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The Latest on ADF Implementations
Continued

The Most Critical Piece of an ADF “
The most critical part of ADF is the document,” says Bannor without hesitation. “It isn’t the printer, the host, the finishing system, or the bar code reader. If you don’t build intelligent documents, everything else you do in implementing an ADF strategy is worthless. If you can’t identify every page of every job and understand some of the content of that page, nothing will work.

“Whatever it might be," he adds, "that document has some effect on the relationship the company has with its customers. That document may be the only tangible proof that the company that sends the document is doing something for them.”

Schumacher agrees, adding, “Having the ability of tracking the document is most important—where it is in the process from when it leaves the building to when it reaches the customer and then comes back. It is important to look at the entire process rather than just getting the document out the door. Ninety-nine percent of all people are only concerned about getting it out the door.”

“You want to know that you actually did print what you thought you printed and maybe more important, not only do you know that you printed what you thought you printed, but you didn’t miss a page or duplicate a page,” Bannor says. “People say, ‘We don’t need that. We have ironclad manual quality control.' That’s an oxymoron. Companies like that only realize they don’t have a zero defect operation when something really big goes wrong, like printing duplicate payroll checks.”

However, an ADF is “not limited to simply an integrity check to verify the piece was mailed, a true ADF monitors and maintains all configuration details for the customers, jobs, composition, printers, and inserters providing the flexibility to meet or exceed predetermined service level agreements while maximizing human and machine capabilities,” adds Day.

Perception Versus Reality
Surprisingly, one of the biggest misconceptions about ADFs may be the degree of automation." Very few ADFs are completely automated from beginning straight through to the end,” says Schumacher. “We’ve asked companies, ‘What percentage of your process needs to be automated before you can consider yourself an ADF?’ The answer is probably being about 45 percent.”

Otherwise, Schumacher says the other myth surrounding ADFs is harder to overcome. Too many companies see ADFs as just a mail room. "There is a lack of recognition that the true ADF can provide companies with that critical contact to make their monthly appointment with their customer base meaningful,” he says. “A majority of businesses tend to recognize transactional mail-in both print and digital — as a necessary expense. Instead, it must be viewed as a strategic marketing tool comprised of customer-rich information that is leveraged to make intelligent decisions that impact revenue. When companies dare to be innovators they can transform their customer communications and business processes by deploying ADF solutions, such as document creation and production tools that can gain a competitive advantage through increased customer satisfaction and lower operational expenses.”

Bannor agrees. “Print-for-pay mailers know they are mailing money off of printing," he says. "On the corporate side, printing is something that goes on down in the basement. It is an expense and they struggle to understand how strategically important it is. Since the challenge is to get recipients to open your mail, why wouldn’t you want to use a document that you know they are going to open, like asking boat owners if they want to add their boat to their insurance policies when you send them their automobile policies. Now you’ve changed a transactional document to 50 percent document and 50 percent marketing. How do you make that happen? Turn to the guys in the basement. That’s where it is going to happen.”

“I think most people think it’s a single system/product that a person buys and brings into a shop to make it more efficient," says Jones. "Some would say that the Xerox Automated Book Factory is an example. It is a solution the feeds roll paper in and outputs perfect bound, trimmed books. While this makes the production of short-run books a reality, we view it as only one of a series of tools that are improving an enterprise's ability to compete more effectively in the print on demand environment. Amore complex Automated Production Workflow with Book Factory could send production data and usage information over the Web into enterprise production, inventory, and billing systems."

"Many users simply monitor the print and inserters via a barcode reader or camera," says Day. "Since they record all the pieces, they consider it an ADF. While this method provides reports on the action of the devices, they do not provide any load balancing, utilization of consolidated reporting. There is no flexibility to meet changes in demand without starting back at the source data. Without taking all aspects of the business processes into account, many companies build an ADF that only addresses a few of the aspects of the process."

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