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Reinventing Quark: Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks
When creative professionals think of Quark, they tend to think only of QuarkXPress – or perhaps a negative technical-support experience. But Quark is more than a one-product company, one that has been trying to change for the better. Craig Cline provides an inside peek at Quark's new attitude.
Written by Craig Cline on April 6, 2004
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Quark is changing. The company is reinvesting in marketing, customer service, technical support, and development. It has a new CEO. It has spent the last several years building a suite of multi-channel publishing products while looking over its shoulder at the competitive inroads that Adobe's InDesign has made in what was a virtual QuarkXPress monopoly among professional publishers.
Quark's fall from grace was largely of its own making – a combination of contradictory and some would say punitive policies, customer service and tech support horror stories, and a perceived arrogance that just rubbed people – particularly egalitarian Mac users – the wrong way. And last but not least, Quark absolutely dominated the professional publishing market, and we all know how well people like near monopolists (can you spell M-i-c-r-o-s-o-f-t?). No matter that behind the scenes Quark has listened to the marketplace, has seen that the future lies with workflow solutions and not just point shrink-wrapped products, and has quietly put together an impressive suite of multi-channel publishing system products that appear to deliver what the market has been asking for. There are just a lot of people out there who are pissed off at the company.
It's no surprise, then, that the company has taken this as a wake up call and is moving into overdrive to rectify the problems of its recent past -- and to get a jump start on inventing its future – with one of the most complete implementations of a multi-channel workflow publishing system that I've yet to see. (Editor's note: The author consults with Quark, among other clients.)
QuarkAlliance: Reaching Out
As one example of this change – which appears to be genuine to me – Quark has been beefing up its engineering staff (up 33 percent to more than 1,000 engineers, with 80 percent being devoted to enterprise workflow products), technical support staff (up 60 percent) and customer service people (up 50 percent). Quark has also resurrected its QuarkAlliance program work with system integrators, trainers, and large end-user support organizations.
I'll recount the conversation I had with the head of the QuarkAlliance program. Showing obvious enthusiasm for his job, he described how the program had "fallen in disarray and had been nearly cancelled" when he was given the task of revitalizing it. That was six months ago. Today the program is weeks away from being re-launched, and is currently being staffed up to support each class of customer -- system integrator, output provider, ISVs -- with its own program. Along with re-opening the lines of communication with this very important part of Quark's sales and support channel, he will be looking for ways to initiate co-marketing and promotion programs with each of the partners. Quark will also be certifying end-users for the first time as part of this program as well.
The company has also sent a customer loyalty award to all registered customers for up to 50 percent off the total purchase prices of up to four additional licenses of any product -- up to $250 per keynode. The loyalty award is applicable to both products and services -- software, technical support, mobile licenses, ServicePlus membership, QuarkAlliance
membership -- you name it. The company intends to bring back its user groups and is planning to organize a meeting similar to its Service Plus conference sometime this year. Activation and key validation won't be going away, but the company is looking at ways to make it easier for people to manage their key codes within a workgroup and is willing to discuss any specific problem customers have in managing their QuarkXPress licenses.
In general, the new management team in place (which includes Kamar Aulakh, who was recently named president and CEO headquartered in Neuchatel, Switzerland; Jürgen Kurz, who is senior vice president of development located in Germany; and Debra Hansen, senior vice president of global sales and professional services, Susie Friedman, senior vice president of marketing, Charles Mueller, senior vice president of finance, and Cliff Kaplan, vice president of business development and OEM products – all out of Denver) appears to be Real Serious about reinventing Quark to be more customer-driven and to once again become a market leader.
QuarkXPress 7: XML Everywhere
Let's first take a look at what Quark has planned for QuarkXPress, since it is the heart of Quark's publishing systems solutions in one form or another. It's also the product in Adobe's cross hairs and that's being attacked with renewed vigor with the recent release of its Creative Suite and InDesign 3.0.
Whereas Adobe is putting its stake in the ground of a PDF-based workflow (with, increasingly, an able assist from XML-based extensions such as JDF), Quark is betting on an XML future and consequently is engineering publishing workflows around XML and other Web standards. XML, which is short for "Extensible Markup Language," is a flexible way to create standard information formats and share both the format and the data on the World Wide Web. Accordingly, Quark's applications, from future versions of QuarkXPress on up, will be able to easily work with any data format that is XML savvy, including PDF. Print publishers who are trying to standardize on a PDF workflow may find this strategy suspect, but for the enterprise publisher – a category that eventually will include all publishers -- an XML based multi-channel workflow makes a lot more sense.
