Adding e-Approval to Your Document Output QA Can Save Time, $, and Avoid Costly Mistakes
From Scott Gerschwer, Ph.D., Compart NA Marketing
If you are an in-house print/mail operation or a service bureau in a regulated vertical like Insurance and Financial Services, there are four tests--not just one--that you should be conducting before you send a job to the printer:
- Regression testing: for both custom-developed applications and those created using commercial composition software, any changes or upgrades can be tested against legacy applications.
- Iteration testing: the process of creating a new document requires many steps of programming and subsequent testing. Changes to existing documents also require an iterative modification then a testing process.
- Conversion verification: in enterprises, documents and print files often have to be modified or converted to other formats for production or delivery. Testing the input against the output confirms quality and correctness.
- Archival testing: content that goes into the document repository must exactly match what comes out to support the legal and compliance requirements.
Quality assurance can be performed at any or many points during document production but it is best to catch mistakes earlier, rather than later.
And if you want to ensure that you've covered all bases to the satisfaction of all stakeholders, an electronic Approval function is a must-have, not a want to have. Gaining the sign-off of everyone involved means that you have done your due diligence and left nothing to chance--and everybody says so.
And if you want to ensure that you've covered all bases to the satisfaction of all stakeholders, an electronic Approval function is a must-have, not a want to have. Gaining the sign-off of everyone involved means that you have done your due diligence and left nothing to chance--and everybody says so.
Electronic Approval is easy to use and can be applied to the piece level or for an entire file of jobs. All of the properties of the document can be viewed and signed off on, including all associated metadata.
The user is asked to comment on each action, and all actions and comments by users are logged. The entire operation is recorded after validation or invalidation of a file. Validated files go on to the next step in the production process and invalid files are held up for inspection and remediation.
That way everyone is happy. Especially for those in insurance. Take a moment and read this email:
"The insurance industry generates a ton of documents that either get mailed to the insured or are made available to them electronically. All of the forms must be filed with the state DOIs and once filed, the carrier is obligated to produce output that matches what is filed. If there are discrepancies between what we produce and what is filed, we may be subject to fines, rework, bad faith claims, etc.
Our QA group is charged with ensuring our output is correct. Unfortunately today all of the QA work is manual using the eye ball check. That approach has resulted in errors being released into production over the past six months.
We are trying to identify what automation tools might be available to address our challenge. Some of the penalties can be severe - from a cost and a time perspective.
In fact, if you have ever been found to be non-compliant, my guess is that you will never want to go through that experience again. So please help."
About Compart:
The company, headquartered in Germany, has been a market presence for over twenty years and has subsidiaries in Europe and North America as well as a network of partners in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Compart helps companies boost the efficiency of their operations with solutions for quick and flexible processing of high-volume data streams and document quantities. The scalable and platform-independent DocBridge® family of products, designed, developed and supported by Compart, allows documents to be output anytime, anywhere, digitally or on paper.
The company enjoys a worldwide reputation as an innovative market leader as well as a developer of professional and leading-edge solutions in the field of content and document technology. More than 1,200 customers in 42 countries rely on Compart solutions, in industries that range from finance, insurance, and retail to printers, telecommunications, utilities and healthcare.
Furthermore, Compart is a technology partner for some of the leading manufacturers in the industry. Our software is embedded within some of the most often used Multi-Function Devices, printers and copiers in the world.
Thank you.