DENVER - In November, Quark Inc. named Raymond Schiavone its new president and chief executive officer, succeeding acting President Linda Chase. Schiavone, a former GE exec, also served as president and CEO of Arbortext. Last month, Newspapers & Technology Editor Tara McMeekin sat down with Schiavone to talk about the company’s future direction, its plans for the newspaper industry and product lines.

Raymond Schiavone President and CEO, Quark Inc. Photo: Newspapers & Technology

Newspapers & Technology: What plans do you have to bolster Quark’s presence in the newspaper industry?

Schiavone: My first order of business was to get out to meet clients to get a sense of what they’re doing, what their challenges are and where they’re going. I wanted to understand how Quark is performing today. Largely the answer I got was that our clients are happy with what we do, but the newspaper industry is facing a lot of challenges. My primary question was to ask them what direction they are going.

 

Quark’s been around for quite awhile and we’ve been efficient and effective at providing the right technology platform for what yesterday’s needs were - now we need to focus on tomorrow’s needs in the newspaper industry and what technologies newspapers need to be successful in that environment.

There is one common underlying theme from the newspapers I spoke to, which is that they need to be more efficient at repurposing content and obviously, other media is important beyond just print. The publishing industry in general in the past may have been defined more by their print publication, but now they’re defining themselves more as content syndicators. They see that the real value is in their ability to create content and distribute that effectively.

There are certainly new models - for example Metro is changing the game and there are a number of free newspapers out there (see Newspapers & Technology, November 2006). I think that’s the first step. The next step is to determine how newspapers can be more efficient and effective at getting that content out to different audiences and different media types. That’s going to influence our technology direction.

N&T: QPS has been available for more than 13 years, but seems to have lost momentum. Is Quark changing how it will support the editorial system?

Schiavone: The first thing we’re going to do is get our next version of QPS out. It’s been a long time since the last release and there are a number of features we can provide that can reinforce what we’re doing to bring that product up to date.

One of the criteria we used was to make sure that it is not proprietary. In the past we had developed some things like content management interfaces that were proprietary because there weren’t standard technologies out there to interface with, so people had a variety of file systems and content management systems. Our new QPS product will have standard technology interfaces, which will allow people to interface with other visual asset management systems.

(Editor’s note: Quark estimates that the new version of QPS will be available in the second quarter.)

The first thing is to allow a logical upgrade path so people can integrate with standard technologies and utilize the latest QuarkXPress versions and new CopyDesk version as well. That’s taking what we do already to the next level: more open, more standard technologies and getting that platform set to work with QuarkXPress 7. The next thing is - and this is an early product line - but Interactive Designer, which will allow you to publish your QuarkXPress document to some technologies on the Web.

That marks our first step in repurposing content. We’re going to be spending a fair amount of time with our clients in newspapers and other publishing areas to understand their business drivers. I want to make sure we’re not building technology and imposing on the market, but instead understanding the business drivers and then specifically solving that problem.

N&T: How strong is Quark’s commitment to the newspaper industry and how focused are you in that segment?

Schiavone: The newspaper industry is not our most profitable industry, but if we want to be leaders in publishing, we’ve got to serve that segment. Even though introducing the next version of QPS is not going to be the big breakout play for us, we’re doing it anyway - and hopefully that’s the strongest show of commitment that we can give to the industry. We’re going to do it, we’re going to do it well. There is a commitment. The newspaper industry has stuck with us through many years and we’re going to stick with them.

The industry is going to morph so I really want to understand what it’s changing to in order to be ahead of that curve and provide technology that will help newspapers make the change faster than they would have otherwise.

It’s easy to get drawn into the challenges of the day because most people in newspaper operations are just struggling with “how do I do my job better, faster, cheaper?” We’re going to provide those things but if you just stick with that, then you’re going to miss the big opportunity, which is changing the business model.

We’ve got to balance how many more features to put in what we already have with new angles - multimedia delivery. That’s more than a feature; I think that’s a major shift.

N&T: How do plans for expanded product lines and alliances previously announced by Quark stand to benefit the newspaper industry?

Schiavone: I’m not certain how this applies to the newspaper industry specifically, but generally what we’re looking at with our XPress Server product is to build alliances with people that will build applications on top of that product that will be purpose-built - very specific applications that could be departmental-type solutions that are more specific than what we would be able to do, because generally we’re building horizontal technologies.

If somebody is close to a particular application, they can take the core capabilities that we’ve got and build an application layer on top of that for a specific purpose. We’ve got strategic alliances already with system integrators and application developers that want to build applications on that server and market it to specific industries for very specific-use cases. I’d imagine that the newspaper industry would be similar. I’m looking for people who have the main expertise that can leverage our technology to solve a particular problem that isn’t a broad enough market for us to specialize in but we provide the core underlying technologies.

It’s a trend that is different than what we’ve done in the past, which is build everything ourselves. The move is to open standards and partnering with best of breed in anything from leveraging the operating systems more of Mac or Windows to enhancing our product and then on the application layer, partnering with people who can develop very specific applications.

N&T: Would you look to other prepress vendors to do that?

Schiavone: It’s hard for me to get into that level of specifics but what I can tell you is the technologies like our Job Jackets (introduced with QuarkXPress 7) and the collaboration zone are very much looking at the process and how the process is changing. We want to be more efficient in the whole process, not just content creation.

We’ve done the content creation well, we’ve done the workflow pretty well, but then there are downstream problems that we can mitigate by incorporating checks upfront. The Job Jackets will impose more structure on the content development that will eliminate problems in prepress and production.

We’re thinking about that whole lifecycle and we’re already building some technologies in there, but again, those are things we’re going to do anyway. That is going to help newspapers do what they do today more efficiently. I really want to understand what they’re going to do tomorrow and we’ve got to start working on the technologies today that will help them get where they want to go.

N&T: How do you feel your past experience has prepared you to lead Quark?

Schiavone: I think my public company training coupled with my experience running a couple smaller companies that were very specific to publishing, although not newspapers, prepared me. The first one that I ran was a joint venture between GE and Thomas Publishing, the folks that create the Thomas Register of American Manufacturers. They’ve been around 100 years, probably as long as many of the newspapers. Then I ran a company called Arbortext, an XML-based automated enterprise publishing software company. That gave me a good window into the challenges in publishing. It’s a slightly different market, but a lot of the challenges are the same.

What’s most important from my background and ability to lead Quark is that I bring operational rigor and a professional management style that is different than Quark’s original entrepreneurial management style. What you’re going to get is a company that acts more like a public company, a company that is more open in our communications than it has been in the past and that is more predictable in the way we operate.

I’m not an inventor. I’m an operating manager but I’ve got a lot of bright minds in the business and the best thing that I can do is make this company very customer-centric - one that listens and then innovates.

We’re very good at innovating, we just need to make sure we spend enough time understanding where our customers are going and then get ahead of them with innovative technologies.