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 Integrating Paper And Online Documents
Systems to enable the strategy
By Kemal Carr
August 2002 - Document Processing Technology - As a medium
for exchanging and using information, online document delivery via the Web
has emerged as the world’s most effective tool for making information more
valuable and accessible. As more customers demand online delivery, only a
truly integrated printed and online document strategy can take advantage of
your proven legacy documents while enabling multichannel, online document
delivery.
Most organizations realize printed documents will be with us for years to
come; however, print will not meet all the needs of the various applications
that must deliver content to users and devices. This creates a crucial
challenge for organizations: to balance and integrate print and Web content
delivery processes effectively. Enterprise Output Management (EOM) products
and technology are poised to assist organizations with enterprise-wide,
multichannel content migration and distribution issues associated with
delivering legacy print to the Web.
We’ll look at challenges of online document delivery, Web deployment
options and EOM offerings in the following delivery categories: Report
Distribution and Management Systems (RDMS), Enterprise Output Management
Systems (EOMS) and Print Definition Language (PDL) transformation
technology. Depending on your organization’s document strategy, technology
footprint and industry regulations, the best approach for you will be
different than that of your competitor, so we’ll also spend some time
exploring which solution make sense for your organization.
Multichannel Document Delivery
Rather than replacing paper, the Web has become a delivery channel
alternative, augmenting existing channels much as the fax did in the 80s.
While migrating legacy print to the Web, companies can now exploit the
ability to exchange information instantly with their stakeholders anytime,
anywhere, creating new business opportunities and erasing the line between
communication and commerce.
The strategic benefits of an integrated solution are countless and
include simplifying customer delivery method migration, ensuring improved
customer service, improving personalized marketing efforts, streamlining
data and document processing and providing performance measurements for the
entire communication cycle.
The tactical advantages of online document delivery are well known.
Online delivery provides reduced access time to critical information;
increased productivity by reducing information search times; less expensive
distribution models; better intra-application integration; increased
information reusability; improved disaster recovery; and reduced data
storage, retrieval, processing and distribution costs compared to hard-copy
solutions.
Those organizations that fail to provide online document delivery —
either internally or to their customers — risk losing market share, revenue
and competitive positioning to competitors. Organizations would be wise to
continually increase the efficiency of their existing paper-based operations
while striving to offer customers new online delivery options.
Moving Paper to Electrons
Often, paper documents are not prime candidates for online delivery.
This is especially true for documents that are required to match the paper
image exactly in its printed form. Documents with extremes in typography,
graphics, margins or layout are probably candidates for redesign rather than
candidates for straight Web presentment.
It is important to evaluate the dynamics of a document prior to online
migration. Assess items such as relevancy, content dynamics, change
frequency and life span. Documents with low relevancy — such as overdraft
notices — are poor candidates due to the cost/effectiveness ratio. The
existing hard-copy systems used to deliver this data are cost effective and
adequate, making migration unnecessary.
Documents with dynamic content and frequently changing information are
good candidates for migration. While eliminating paper may be the project
driver, it’s likely that some customer segments will still want paper over
electronic delivery — forcing organizations to support both. These dynamic
documents typically have high customer visibility; therefore, they often
require rapid delivery supported through online presentment.
The anticipated useful life span of the document will factor into the
decision to move it to the Web. Obviously, IRS 1099 forms have a significant
life span that would warrant online delivery, and the cost to support that
vehicle will be recovered over several years. Documents such as mortgage
interest rate quotes have limited value given the useful life span and
dynamic content.
While simply moving documents online isn’t always the best decision,
eliminating documents entirely might serve the organization better. Industry
figures show that 20% of corporate documents can be eliminated due to
redundancy and/or obsolescence. When was the last time you filled out a
human-resources form on paper?
Another consideration is the regulatory body monitoring your particular
industry. Here, the challenge is to ensure that, in the act of migrating
documents from a paper to electronic delivery, your process continues to
meet regulatory requirements and protect highly sensitive information.
Moving regulated documents to a Web-enabled delivery environment requires
careful consultation with regulators to ensure that you do not spend your
company’s time and money creating an unusable online document.
Design Issues: Capture versus Presentation
Document design issues are significantly different depending on whether
your document is simply presenting information or whether it is capturing
data. Interactive documents that ultimately generate paper documents do not
necessarily need to act like the physical paper. There are a variety of
reasons that might lead you to that conclusion, but in a strict technical or
design sense, you can collect and display data differently than what is
created in legacy systems today. Make sure that any instructional data is
not lost in the transition from paper to electronic.
