InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
June 14, 1999
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Suite makes small but valuable additions
By Jeff Angus
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ny software that has arrived at version 9 should display mature design. The maturity of WordPerfect Office 2000's designers is estimable. Thank goodness.Rather than simply cramming in increasingly marginal features, the Corel crew has sprinkled the new product with a small number of very good ones---oriented toward productivity, intranet publishing, and integration. WordPerfect Office 2000 offers value both for companies that don't have an office suite standard but also, interestingly enough, those that have chosen a WordPerfect competitor. The introduction of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) as a macro and automation vehicle means large organizations can use existing VB expertise to automate WordPerfect Office 2000 applications, and integrate them with Microsoft Office applications.
The significance of this is powerful, although not for an overwhelming number of shops. For organizations that haven't established a company standard for office suites, the ability to create parallel, multiprogram applications in users' different suites can greatly enhance individuals' productivity since each can work in a set of programs he understands, and in which he has mastery. Of course, most IT organizations will be loathe to expend energy increasing individuals' productivity if it means increasing their own workload--and VBA will mean an increased workload because it's not a system in which end users can serve themselves. VBA makes for richer, broader applications customized to each organization's needs, but it's not a solution for pushing development out to line-of-business, white-collar workers.
For shops that have standardized on Microsoft Office, having VBA inside the Corel product will provide an excuse not to undertake the expensive and frustrating process of converting WordPerfect users (ones who have yet to give up their favored product) to the standard. Sadly, in this world of finite resources and shrinking budgets, almost no IT organization seems interested in saving money when it comes to enforcing standards. Finance departments have a hard time measuring the effects of desktop productivity; they have an easier time measuring the costs of support and software licenses, factors which pale in comparison.
Editing Without Conversion
To further integrate WordPerfect Office 2000 with competitors' suites, Corel has added the ability to edit Lotus and Microsoft word processing files without having to convert formats. This is a great convenience for companies that support multiple office suites or those that exchange files with other companies that use a different standard, and should reduce support costs.
Corel has addressed a challenge that goes beyond integrating different publishers suites. Even if your whole organization is standardized on a single application, different offices may have different fonts. They can now embed in the file the actual shape of the characters and bind them into the document (making it, of course, bigger). The advantage is that recipients can see and print the document correctly without having the typeface themselves.
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