Background
Different departments within a mid-sized U.S. state had responsibility for outputting and mailing a range of documents, including statements, invoices, explanations of benefits, and more. A mainframe system in a remote location stored data, while all production was done locally at each location. The various departments had to deal with multiple input formats, including PostScript®, PDF, and Xerox Meta, and produce vital customer communications in a timely fashion within strict regulatory guidelines. With the help of Crawford Technologies, they were able to streamline processes, eliminate errors, and gain workflow efficiencies.
The Challenge
The workflows in place were highly manual, and were time-consuming. Even worse, there had been errors in delivering accurate communications. There was no system in place for audits, and very little visibility into production. The staff was not even certain how many pages were processed on a daily basis. Because of workflow inefficiencies, equipment was not running at full capacity, some of the equipment was underutilized, and they were not always taking advantage of postal savings.
The state identified the following goals:
- Improve and automate the production and post-production processes
- Accept multiple input formats, including continued support of legacy data coming from the mainframe system
- Guarantee document integrity and accountability
- Facilitate and automate reprints
- Provide better visibility into production
- Ensure that equipment and systems were maximizing postal savings
The Solution
After an on-site assessment, CrawfordTech recommended a suite of solutions that would work in concert to automatically transform their incoming print streams to PDF in order to standardize and streamline production and post processing. Meta data and MRDF control files created during the conversion process adds intelligence to the jobs, determining how they get processed.
Jobs are automatically combined to consolidate work and optimize throughput, and an automated process manages reprints. By adding inserter marks and barcodes, the agencies can make better use of their mailing equipment, and take advantage of postal savings. All activity is tracked so that the operations staff has the insight and degree of control they require.
Results
New jobs from the mainframe system can now be on-boarded in less than one hour — including loading data, testing and qualification to outputting for print and mailing. With the added intelligence, workflow standardization, and job consolidation, more jobs are going through the production process with complete visibility into scheduling and production, and with no errors. The gains in productivity have resulted in cost savings and improved customer delivery.
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