Electronic Software Distribution (ESD)
This flash presentation reviews some of the key requirements that most clients are looking for in an ESD system.
ESD is not only a path to saving physical distrbution costs but it is also a way to increase customer satisfaction if done well. The opposite is true, if not done well it can become a liability. Failure can come from lack of materials, incorrect materials or general accessibility problems.
Increasingly customers are not asking for but demanding the ability to self-serve. The convenience and efficiency of being able to download the materials you want when you need to is in fact vital to most customers. For most customers the "push-pull" philosophy of pushing notification but allowing a pull of the materials creates the best of all worlds.
The key to creating a sustainable system is ensure that the infrastructure used and the processes designed are not accessory to the release and distribution process but rather central to them. If the central repository for all the intellectual property is the same one customers draw from or is integrated and automated to contain the same materials then the customer download site will be maintained as part of the main process. If however, excessive manual effort is required to maintain the site, the site will generally degrade without dedicated resources. Human error will always occur so checks and balances need to be built into all systems.
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