I spoke with Jürgen Kurz who is working on QuarkXPress 7. He said that QuarkXPress 7 will extend the use of an XML Document Object Model (DOM) which will make it easy to get data in and out of QuarkXPress. The groundwork for the XML DOM is already in place in QuarkXPress 6, but it's not as full-featured as Quark wants it to be, which is why Quark hasn't made a big deal out of it until now. In QuarkXPress 6, the DOM interface is read-only, so applications can read QuarkXPress projects as XML, but not vice-versa. The QuarkXPress 7 DOM interface will be bi-directional.
QuarkXPress will continue to support its existing document object models for backward compatibility, but he believes the new "open" XML format will make it much easier to transform content as well as to interface with other systems, both Quark-supplied and third-party/legacy systems. Kurz believes that by doing so the cost of implementing page layout within a workflow will be driven down to nearly zero. "The DTP Revolution has happened," he said, "upgrades are getting more and more incremental. The real money is in getting a customer to replace an existing workflow with a new one." Quark is betting the company that the workflow is king, and that it will be XML-based.
To this end, QuarkXPress 7 is being designed to facilitate the product's use in an XML-based multi-channel workflow. The company intends to make QuarkXPress play better in a PDF workflow, but Kurz believes that publishers will need to move beyond PDF-only workflows if they are to really take advantage of multi-channel publishing. He also said that Quark's development team works in "two divisions working in concert, responsible for desktop and enterprise, so we don't lose sight of the needs of either small or large customers. "
"Print is moving more and more toward electronic publishing," Kurz argued, "with PDF online, eBooks, Flash, eForms, etc. PDF is important but not the only format that people will need to use. The cost of doing [producing electronic content] still too high -- the content creator is being increasingly asked to understand the workflow. That's why we need to simplify the workflow by creating and supporting open standards for print and Web production workflows." QuarkXPress 7 will make it much easier to synchronize content across multiple media, and reduce the burden on the content creator to be a master of all the technical details of the workflow. "QuarkXPress is an excellent template design tool," Kurz concluded.
Feeling the heat from InDesign, Quark is striving to make up any feature gap that exists. Quark has felt compelled in recent months to equip its field staff with a sales presentation titled "Great Reasons to Use QuarkXPress," touting both head-to-head benefits such as "Our Ease of Use" (tools, dialog boxes, palettes, and keyboard commands, many of which designers know by heart) to "Our Scalability" (extending beyond QuarkXPress to Quark Publishing System or Quark Content Manager for managing and repurposing content while expediting review processes, automatic XML syndication, Web site publishing, and so on.)
Regardless of your opinion of QuarkXPress's competitive feature set head-to-head with Adobe In Design's, the "Scalability" factor has let Quark pull away from Adobe in terms of solving the multi-channel publishing workflow puzzle. Adobe knows that it too has to get into the workflow solutions business, and has taken a baby step in that direction with Version Cue. But it has a long way to go to catch up with Quark. And Adobe knows it.
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Quark versus education
My principle dislike of Quark stems not only from the lack of service, but from the way the company treats educational institutions. When version 5.0 was introduced, supposedly it was compatable with Mac OS 10. In reality, it worked, unstable at best, in classic mode and with an abundance of font problems. When 6.0 was introduced, did Quark offer educators a reasonable upgrade? No such luck. As a growing number of commercial printers turn to InDesign, so will educators. At some point, we'll all teach InDesign–the designer's layout program of choice.
A little late
Quark is more than a little late to wake up. I made the switch to Adobe Indesign a long time ago and have never wanted to look back to Quark. Quark has been far too expensive. InDesign is much better with Adobe's Creative Suite and using a PDF workflow for print (it cannot be beat). It was good for a few years Quark but I must say goodbye in favor of the superior InDesign CS.
Not enough reasons for the average user
Quark still seems to be out of touch with its main user base. By going after the big (most profitable segment) and devoting 80% of it's resources to that end, it seems they are OK with just chasing after the big fish and letting Adobe start to erode its overall marketshare. I was waiting to see how Quark 6 and InDesign CS stacked up, and clearly InDesign is a better product. Since the overwhelming majority of users don't want the Enterprise component or can't afford to implement it, Quark's new offerings will fall on deaf ears.
