Mar 22, 2002
By Al Cooper
In the first issue of this column, I identified some basic reasons for performing an Output Study. Now I will begin to answer,
"What is an Output Study?"
An Output Study is the process by which one or more people in an organization review the output produced from a high volume computer output
(HVCO) facility to determine if the right output is being produced in the right format to the right person and in a timely and cost effective manner.
Some people may have encountered the terms "Print Study" and "Document Management Study." What's the difference between an Output Study
and these studies?
A Print Study targets only printed output from a HVCO facility. A Print Study will often be attempted when: printers are coming off lease; new print
functionality is required for an application; centralized print centers are being disbanded and distributed printers are being installed; new print facilities
are being added; and many more reasons specific to the printing of output. Although some Print Studies attempt to identify paper output applications
that should be produced in alternative media, most limit the scope of the review to printed output and the hardware and software associated with
producing that paper output.
A Document Management Study, on the other hand, is a study of all documents, from incoming correspondence through document archival and
retrieval procedures to outgoing computer output, customer correspondence, and even, in most cases, to internal corporate documents, including
legal documents. A true Document Management Study is normally a massive effort involving multiple analysts as well as a Project Manager for
an extended period of time.
An Output Study focuses on all output from an HVCO environment, whether that output be paper, microfilm or fiche, CD-ROM, reports archived
and retrieved in either mainframe or PC Server environments, web pages or output delivered to a customer via the Internet, or fancy documents
delivered to a list of recipients by e-mail.
An effective Output Study must cover all aspects of computer output production from application run times through printing, inserting into envelopes,
all the way through the mailing process. It may even include delivery methods as well as post delivery processes such as the processing of payment
stubs from billing applications upon return to the appropriate payment-processing center.
Why would an Output Study be concerned with application run times? In most HVCO installations, the timely delivery of customer output is
dependant on the timely delivery of the output files to the print room for printing. If excessive run times are involved, then the start of printing
will normally be delayed, resulting in delays in the final delivery of the output to the post office or customer. In some cases, I have encountered
daily applications that have had 25 hour run times in order to produce 3,000 mailed documents of 3-5 pages each. With only 24 hours in the day,
this becomes problematic. In most cases, a simple redesign of the application can result in extensive reduction in run times.
In the above example of a 25-hour run time, redesigning the application print file resulted in a run time of 17 minutes. Future articles will address
the question of how to identify such drastic reductions.
The next article will continue to address the question of "What is an Output Study?"