by Richard Huff at documentmedia.com

Successful digital print production requires more than a good printer. Many Madison Advisors customers have taken a closer look at production processes and identified areas for process improvement to squeeze costs out of the operation. Several new and recently improved software tools allow organizations to automate and expedite the print production process. Software vendors offer a variety of document automation and process management solutions that organizations must put together based on their print production requirements to create the best solution for a given environment. We have highlighted some of these solutions and tools below:

The output process control and reporting system resides at the center of any production process. This system usually consists of a flexible rules engine and programming interface for modeling the unique production requirements, as well as a centralized database for storing all the relevant process, job and item-level details. Such a solution must be configurable and scalable enough to model all the operational processes and store enough data to provide meaningful reports.

Master data management and data mining tools enable organizations to consolidate customer data from multiple sources and provide a meaningful view of the customer relationship. Organizations often use these tools to bring together customer data from multiple lines of business. Armed with a better understanding of the customer’s relationship to the organization as a whole, companies can leverage personalization within customer communications with timely and relevant messages and offers.

Document composition systems represent a key component in an output process management strategy. These systems merge document layouts and customer data into manageable print output streams. Ideally, operations receive and process the output in a print management queue without the need for transformation or manipulation. However, legacy document designs may lack barcodes and other page elements needed by operations to track individual documents and pages. Document composition systems provide the best method for integrating personalized data into relevant customer communications.

Print management software provides organizations with job management and device monitoring across one or more production facilities. A print management system receives incoming print jobs and splits jobs across available print devices to meet production schedules and service-level agreements.

Transformation software bridges the gap between customer demands and production realities. Print production operations often receive new data files and print streams that must be edited and transformed prior to output. Print stream transformation tools convert output files from one printer format to another, allowing print operations to maximize printer resources. Print stream manipulation tools allow developers to make repeatable changes to an incoming print file. Such changes include adding and removing barcodes, adding page numbers, redacting sensitive information and moving page elements to fit new envelope windows or new layouts. Recent updates to transformation software tools include graphical user interfaces, print stream comparison features and color support.

In addition, production workflow solutions must include delivery systems, such as barcoding systems, postal preparation, document archives and reporting tools that support print delivery, electronic presentment and SMS message delivery, while enabling organizations to account for each unique customer communication document.

Organizations need to evaluate their production operations and build a list of requirements for a solution to automate or improve the production process. Few vendors offer complete solutions with all the components necessary to address all aspects of a production operation, so organizations should expect to build a best-of-breed solution with products from multiple vendors. However, most software components will utilize open data interfaces that allow the software to share data with other elements of the solution. Organizations should select modules that do not require additional data or print stream transformations to support.

While most output process management solutions emphasize transactional documents, such as statements and bills, organizations should consider extending these solutions to marketing and promotional documents. Transactional document production follows a repeatable pattern that organizations can easily model with a process management solution. Organizations that generate high volumes of promotional documents should evaluate solutions for support of promotional workflows.

Recent trends in output process management include support for new delivery channels and document types. Within the past year, Madison Advisors has seen increased demand for customer communications through mobile devices. Based on customer demand, organizations provide summary documents and notifications to mobile devices from which recipients can retrieve more information or detailed documents from an online archive.

Interactive documents appear as another emerging trend for customer-focused organizations. These documents use embedded business rules to guide users through the data collection process and build a document or set of documents based on the data input. Final documents may be presented online and routed to production for inclusion in a transactional print run.

Organizations should consider output process management as part of an overall customer communications document strategy. Organizations planning to make significant changes to production processes or customer-facing documents must collect and incorporate the requirements for these new processes and documents prior to changing acquiring new software.

RICHARD HUFF [richhuff@madison-advisors.com] is a principal analyst with Madison Advisors, an advisory firm that specializes in print and electronic communications. He provides project-based advisory services designed to assist clients with business strategy and technology selection decisions. For more information on Madison Advisors, visit www.madison-advisors.com.