Whether you are collecting or presenting data that was traditionally
presented on hard copy, be sure to understand how the user interacts with
the document. For example, for data collection, some designers advocate
logically grouping input fields into small groups with continuance at the
bottom of the screens. Some advocate keeping the process to a single Web
page.
Due to the lack of interaction, presentation doesn’t necessarily have as
many issues. To help increase ease of use, there are many tips and
techniques available regarding online document usability, color usage,
density and typography. One challenge might be viewing devices within an
organization. Users with older monitors and lower screen resolution might
pose a challenge. Remember to test any migration plan against all the
available viewing platforms and systems.
In many cases, simply displaying the required data in a format that is
readable and intuitive can suffice. Keep pages simple, easy to read and easy
to navigate. Simply moving the exact printed image to an electronic channel
can assist in the initial customer migration due to familiarity and
similarity of the electronic document with the printed document. Once
customers feel comfortable with the newer medium, incentives to migrate from
hard copy will be more effective. But don’t be fooled; research has shown,
and low adoption rates of electronic bill payment have proven, that
customers cannot be thrust online at the organization’s pace. Customer
migration to online document delivery occurs at an individual consumer
level, not at the market segmentation level.
Review of Deployment Options
A key business driver for online document delivery is the ability to
leverage existing information and systems. Organizations already create,
manage and distribute large volumes of hard-copy customer documents for
regulatory, marketing or mission-critical applications. There are several
options to consider when migrating this legacy print data to the Web.
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Report Distribution and Management Systems (RDMS) with
browser-based viewing solutions
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Enterprise Output Management Systems (EOMS) which support
Web-delivery protocols
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Print Definition Language (PDL) Translation software for
electronic delivery platform support
The RDMS approach makes sense for organizations that maintain large,
existing data stores of customer-facing communications that are targeted for
online delivery. These systems store, index, manage, distribute and present
data and documents from a central archive. RDMS systems provide flexibility,
scalability and integration options that are logical for organizations with
large, internal systems-support teams to maintain and develop custom
applications.
Organizations that want RDMS solutions should consider products from
vendors in this space including BMC, IBM, RSD, Computer Associates,
Systemware, HP, Mobius, Anacomp, Insci, SERsynergy, FormScape and Cypruss.
These vendors offer solutions spanning multiple platforms and operating
systems, from NT and Windows to mainframes, and span the solution spectrum
from departmental to industrial strength. In addition, these solutions now
offer Web-presentment modules so that existing customers are not forced to
migrate to new technology to Web enable their large, internal
corporate-document archives.
Alternatively, the EOMS approach makes sense for organizations that are
not storing large amounts of customer documents for an extended period and
want to move transactional documents online quickly. These systems manage
data and documents prior to distribution to output systems rather than store
information in an archive such as a RDMS. This approach will assist
organizations with significant volumes of highly transactional documents
that have a short shelf life. The ability to create a printed version of the
document, while creating an electronic version under the same controls and
disciplines, can provide an organization with the framework to efficiently
move customers from paper to online delivery. The ability to create both
versions with the same processes makes this a good solution for highly
regulated situations.
Organizations that want to use an EOMS solution to migrate documents
online should consider products from vendors in this space including Adobe,
IBM, Bell & Howell, Xerox, Barr, Solimar, Marco 4, Quest Software, InSystems
and Plus Technologies. These vendors offer solutions across multiple
platforms to provide Web-based document presentment of customer
correspondence. While most of these vendors make use of underlying
translation technology, they go beyond pure translation to offer file and
document control, management, reporting and archiving integration.
Organizations without an enterprise-archiving solution for customer
documents can leverage integrated archiving solutions provided by these
vendors.
As still another option, the Translation software approach makes sense
for organizations that have the need to translate smaller document volumes,
either immediately for presentment or in conjunction with document
archiving. Often, translation solutions can act as middleware to merge
multiple, disparate documents to present a new "image" to the customer.
Organizations searching for translation solutions to migrate legacy
documents online should consider products from the following list of
vendors: Emtex, Optimus, RSA, Pembroke International, Xenos, Crawford
Technologies, NSA, Integrated Print Solutions, SwitfView and CDP
Communications.
Struggle or Succeed?
Many organizations are still struggling to deliver their legacy
documents to the Web. Some internal systems are inappropriately scaled to
support an entire customer base, while departmental solutions often don’t
meet broader customer needs. Companies with well-defined document strategies
recognize these needs. If your company is behind the online delivery curve,
continue to work to refine your objectives and select an approach that best
supports your strategy. It won’t be easy, but your customers will be glad
you did. |
