Compart: Document and Output Management

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Potentials of German Output Management Market.

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Optimized Correspondence for All Submission Channels

Output Management often involves a combination of various applications which create, modify, convert and prepare documents for the various submission channels. They run on different platforms and create data streams of different formats, which are difficult to combine. Technological support provides asynchronous, database supported correspondence pool software solutions.

An everyday office routine: Employees produce correspondence at their workstation PC, print it out, envelope it by hand, add a stamp and finally put it in the company mail tray. Whether the claim settlement department in an insurance company, marketing at pharmaceutical manufacturer, or in customer support at an energy provider – individualized one-off printing in companies is still common practice, both in owner-managed businesses and in groups of companies. What a waste of resources, not to mention "secondary activities" such as adding paper, dealing with paper jams and changing the toner. This also involves a high risk of errors: Text in correspondence can be incorrectly compiled or the wrong number of stamps might be added to the letter. Particularly in companies with a large number of customers, the growing flood of documents requires a huge level of capital. The majority of the work is routine and can be automated. In other words: By establishing central printing and mailing processes, which involves all departments of the company, costs can be significantly reduced. As experience has demonstrated, it is possible to cut costs by up to 80%.

In view of this potential, companies are beginning to rethink the situation. More and more companies are recognizing the advantages of centralization. Individual letters are created, spooled and produced through the central output management for the entire company. Another fact in favor of process bundling: The many new applications used to create document nowadays usually overburden companies’ IT infrastructure. The applications run on different platforms and generate documents and data streams in varying formats, which are difficult to combine. With familiar consequences: Low flexibility and high costs. For example, it is not possible to send several documents to the same recipient in the same letter or attachments cannot be dynamically added.

Put an End to Individual Correspondence!

Take a different approach and centralize processes. Technological support can provide a database-supported asynchronous mailing pool solution, such as the solution provided by Compart. The international supplier of output management solutions has developed DocBridge Pilot, platform independent software which can be used to create tailor-made correspondence for all types of output. For printing, e-mail, fax, E-Postbrief and web portals. The principle: Incoming documents are imported and correspondence is sent out in separate processes. The incoming documents to be processed are analyzed and all criteria required for their further processing are extracted in the form of metadata, such as the content of notes (NOPs) in AFP data streams or page content such as markings (Optical Mark Recognition, OMR), barcodes or text. While the software saves the documents in a central mailing pool, the metadata is stored in a relational database. Using a printer driver implemented on the PC workstations (clients), users are able to add their office documents to the same mailing pool so that they can be processed centrally.

One type of Software for All Formats

A series of functions can be configured to manage the dispatch for each job, for example sorting and enveloping the documents in the required output format and the addition of pages with extra information such as data matrix codes, OMR markings, logos and advertising messages on empty pages. All further stages can be configured as fully automated processes or initiated by the administrator at the time of their choice, For example, the administrator has the option of bundling documents in the mailing pool which have been sent from different sources and have different formats into one mailing, and integrate into one task according to required criteria and optimize them for dispatch.

The methods used to process the incoming documents can be configured using a graphic interface before viewing the result. These configurations also enable the user to access earlier versions and use them for further processing. The benefit of DocBridge Pilot: It supports almost all relevant formats for incoming and outgoing documents, such as Advanced Function Presentation (AFP), Portable Document Format (PDF), Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) and PostScript.

Switch to Autopilot

Well-known companies around the world already work with the Compart solution, including an internationally leading telecommunications supplier based in Germany. This company has established the central document pool which is particularly used to reply to customer queries. Around 300 letters are received by the company each day. The aim was to relieve employees from cumbersome secondary activities such as printing, signing, enveloping etc., so that they could concentrate on their main responsibilities. They sign the letters digitally, after which the letters are saved in a server index as an electronic image. The process is then finished for the employee. Colleagues in specialist departments access the correspondence via a web client and check whether the letters correspond to the criteria. If not, they are blocked, so that they can be corrected, otherwise they are released for electronic dispatch to the connected printing centre.

DocBridge Pilot prepares the documents correspondingly for this purpose. Converted to the common printing format AFP, they contain all required information for further processing. This includes: The assembly of individual files into an overall AFP document for continuous form processing by the printing service provider. The software takes the requirements of duplex printing into account, i.e. it adds empty pages to the end of the document with an uneven number of pages (2 A4 pages rotated by 90° and placed next to each other on a three roll printing paper) and adds them to the AFP data stream. The printing centre bundles all orders available on due date X so that they can be processed economically in the interest of a high load factor. All AFP document are collected and processed in the spool according to criteria such as prices, urgency and postage optimization. After dispatch, the specialist departments are notified accordingly. The company therefore has a complete AFP spool which is prepared into "bite-sized" sections for the printing service provider.

 

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