Quark’s Reorganization And The Future Of QuarkXPress
Recently, various outrageous rumors have been flying around about a reorganization at Quark, involving cut-throat layoffs, dismal sales, squandered fortunes and clueless leadership. To discover the truth, I went directly to the source. Quark’s CEO Ray Schiavone kindly granted me an extensive interview, so I asked him exactly what Quark is doing right now, and where they’re headed. Here’s what I discovered:
THE EXTENT OF THE REORGANIZATION
“Less than 10″ employees in the Denver office were laid off, to reallocate resources toward new initiatives. Quark has also hired several key new people and is in the process of hiring quite a few more — again to support new initiatives. Their offices in India were affected in a similar way.
THE NEW INITIATIVES
Schiavone has been CEO of Quark for nine months. During this period, he spent a great deal of time visiting key Quark customers around the world. During that same period, Quark presented free seminars across the U.S. and met with a broad range of customers. The goal: to find out what improvements customers are asking for and provide them.
Perhaps you can guess what some of those requests were, based on this short list of where Quark is investing additional resources:
- A new technical support center in Denver.
- More development in the U.S., in addition to India.
- A new office in Santa Clara, California, for R&D, support and sales.
- Expanded technical support in Neuchatel, Switzerland.
- New offices to support Latin America, Asia, eastern Europe, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Russia.
- Increased staff in Germany, France, and England.
SALES FIGURES
To me, this kind of activity doesn’t seem possible if the sales of Quark’s flagship product were weak, so I asked about how sales are going for QuarkXPress 7. Being a privately owned company, they don’t share exact figures, but Schiavone did say that they’re ahead of their sales targets for upgrades to QuarkXPress 7, and have been pleasantly surprised by the strength of the sales of new copies as well.
THE DIRECTION OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
OK, so Quark is investing in greater support and R&D in the U.S. and Europe. They’re also adding support in key countries around the world. But what about the product? Where is QuarkXPress headed — what’s the Big Picture for the tools that millions of design and publishing professionals rely on every day?
Based on their interaction with customers, Schiavone and his team determined that the biggest needs center on republishing content. The biggest time-wasting activities worldwide involve recreating assets to use in print, Web, interactive, mobile devices, and other delivery media. In addition, customers need to be able to easily use content from all sources: QuarkXPress, InDesign, XML, Flash, PDF, and others.
To address this need, Quark is investing significant resources to build up their content-sharing and server technologies, which lead the industry. QuarkXPress Server 7 is already capable of delivering content to multiple media at once, using only a Web browser for input and requiring only basic QuarkXPress skills to create new designs. And of course QuarkXPress 7 already allows sharing of content between users, without requiring a server.
This kind of challenge plays to Quark’s strengths: QuarkXPress has always excelled at efficiency and productivity. While Schiavone wouldn’t tell me exactly what new products or services to expect in the immediate future, he did say there would be some exciting new announcements this fall around new server capabilities and partnerships with existing server vendors and open source suppliers.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DESKTOP?
“We’re continuing to develop QuarkXPress as the most powerful content publishing tool in the world.”
All this talk about server solutions and “reinventing the enterprise software side” of Quark made me nervous about the future of QuarkXPress. Was Quark abandoning the desktop market? Will QuarkXPress be relegated to being the front end of a giant publishing engine?
Schiavone: “No, no, no. QuarkXPress is the basis of everything we’re doing. The 7.3 upgrade was the highest quality upgrade we’ve ever released. We’re continuing to develop QuarkXPress as the most powerful content publishing tool in the world.”
Their goal, he said, is to take content publishing out of the 20th century model that became entrenched during the desktop publishing revolution, and into the reality of today’s cross-media publishing needs. The content-sharing technologies already built into QuarkXPress 6 and 7, when added to the power of QuarkXPress Server and other technologies about to be released, will go a long way toward smoothing and optimizing today’s workflows.
In other words, they’re investing in top end technologies so that they can continue to introduce unprecedented new features into the consumer market and QuarkXPress. And that makes me, a QuarkXPress user, quite pleased.
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6 responses so far ↓
1
Never Mind that
// Aug 17, 2007 at 2:29 am
Mr. Ray is meeting clients to know what customers need. Did he meet employees to know if they are about the certain and believe in Quark policies. On what grounds he is so sure when his work force does not feel good about the company. Quark is aiming to achieve this without the support of employees. Does employee satisfaction lists on his agendas ?
He did mentioned “less than 10″ employees fired in Denver but what about other locations including India. Did he mentioned the Quark HR practices where an employee is forced to sign a paper that he is leaving the Quark for better future prospects.
Is Quark happy with the mood inside the company ? You are aiming higher with the support of low morale of employees. Mr. Ray look at the bigger picture.
2
Jay Nelson
// Aug 17, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Thanks for your comment! While Ray and I didn’t discuss Quark policies or employee moods, the only mood at Quark that I’ve experienced is an upbeat, enthusiastic vision and a positive expectation of the future. My observation is based on recent contact with some product managers, marketing folks, and now the new CEO.
3
Retrospection
// Aug 17, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Mr Ray,
I suggest have a internal anonymous employee forum, which would yield you better insights what your employees feel about you and the way quark is doing. Going up the ladder or down. ! Quark is unnecesarliy spoiling the image Tim Gill had made few decades back.
4
Never Mind That
// Aug 19, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Jay,
Thats just one small aspect of the overall scenario. Product managers or marketing guys does not make a team. They are a small part of a big team. I do not work for Quark but I have so many friends working for Quark but the mood is simply low. In fact most of them are looking for opportunities outside the Quark. Employee at any level of the hierarchy should feel good about the things happening around him.
The roots are getting weaker at Quark. I always felt no company can grow without the satisfaction of their customers and employees. Ray is a captain of the ship, he should be aware and should mention that he is concerned on both aspects.
5
Robert Rapplean
// Aug 23, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Nevermind, I have to disagree. I’ve spent the last two months talking with employees of Quark at every level of the organization. While those in India have been less than candid, I’ve gotten a positive response from all but a small portion of those I’ve talked to. I have no doubt that there are some people in the company that aren’t happy. Change is scary, and some people think that all change must be negative. The general impression that I get, though, is that the changes that are going on are very positive and headed in the right direction for both the company and for its customers.
6
Never Mind That
// Aug 26, 2007 at 3:06 am
Robert,
I agree change is always scary for employees no matter its Quark. These *changes* have been part of quark for so many years now. But it never helped the organization. So its obvious to loose faith. Moreover I mentioned about HR practices followed in Quark. Employees are not aware why he or his fellow colleague has been fired. Although they have been among top performers in the company.
Lets hope they get it right this time. It will be matter of months when we will be able to see what are the results.
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