More to Quark than just Xpress
As a long-time user of Quark Xpress, I was always vaguely aware that they had an enterprise class publishing system, but I never had the need to investigate it, as I worked for small to mid-size printers. After having read this article I'm impressed with the amount of stuff that they produce.
In 13 years of use, I've always had a pretty good experience with Xpress in particular. We were usually on the service plan, so there were no real issues with customer service. There were occasions like the release of vers. 4 that were troublesome, but they made that a stable piece of software with revisions. Just like any other software company.
I started with Xpress with vers. 2 and InDesign at vers. 1.5. Both have come a long way in their time, esp. InDesign. But for most work, I still rely on Xpress, mostly because I know it so much better.
But like the author said at the end of the article, Quark is so much more than Xpress. Thanks for the view into the product line.
Lots yet to be proven
Yes, Quark has more of a workflow suite than Adobe does. But much of what is shown in this article is vaporware. Maintenance is outrageous, with no updates for QPS users in the 18 months + since Quark took over the product again, no sign of any soon, and no one who can support QPS. Activation is brain dead, breaking with software updates, plugging in hardware, etc. The download link for the 6.1 updater on their site gives a 404 error. And there are still no user forums, ultimate proof that they have no confidence to face their customers. So far there is a lot of hot air and no meaningful change I see, and the QPS users we support will move to an InDesign-based solution before upgrading barring MAJOR changes.
What is this? A huge Quark announce?
The article is a large, detailed announcement favouring Quark products and goodwills. Full of promises users already heard in past years about better support and improved products.
About QXP, one more time Quark points to the wrong direction. To fully support XML is not a choose, it's a need. If the great new that version 7.0 will bring is all about multi-channel and XML support, QXP will remain inferior to InDesign.
Average users needs improved typographical tools, better way to manage tables, footnotes, page imposing and colours, reliable print and PDF-output – and would be nice not to need a dozen plug-ins to get the "workflow" to work and flow. If QXP 7 will still lack on these points, even a great XML support will fail as a whole strategy.
And, of course, how to believe in such promises if Quark site still does not works as expected and does not offer even an user forum?
I'm still skeptical
After waiting far to long for Quark to put a true OSX version on the street, I am still skeptical after reading this. And just how much will Quark 7 cost. Will it be competative with InDesign. In higher education we are only interested in teaching the concepts of design, etc, and not how to use a specific tool. We can teach concepts and design principles with InDesign just as well as we can with Quark, and at about one third the price even with educational discounts. I know from experience that once students leave and enter the workplace they tend to ask for or use the tools they learned with. I did not see anything in the article about support for education. Perhaps Quark should put some effort into that area to help maintain their market share.
This isn't a news feature, it's a press release
At least the article indicates "Editor's note: The author consults with Quark, among other clients." How can we trust the objectivity of a person writing about a company that signs his paycheck? Everything in the article might be true but unless it's written by someone not on the Quark payroll, I'll be taking it with a grain of salt the size of Alaska. What's next? The virtues of AdobeCS by CEO Bruce Chizen?
Quark is a pariah
Pamela Pfiffner said;
"What it comes down to is this: Quark has such a horrible reputation that no one wants to give it the benefit of the doubt." -end snip
Like many, I put up with the mistreatment Quark dished out because I liked and needed their product to earn my living. When I made the transition to OSX - and was left Xpress-less, I discovered that I was not as dependant on their software as I had come to believe.
Quark, as a company, has become a pariah to many of us who formerly used Xpress, and who no longer use it because we don't have to.
I suppose it is possible Quark could win me back as a customer - but not as long as I don't "have" to.
Quark's Credibility Gap
Pamela stated "What it comes down to is this: Quark has such a horrible reputation that no one wants to give it the benefit of the doubt. I won't say that reputation is unearned. The company knows it needs to change its attitude. The real question is, Will the publishing community acknowledge any change? Or does it even care?"
I can acknowledge that Quark supeficially realizes that it needs to change. But the REAL question is does Quark even care? More to the point are they capable of changing?
Quark is going to need to do a WHOLE lot of bending over backwards to change their awful reputation before I'll be willing to believe they are sincere and not motivated by one thing...maximizing profit.