via Innovation Philadelphia:
Lansdowne’s Appligent Brings Innovation to Marketing and Public Relations
DDM Marketing and Communications is a full-service strategic and creative marketing firm assisting clients in a number of industries including professional services, higher education, manufacturing, and industrial design. When DDM needed to dynamically manage and distribute its documents and presentations it turned to Lansdowne, PA-based Appligent’s flagship application for manipulating PDF files, AppendPDF Pro. It wasn’t long before DDM found external customers for its system and AppendPDF Pro’s scalability made for a short leap from supporting internal marketing efforts to creating a product suitable for its clients, and Paperclik™ was born.
Paperclik is a Web-based document management solution based on the Application Service Provider (ASP) model, in which the application and data is hosted at a secure location by DDM. Customers pay a monthly fee, which includes access, maintenance, and upgrades. Paperclik enables customers to have a sophisticated document management system without a large up-front expense or a lengthy development effort. Since the system is based on Adobe’s PDF file format, all content can conform to corporate identity specifications or comply with regulatory guidelines. Paperclik is Web-based so clients can work from anywhere as long as they have Internet access and a standard browser. Users are authenticated by a login process and are only able to access the content that they are authorized to use.
“Paperclik’s development was driven by our clients’ demands to better organize materials in a decentralized environment”, said Mike McCarthy, Partner at DDM. “Appligent’s AppendPDF Pro gave our development team the flexibility, scalability, and power it needed to build an enterprise-level solution in a very short time.”
DDM’s developers used Appligent’s AppendPDF Pro along with low-cost generic tools on the Red Hat Linux platform to build Paperclik. AppendPDF Pro is a highly versatile tool for splitting, merging, appending, and stamping PDF files that can also build tables of contents on the fly. The flexibility and straightforward command line interface of AppendPDF Pro enabled them get a first release of the site up in only 3 weeks. This flexibility also allows developers to engage in an iterative cycle of continuous product enhancement.
After its success with Paperclik, DDM found clients asking for more features. As a result DDM developed another version, Paperclik Direct™, which adds self-service functionality so an external audience can directly access content. Clients who use Paperclik Direct make portions of their site available to their customers who can assemble customized documents by themselves. For instance, a university can enable potential undergraduates to build catalogs and generate personalized cover letters based on their background and interests. A prospective field hockey-playing Engineering student who’s interested in joining a sorority would have different package than a Political Science major who wants to write for the student newspaper. Contact and profile information is passed on to admissions officers who can focus recruitment efforts on candidates that meet specific criteria.
DDM has found growing interest in Paperclik and Paperclik Direct services with clients in a number of industries including: higher education, large sales organizations, and professional service firms in a number of fields including law, accounting, and insurance.