I remember the
early days of print & mail tracking systems (such as the LMO concept) where
early adopters faced challenges of their vendors continually (and at the
customer’s expense) developing interfaces and forever trying to integrate new processes
and factory equipment into a rigid ADF architecture. I am surprised at how many of today’s
transactional, security, healthcare and financial document processors still
tolerate this level of performance from their traditional vendors.
As mentioned
in previous entries, I am not a fan of the term “automated document factory”
because it does not embrace the value today’s technologies provide, nor does it
focus on the core (information management) power of today’s solutions. Perhaps, we (us vendors) have not done an
appropriate job of educating our clients as to how they can improve their
entire enterprise through use of an ADF.
Current
generation ADF technologies are no longer shop floor data collectors with
proprietary systems, long installation times (laden with extensive professional
services) and closed data structures.
The real
value of today’s ADF is to make our customer’s business processes (and
performance metrics) available to them at their fingertips while ensuring the
accuracy and timely output of ALL processes.
We are in the business of providing easily accessible benchmarking and
business performance information just as much as we are in the document integrity
and compliance reporting business.
The ADF is
no longer restricted to print & mail operations, but now extends across all
other production environments such as fulfillment, card processing, manual
processing operations and shipping. Current generation solutions, built on an open
data concept, allow seamless integration of shop floor production management
and integrity tracking with front office accounting, estimating and scheduling activities.
Open and
scalable technologies, along with vendor agnostic architecture models, now
allow the integration of these additional operations while making real-time
data accessible for business owners when and where they need it. Users should require full access to data,
reporting and the ability to compare actual results with pre-production accounting,
estimating and scheduling expectations.
An effective
ADF also eliminates overhead costs associated with process transitions, manual
data entry and the reporting of SLA, productivity and job performance metrics. Although eliminating risk (of late delivery fees
and compliance penalties) continues to be the leading cause for investment in a
tracking system, most installations can provide a very quick and hard ROI based
on tangible process savings.
As I
continue to see financial, healthcare, insurance and security print providers
burdened with the limitations of yesterday’s ADF, it is obvious we must do a
better job of showing our perspective clients how today’s ADF can improve their
entire business.
By Pat Hoskins, pat.hoskins@ironsidestech.com,
PH (585.953.3013)
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