, publish everywhere’ system. One set of copy changes can be actioned on print and online documents simultaneously – allowing you to view your website development as you go along, and negating the cost and time of rebuilding pages in HTML once the printed version is signed off.

I think the key benefits speak for themselves and are especially important in todays challenging economic environment:

• Reducing agency costs of repeated rounds of authors corrections
• Enjoying the flexibility of editorial control of entire report
• Having the ability to update charts yourself
• Updating online and other documents simultanously

Our WordSmart system has revolutionised the way that a ‘back end’ of the Annual Report can be produced and taken online.

We create Microsoft Word templates that look exactly like the final design files which clients then use in-house as their master file. This allows client teams to take ownership of the ‘back end’ to make all changes themselves.

WordSmart brings clear advantages:

- Takes away the pain of writing and checking corrections
- Knowing exactly what the final design will look like
- Empowering your accounts team to make all editorial decisions
- Improves security as all your financial statement files are kept in-house

Finally, developed to complement our WordSmart system, WebSmart allows the automation of a large part of the process of converting your Annual Report to HTML. The process dramatically reduces the time required to deliver an online report and enables cost effective microsite development.

All of our corporate reporting clients are enjoying the benefits of our client editing systems. They tell us they could not imagine going back to the traditional production process. Well, why would they?