Compart: Document and Output Management

Expectations exceeded: The Hunkeler Innovation Days are doubtless one of the most important events for the digital printing sector, providing the best forum for launching new products and meeting potential clients. Compart, a provider of platform-independent and scalable output management solutions, was a co-exhibitor this year with its partner Docucom, one of Switzerland’s leading system integrators in the field of document creation and processing.

The focus of their joint presence at the fair, which took place on 14-17 February 2011 in Lucerne, was squarely on “Cross Media”, particularly on the technical challenges it poses. These include linking the different communication channels and exploiting layout and content for multiple uses in combination with new terminal devices and output channels. In this context, Compart presented its applications for bundling locally created documents, for efficient modification and conversion of data streams, for delivery bundling and for supporting innovative electronic channels - such as the E-Postbrief (electronic postal letter).

Harald Grumser, Compart’s CEO, is convinced that the idea of having a joint presence at the fair was a great success. “Presenting Docucom as an integration service provider and Compart as a provider of mature products for all aspects of output management has once again led to some promising contacts that will benefit both sides. ”At the same time, Compart was able to further enhance its own profile,” says Grumser. “The discussions proved that we with our products are best placed to serve the evolved demands of the whole document nerve centre in output management.”

White paper solutions on the advance

There was much demand for all-in-one IT solutions covering the whole process of creating, editing, converting and outputting documents across different channels. Companies are particularly vulnerable when it comes to document formats and their conversion - that much was evident from many of the discussions that Compart and Docucom were involved in. Clearly, many companies are still using software that is not capable of supporting all data formats. Hence, visitors expressed a great deal of interest in Compart’s scalable solutions for flexible and efficient processing of high-volume data streams originating from different sources. Not only can these solutions be customized to company-specific requirements, but they support all the usual input and output formats, from AFP and IPDS to PDF, PDF/A and XSL-FO. In addition, they can comfortably handle meta data.

Another focal point was the growing importance of white paper solutions. These create and output empty documents, i.e. documents without content or layout, for specific recipients. All the required data is stored in the IT system and made available for each client, starting from master data such as name, address and DOB, through advertisements to be placed, to particular fonts and logos. The benefit of these white paper solutions is that they obviate the need to physically store large quantities of a variety of pre-printed forms. Instead, a software application manages all the data required for each document.

Compart can help companies prepare and optimize their data streams for best results. Here the DocBridge® Pilot software plays a key role: it extracts all the criteria required for processing in the form of meta data and stores it in a relational database. Compart is in discussion with a number of firms, among them well-known German and international insurance companies.

Hunkeler Innovation Days - Compart will be back in 2013

Harald Grumser says: “This event is a must for us. This is where you meet everybody who is anything in the worldwide digital print industry. It is beautifully organized and offers us a number of synergies for winning new clients as well as for exchanging information. Niche fairs such as the Hunkeler Innovation Days provide us with an excellent alternative to the larger IT trade fairs that have no particular focus and where we are often not perceived in quite the way that we would wish.” For this reason, Compart will participate again in the next round in 2013.

The Hunkeler Innovation Days are an international trade fair held every two years that brings together the biggest manufacturers in the field of paper processing for digital print: manufacturers of printing and enveloping machines along with developers of IT solutions for controlling the machines as well as all of the output management. It is not so much individual products that are centre-stage, but the complete production systems and their practical application. Analysis of visitor interest in recent years provides evidence of the growing interest of traditional offset printing companies in digital printing.