Marathon Innovations - Products
Marathon Innovations

 

 SmartPath Benefits
Reduces media development time and costs
Improves overall quality
Gives business-process owner control over the process
Provides real-time project management and status reporting
Interfaces with external vendors and agencies
Eliminates costs associated with color proofs, copying, and shipping

 Research Study
A research study by the Butler Group revealed that the time required to manually route information for a complex business process accounts for 90 percent of the overall time it takes to complete the process.


SmartPathTM Marketing Automation Software (MAS) provides Web-based automation and management of the complex processes that support the creation of promotional materials and content development for a wide variety of media, including print and the Web.

Time-to-Market Challenge
Success in business often means being first to market. To get there, companies must be able to rapidly develop promotional materials and content for a variety of communications media. The relatively young arena of eCommerce is placing an even greater demand on marketing organizations to shorten the delivery cycle of content development and promotional campaigns.


SmartPath MAS project orientation allows users to view the data and status of all processes associated with each project at any time.

Marketing departments and publishing organizations must maximize their operational efficiencies by automating the underlying business processes that support the planning, development, review, revision, approval, and publishing of promotions (advertisements, brochures, packaging, etc.) and content (catalogs, Web sites, etc.). But in today's competitive environment, there are many obstacles that can impede a company's ability to get promotions and content developed quickly. Last-minute revisions, repetitive approval cycles, changes in government regulations, geographically dispersed teams, and lack of real-time project management can delay a promotional campaign, catalog publishing, or product launch for weeks, if not months.

However, if the supporting business processes are well defined and automated, the impact of such factors is minimized, reducing cycle time and improving overall quality. Automating the media development process will give marketing departments and publishing organizations the edge they need to quickly respond to fast paced markets and changing conditions.

Automate the Process
SmartPath MAS solves time-to-market issues for media development. It leverages the most advanced process management technology available, incorporates a powerful media management engine, and utilizes a proven application model for Web-based media development. SmartPath MAS automates and streamlines the processes that support the planning, development, review, revision, approval, publishing, and distribution of promotional materials and content. Traffic, editorial, and production groups within marketing and publishing organizations, as well as external departments, vendors, and agencies, can perform their day-to-day functions online in a fully coordinated workflow-reducing costs and cycle times and improving quality.

SmartPath MAS end users can create and modify their own process definitions as business requirements change.

Automating the processes for promotions and content development requires extensive domain knowledge of marketing and publishing operations, working in a variety of media, including print and the Web. Marketing and publishing organizations typically use tools and technologies that lie outside the mainstream of corporate information processing, requiring specialized platform knowledge. Also, these organizations typically interface with many external agencies and vendors, which requires systems that can be extended to third parties.

SmartPath MAS Solution
The SmartPath MAS Web-based solution is the first business-process application specifically targeted at automating and managing the processes that support media development for promotions (advertisements, brochures, packaging, etc.) and content (catalogs, Web sites, etc.). Supporting a wide variety of digital media on the industry's most popular computing platforms, Marathon Innovations has incorporated into SmartPath MAS their extensive knowledge of marketing and publishing operations.


SmartPath MAS automates and manages online the processes to plan, develop, review, revise, approve, and publish digital media.

Users can easily define systems to automate process workflows, manage associated digital documents and media, and integrate with existing data processing systems. The process owner, such as the Traffic Department, uses out-of-the-box templates to define process flows expressed in familiar terms. A powerful and unique feature of SmartPath MAS is its adaptive workflow capability that enables processes to be dynamically modified to fit an individual job, all active jobs, or all future jobs while the process is actually executing.

SmartPath MAS provides a business-level approach that empowers marketing and publishing organizations to focus on the development of the media for promotions and content rather than the manual tasks to manage and coordinate the effort. The SmartPath MAS graphical process definer provides business managers visual models to analyze and respond to change with unprecedented speed and flexibility.

Use A Proven Solution.
SmartPath MAS has been embraced by the most demanding of customers, customers that produce over 3,000 promotional jobs per year, market multiple brands in multiple divisions, and market in highly regulated, security-focused industries.

Start Small-Grow Big-Stay Secure.
Stay Secure. SmartPath MAS provides for scalability and reliability. It is designed to function as part of a 24x7, fault-tolerant, multi-server, distributed architecture. As transaction rates increase, additional servers can be added to the configuration.

Own the Process.
SmartPath MAS is a tool that nonprogrammers can use to design and modify automated business processes. The graphical icon-based Process Definer is used to develop, view, and update process workflows. Active processes can be modified for a given instance or for all successive executions.

Create Complete Audit Trail.
SmartPath MAS maintains a complete and permanent audit trail of every process. The audit trail can be used to demonstrate compliance or improve future process designs.

Future of Media Development

To compete in a fast-paced, dynamic, or highly regulated industry, marketing and publishing organizations must employ business-process automation to achieve a competitive advantage. SmartPath MAS is a comprehensive Web-based process automation solution that accelerates time-to-market, reduces costs, and improves quality for the creation of promotional materials such as advertisements, brochures, direct mail, and packaging as well as content development for catalogs, Web sites, etc.

Timely development of quality promotional materials and content is critical to market success. Using SmartPath MAS, companies can realize the benefits of automating these marketing and publishing processes while integrating other departments, vendors, and agencies into the overall workflow.

Marathon Innovations understands marketing and publishing operations. We speak your language, not techno-babble. So give us a call.

SmartPath MAS Features
Designed for Marketing and Publishing Workflows
Process Definer and screens use industry terminology
Customizable templates for typical workflows
Integrated digital media management
Layered mark-ups

Access to Existing Application Data
APIs to access legacy data

Powerful Process Definer
Icon-based Process Definer enables marketing
managers to define complex processes
Active processes can be dynamically modified
for a single job or for all active jobs
Defined processes can be reused in multiple projects

High Performance and Ultrascalability
Dynamically balanced server resources
Multithreading
Process commit, rollback, and recovery

Security
Controlled vendor and agency access
Encrypted security and permissions
Integrates with operating system security

Standards Based
NT and UNIX servers
Windows 95, 98, and NT as well as Apple MacOS clients
Microsoft and Netscape browsers

Contact Information
Marathon Innovations, Inc.
5150 McCrimmon Parkway
Morrisville, NC 27560
919.462.9880 Phone
919.462.9872 Fax
www.marathoninnovations.com

Marathon Innovations, SmartPath and SmartPath MAS are trademarks of Marathon Innovations, Inc. All other trademarks or service marks are the property of their respective holders.

 


 
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