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Customer Profile: Rapid Automated Printing and Mail Management
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Summary
SwiftView helped a consulting company automate its insurance
client's mailings. SwiftView and SwiftExtract quickly pull subset files, create cover pages, insert barcodes, sort by document
type, and print with optimal efficiency.
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The Company
This company is one of the largest information technology (IT) services firms in North America, providing IT and
business process services to clients worldwide.
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The Challenge
An auto/homeowners insurance client asked the consulting company to manage printing and posting of daily customer mailings.
The mailings comprise a wide range of policy correspondence, such as policy letters, amended policy statements, etc. The
letters are created at the insurance company and sent daily to the consulting company as a single 500- to 1,000-page black-and-white
PCL5 file. The consulting company needed to pull the information from the PCL file to create mailers, and automate selection
of the equipment to print and insert. Same-day printing was an absolute requirement.
The director of consulting manages application development and handles infrastructure (server and network) issues for clients.
He needed to design a system that would efficiently handle the client's mailings using the consulting company's well-tested existing
printing and insertion equipment.
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The Solution
The consulting company had already been using SwiftView for viewing, so when they needed to do more with the files, they turned to
SwiftView, Inc., for its expertise in PCL. The director was particularly interested in SwiftView's ability to extract, handle
macros, analyze and manipulate PCL files beyond simple on-line viewing. "We have experience processing a lot of different
types of data: PS, AFP, etc., but had never done any post-processing on PCL," he says.
Depending on the number of pages, a letter will be sent to either a Bell+Howell inserter or a Gunther inserter at the consulting
company's production facility. To automate this selection, a 3-of-9 barcode is attached to each letter to automatically
choose the correct size of envelope or packaging: a #10 envelope for one and two page mailers, and either a 6x9" or 9x12" envelope
or a box for larger ones.
"We needed the right tool to process the job: to split the PCL based on page size and then bar code them, so that when the output was
created and printed we could put it on the Gunther inserter with the 3-of-9 barcode definition on it."
SwiftView worked with the company to select and apply PCL technology, as described below:
PAGE EXTRACTION and MACROS: Prep before printing greatly improves throughput
The company uses the SwiftView Viewer and the SwiftExtract Page Extractor together in an automated system that involves the following functions:
- Identify the document type. SwiftView can easily find unique textual identifiers, such as zip codes,
account numbers, page numbers, or anything else in a file. Once the location on the page of the unique identifier is defined,
indexing can easily be automated. In this case, the unique identifier is a string in the top left of each letter that
identifies the document type (number of pages, hence type of envelope), that in turn determines which inserter will process the
letter.
- Extract pages. The unique identifier defines the start of a new document. The consulting company
uses SwiftView to index the unique identifiers then feeds the index to SwiftExtract. SwiftExtract breaks the large, thousand-page
file into complete, accurate, fully-functional individual PCL documents.
- Generate new 'address' pages and add machine barcodes. Before printing, SwiftView pulls addressing data
from each document, creates a new "cover" page and places the addressing data in the correct location for display in the envelope.
SwiftView also inserts a JPEG barcode that the company provides onto the new page. This barcode is based on the unique
identifier and identifies the document type, hence, which printer and inserter will handle the letter. SwiftView can also
generate barcodes directly using barcode fonts in markups, making it easy, for instance, to add postal barcodes.
- Sort documents by type before printing. The company found that even greater efficiency was possible by
sorting the letters by page length, as well as by zip code. SwiftView makes it easy to sort an index before extraction, and
the company takes the sorted extracted PCL files and concatenates them into groups before printing. Single-page documents are
directed to a printer with only letterhead paper; multi-page documents are sent to another printer with letterhead and non-letterhead
paper in different trays.
- Optimize print performance. The company prints with SwiftView because the SwiftView viewer and PCL have
many features that fully exploit printer capacity, and thus help them run more efficiently. Special caching technology assures
that repeated information does not need to be reloaded by the printer, greatly speeding up the printer's throughput. SwiftView
also provides experienced technical support to assure that customers achieve optimal results. For example, the company needed
to keep tray commands in the PCL file that define whether a page will print on letterhead or other paper. By default,
SwiftView turns these commands off because they are not generally correct for arbitrary printers. But for their printing
application, it was critical. With advice from technical support, the company simply switched the tray commands 'on' and
documents could print on the correct paper.
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Results
SwiftView tools enabled the company to completely automate its insurance client's mailing, while learning new ways to make
printing and insertion more efficient. "The system now meets our business needs," says the director. "At the beginning
I was very concerned that it was taking hours to process a file, but Ryan in tech support showed us how SwiftView could cache the
file, and then it ran in just minutes."
"We save our client money on the postage side by doing page counts, generating control reports, and doing the sorting and merging
ahead. Because we're splitting based on page size, we don't put a 2-page document in a 9x12" envelope, which would cost more
in postage."
The director is very happy with the level and responsiveness of technical support that SwiftView provided, helping address even
small concerns. "I was impressed with Ryan. He's always been there for us. He helped us a lot at the very
beginning, and was always prompt with his responses if we left him messages. That was big for us."
The director was sufficiently impressed with SwiftView's handling of the job that he has introduced SwiftView to others at the
company for print management jobs. In one case, PCL may turn out to be considerably more efficient than a PDF solution
for output of large, multi-page files.
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