Feb 15, 2005
By John Thorpe
As the concept of workflow evolves, and the benefits become more compelling, companies are finding that the best tool for output management workflow is not the composition engine upstream. The solution that makes the most sense is a centralized output management platform specifically designed for the intricacies of today?s unpredictable document production requirements.
Output management (OPM) systems clearly have an advantage in the all-important job of getting composed documents to the best printer and ultimately into the mailbox, with maximum efficiency and speed. OPM systems are able to monitor the bigger picture, such as what resources are available for this job? How is the overall printing workload looking today? Are there other documents coming in that can be combined for batch printing or postal sorting? Which printers are available to allow intelligent splitting or workload balancing of the job? Where are they in the production process and have we met our service agreements? These questions are not within the scope of a composition system, but they are at the heart of output management.
What?s Missing with Composition-Directed Workflow
Even some of the most high-end document composition systems don?t have a true workflow solution for output management. In reality, such offerings often come down to simply the ability to create different print streams and direct them to a specific printer with no knowledge of the overall workload or priorities facing the print center. When a composed job is sent to a printer from a composition engine, the engine is unable to monitor whether the device is down for service or tied up with another job. Operations people don?t have the ability to make last minute changes or reprints without reverting back to the composition system. Users also miss out on the ability to centrally account for all jobs, which requires bringing many systems together. There is no tracking of all pages being printed, and so accounting becomes fragmented.
Compositon systems lack the broad perspective of what is happening overall relative to output and resource utilization. By allowing a composition system to drive printing, users bypass the significant advantages of central output management and all the responsiveness and flexibility it entails. Solutions like FlexServer, VIP and VDE from Emtex are better suited to companies needing a broader document strategy because they can address more issues involving overall document workflow at an enterprise level.
Adding Value Across Enterprise Output
Once focus shifts to output management as the hub for all output needs, a whole new set of opportunities begin to emerge. Workflow re-engineering based on OPM centralizes all printing for significant business advantages in accounting, reprints, asset utilization, ADF workflows, localized reprints, and much more. Operations staff gain greater control over the work for which they are responsible and can make last minute document or job priority changes without involving applications resources. With OPM in place, organizations can reduce the number of required print drivers in their document compositing system and better leverage existing assets. Companies gain the flexibility to re-engineer more workflow over a longer period using the same output management resources, adding to the value and ROI of an OPM investment.
Legacy, mainframe, composition, archive and network traffic can all be fed into the same document production area, and centralized output management is the ideal solution to bring consistency and efficiency to this diverse workload. Even at the office level, there is tremendous potential. The ability to orchestrate multiple data streams from one central point greatly increases productivity across the enterprise.
The document-intensive insurance market is a good example. Allianz Cornhill offers a broad range of products, including auto, health and even pet insurance. With a complex product environment and jobs coming from a variety of sources, Allianz needed a centralized point for both job management and accounting. As Ian Cherry, Allianz operations manager, explains, ?With multiple systems in place, our staff needed to be skilled in multiple environments like mainframe, Unix and Windows, while at the same time, printer utilization remained under-maximized, often needing printers dedicated to certain applications.? A centralized Output Management solution could alleviate these issues. ?By centrally managing our operations with Emtex VIP, we optimized our production capabilities to better utilize our staff and print assets. Yet, overall costs are 25 percent lower than 18 months ago, and we are at a spare 10 percent capacity, despite the higher volumes.?
Output management tools like Emtex Output Management Solutions can also smooth out workflow bottlenecks, as in this example. A service bureau wanted to standardize workflow to achieve better internal efficiencies with inserting, higher levels of quality control, better reports for customers, and mail sortation discounts. With Emtex as the central hub for output management, all the stages of the workflow were seamlessly connected, while maintaining the integrity of the documents.
Smart Batching, Smart Reprinting
Batching has been around a long time, and now it is being used to achieve smarter workflow. As more jobs come into a printing operation from more sources within an organization, there is tremendous benefit in having a tool that can intelligently read and batch these jobs for more efficient workflow. Before, it was not easy to dynamically and automatically create effective batching from a series of one-off or short run job submissions. Now Emtex VIP/VDE is giving companies the ability to batch many print jobs together.
A large service bureau in Belgium uses VDE output management to run a highly efficient batching system for the daily stream of order invoices from a client?s SAP system. Instead of inefficiently processing each small job as it comes in, the intelligent OPM system groups and indexes invoices received over a predetermined period, so invoices for each account can be batched and printed together in one large, efficient run. Postage costs were also reduced, as invoices for the same account could be grouped and mailed. The process required no change to the SAP application and is easily transferable to service bureau?s other SAP-based customers.
The same centralized approach works equally well with reprints. If reprints are managed by going back to the composition system, the process can be quite time consuming and counter-productive, and will delay fulfillment of reprint requests. With output management, operations people at the point of production can more easily handle reprinting, even at the mail piece or document level, without involving applications systems again.
Taking Workflow to a New Level
Antares Information Technologies, Inc., a leading US database management and direct mail service bureau, wanted to enhance existing infrastructure for high-volume document output. Daily capacity reached six million letters with volumes of 350 to 400 million impressions a year, including both transactional and non-transactional documents. Antares lacked an overall central management system across all its output devices and needed a low-risk migration path to turn existing infrastructure into a high-volume ADF. Output management solutions from Emtex helped Antares take their document processes to a new level.
Emtex VIP provides Antares with centralized control and maximizes production by preloading print queues. Output can be distributed and load balanced across any number of available devices. VIP can quickly respool and reposition production between printers for improved resource utilization without dragging down the workflow.
The VIP solution supports the company?s client server technology for improved flexibility, along with providing print stream and host independence. The OPM system offers a more solid platform for ADF automation, and for Antares, this has meant a 10-15 percent productivity increase across the board. Workflow productivity improvements resulted in significant reduction in operational staff workload and overall cost of production.
Centralizing document production within a single site is just one scenario that fits an OPM solution profile. When managing multiple sites with diverse printing and mailing needs, a more sophisticated level of capabilities are required. As the State of Wisconsin discovered, managing four printing and mailing centers with diverse workflow and printer environments made it difficult to optimize increasingly scarce state resources. Emtex FlexServer helped the State of Wisconsin consolidate printing into two centers, greatly reducing redundancy and improving efficiency. It also provided the essential building blocks to create a ?state of the art? ADF workflow that meets the state?s stringent requirement for 100 percent data-to-mail job integrity. ?We were constantly chasing our tails, all with a great deal of stress,? said Tim Smith, print services director at the State of Wisconsin. ?This year, using FlexServer and JETS, we presorted 5.1 million pieces of mail with no outsourcing. It was faster and easier with just a fraction of the stress levels. FlexServer has made a major difference for state printing and mailing operations in Wisconsin.?
Results like these are typical of what companies can expect from technology like the Emtex Output Management solution. When OPM is deployed and put in charge of all output, companies stop leaving workflow benefits on the table and start adding them to the bottom line.
John Thorpe, Vice President of Product Management at Emtex. is responsible for worldwide product direction and technical departments. Prior to joining Emtex in 2000, John served in various roles during his 14 year tenure with Xerox Europe.