Jun 28, 2002
Welcome to the HVCO Data Management Pavilion of OutputLinks.com!
We have been looking at using audits to ensure the integrity of your business process, develop a document strategy, and ensure disaster recovery processes. If you have been with us for those columns you can see that there are many intersecting issues that meet in your print environment. We promised that once we explored the issues surrounding performing this type of audit that we would offer suggestions on what to do with your findings.
With that as our goal we are going to start by looking at the 'how to make sense of what you found when you began your search for mission critical document files, all of their support files, and the master environmental files'. Start with the obvious: were you able to identify all of your mission critical documents, their support files, and the processes that support their creation?
If you think that you have, let's double check.
For every mission critical document can you identify:
- The source file name for every component of the document:
- Forms overlays
- Fonts
- Graphics
- Control files (PageDefs, FormDefs, JSL, JDL, JDF)
- Batch control files
- Database files
- Applications
- The development process for each document
- Application owner
- Forms development department
- Application integrator
- Quality Assurance analyst
- Testing environment
- Target output environment
- Print hardware
- Transforms
- Proofing
- Archive
- Web presentment
- Back office interfaces (AP, AR, Audit)
How did you do? If you did not score 100 per cent, your mission critical documents are at risk. An audit should have uncovered each of these data points about each of your mission critical documents.
Falling out of this information should be a comprehensive look at what you know about your overall HVCO environment. You should not only have the font and form names for each document identified, but you must know the location of each of those files, if those file names are duplicated anywhere else in the environment, and where the back up copies are located. You should also be able to clearly identify the age of the back up files
Your mission should be to plug the holes in the matrix for each mission critical HVCO document. Beyond that repair work, however, you must build a process that ensures the integrity of each mission critical document introduced to your environment from this point onward.
What does that mean? To start, you must have a complete picture of each new document, including the fonts, forms, graphics, control files, conditional processing requirements, data base access requirements, target output requirements, archive issues, and recovery issues.
Your job isn't done yet, though. Remember that we actually print all of these documents. That means you need information on the paper requirements for these documents. Are they designed for cut sheet, roll feed, or custom stock? Where is the paper sourced and stored? Is there a reserve stored offsite?
That gets us started. Next time we will take a look at more of the hardware related issues that should have emerged from your audit. If this is valuable, drop us a line at pm@outputlinks.com!