GulfStream Aerospace, the premier business jet company that boasts more than a quarter of the Fortune 500 as customers, knows that the quality of the customer experience makes a difference – whether it’s in its flagship GulfStream jets or their accompanying sales materials.

The company was finding that design and production lead times and costs for its various sales tools were climbing steadily. The sales tools included both DVD and CD-ROM materials, making it easier for the customer to choose the format best for them. Sales managers would oftentimes leave the DVD or CD-ROM with a customer, who could then peruse the various information – including 360-degree views of each jet model’s cockpit, controls and jet body – at their leisure. The discs also provide a strong direct marketing tool for the salesforce.

"The purpose of it is really to provide a direct marketing and sales tool so the salesforce can sit in front of a client with a high-quality video and navigate through the different features in an immersive type presentation," said Will Dent, manager of interactive marketing for Gulfstream Aerospace. Unfortunately, the variety of options and formats increased production costs and lead times.

Dent said the overall sales tool development was usually a multi-part project that involved days of development time and outside contractors. The company’s development team had to create the DVD and the DVD menu in-house, and then send the package off for final mastering and replication. They also had to create a CD-ROM, which required a different set of procedures and workflows, even when the same video assets were reused in both the DVD and the CD-ROM.

"From a managerial standpoint, we had to basically do it twice," Dent said.

When the company embarked on a new project, its GulfStream PlaneView cockpit simulator, it learned that Macromedia’s Director MX 2004 could help shave not only time, but also production and packaging costs. The company leveraged its Flash prowess across both the DVD and CD-ROM, since the new Director now supports both formats. In addition, it could create the presentation once and then deploy it for both Macintosh and PC desktops, another MX 2004 improvement.

Plus, his team, which was already heavily experienced with Flash, could get up to speed very quickly. "We didn’t have to relearn things," said Jonathan Kind, Web Coordinator for Gulfstream, who worked on the project. "What we do in ActionScript, we can now apply in Director as far as the code was concerned. We also are able to create the components in Flash MX 2004 and reuse them in Director MX 2004."

The result is that development times for the various DVD and CD-ROM projects are now at least 5 day shorter, since there’s no longer any need to use outside help. In addition, since DVD and CD-ROM materials are created at the same time, using a single workflow, packaging and production costs are cut nearly in half.

"One of the great takeaways from this is the ability to reuse our work in many Macromedia products and platforms," Dent said. "And if we are able to produce interactive marketing materials that share resources, as opposed to developing twice, that obviously is a huge cost savings for us."