A large portion of the industry lacks the sophistication and discipline expected from production workflows; such as item-level tracking; robust, automated quality controls; and systematic process controls, including scheduling and forecasting. However, within specific verticals, areas of optimism exist. Print service providers (PSPs) have fiscal and competitive incentives to adopt these advances. Financial services and telecommunications are also industry leaders; and the insurance vertical, with some application-specific highlights, demonstrates proficiency in deploying and executing efficient production workflows.

While cost may be significant, the benefits are numerous—including heightened visibility of work performance, increased accountability to stakeholders, improved process control through automation and systems, and effective resource management. These benefits all correlate back to superior cost management. The investment costs vary depending on where in the process-maturity curve the environment initiates its improvements from. For example, if the operation is already tracking every package systematically and automatically reporting and regenerating damaged pieces for automated recreation, it’s much further along than sites manually tracking jobs in a paper-based binder system. These rely on job entry systems for job re-spools and operators for manual reprints.

What Production Workflow Does and Doesn’t Do
In the past decade, production workflow was defined two ways. The first, automated document factories (ADFs), were targeted at high-volume transactional output, while the second focused on lower-volume print on demand (POD) applications.

ADF and zero-defect processing techniques were regarded by most as world-class production practices and only embraced by industry-leading organizations. In light of today’s increasing privacy and control regulations, organizations now see these techniques as necessary practices that must be implemented immediately. To avoid litigation and penalties, organizations are required to demonstrate that they have deployed production workflow processes and implemented technologies and practices designed to minimize privacy violations. Production workflow and zero-defect processing are among the best approaches to this requirement. This is especially true of organizations in financial services, banking, healthcare, and insurance industries, where there are serious consequences to exposing an individual’s private data to non-authorized parties.

POD workflows contain similar attributes, however they generally target the job, rather than the piece or package level. Due to this distinction, these workflows are often referred to as electronic job tickets. A standard industry format for these applications is Job Definition Format (JDF), based on a special form of XML. In addition, these applications tend to be more color rich, lower in volume, and often contain less variable data than typical transaction applications.

In high-volume document production workflows the most important key to creating a successful workflow is the use of relevant data to drive the workflow process. To reach world class production status an operation must have access and control of critical production data—also called metadata—that produces high efficiencies that drive waste and cost out of the process. Data accuracy is essential, as data and process errors make an organization appear inefficient.

Production workflow generally focuses on the movement of work, specifically a print job or package, through operation to completion. It often starts with these components in electronic form, and maintains control as they morph into the physical manifestation that is ultimately delivered to the client. What production workflows typically don’t contain are document creation processes, campaign management solutions, legacy data administration, or archiving. These functions, while critical, typically interface and share critical process data with the workflow, which in turn provides process status and control counts back to core processes.

Achieving Success
Every organization has unique goals and requirements. It is important to perform a thorough analysis and detailed strategy development process before advancing with any major changes to current output production practices. However, some high-level guidelines apply to all organizations in the process of implementing or augmenting an existing production workflow.

First, determine the enterprise output strategy. Broader than production workflow, an enterprise output strategy is a set of practices and objectives that drive all decisions related to the production of output within an organization. For large organizations, it is especially critical to have an enterprise output strategy ensuring that all output decisions are inline with the organizational direction and do not negate output-related goals.

Second, assess the breadth of the implementation. Determine whether the organization requires a robust workflow, and if it will be implemented across the entire facility, or as a limited workflow model for a select group of applications. Will it be deployed in stages, or as a single project? Does it require integration, or will it be single sourced? These decisions greatly impact the footprint the production workflow has within the organization and the size of the investment. It also affects the technologies that should be considered.

Third, understand the technology requirements behind production workflows. A fully functional production workflow includes numerous hardware and software components. At a minimum, it includes rudimentary job tracking, management, and basic management reporting. At the opposite end of the spectrum, some of the largest and most sophisticated production workflows include file-based processing, item-level integrity, scheduling and forecasting, and closed-loop reprinting.

Next, carefully assess and select the right solutions. Technology procurement is one of the most critical phases, as technologies affect every aspect of your output operation, including document creation, print spooling, printing, staging and tracking, and insertion. A requirement gathering activity is necessary to ensure that all of an organization’s near- and long-term goals are accounted for within the request for proposal. Organizations need to develop a system of priorities against which to assess and compare the responses and choose the best solution or solutions.

Finally, develop supporting practices. Without the right supporting practices, the technology is useless. Organizations must develop production practices to support production goals and complement supporting technologies. Previously, companies spent billions on technology investments, without ever really considering what it takes to implement them within an organization. The new IT model is, “if we can’t measure it, we don’t do it,” showing that business leaders are evolving to a mantra that evaluates productivity, streamlines work processes, and leverages investments to their full extent.

It is also necessary to determine the need for the workflow process to fully integrate with the other components of the production environment. As much as after-market automotive products must fit and operate on your family car, the production workflow can’t be duct-taped and super-glued onto a broken or substandard process and expected to provide the desired results. Surprisingly, this scenario is found in many facility assessments.

Noteworthy Vendors
The vendor market for workflow solutions is mature, offering several highly competitive and sophisticated options. Here are a few vendors providing native end-to-end workflow, or solutions that integrate with partners to provide a complete solution.

BOWE Bell + Howell (BBH) offers two software solutions, BOWE One and JETVision, to manage and enable document production, including production workflow. The scalable and modular BOWE One suite allows configurations for any size solution and any set of capabilities. JETVision is a vendor-agnostic vision system that enables BBH solutions to manage data and operate in multiple vendor production environments. Although hardware is not included in this discussion, it bears noting that BBH offers a full line of automated inserting and sorting systems that integrate with BBH production workflow solutions.

For the management of document production workflow, GMC Software Technology offers two primary software solutions, PrintNet Designer and PrintNet Process Automation. GMC provides software solutions focused on document design, composition, transformation, and output management. By integrating with partner software products that provide postal preparation and automated inserter system communication, GMC PrintNet products provide robust production workflow lifecycle solutions from data receipt to delivery.

InfoPrint Solutions Company is supported by InfoPrint Solutions digital printers and the technologies of the former IBM Printing Systems Division including the InfoPrint Solutions software solutions. InfoPrint Solutions Workflow Services, Process Director, and Manager are the family of software solutions for managing document production process workflow. When integrated with partner software products providing document composition, postal preparation, and automated inserter system management, the InfoPrint Solutions products provide production workflow lifecycle control from data receipt to delivery.

ISIS Papyrus Group offers the Papyrus Process and Communication Platform V7, providing a process and communication platform for managing inbound and outbound content on any channel while enabling end users to control the processes via the Papyrus WebPortal. The Papyrus Platform is architected around a metadata repository that provides a way to consolidate customer centric processes such as customer relationship management, enterprise content management, enterprise information architecture, or business process management. The Platform runs on a distributed, multi-OS infrastructure including mainframe, UNIX, PC, Linux, and Web environments. The Papyrus Platform provides complete production workflow functionality with a minimal need for partner integration.

Oce North America’s solutions are based on Oce’s advanced software applications that deliver documents and data over internal networks and the Internet to printing devices and archives. The combination of Oce Document Designer Advanced V5.1 and the Oce PRISMA integrated family of workflow software provides a solution set that nearly covers the end-to-end production workflow lifecycle. Oce’s products integrate with partner software to provide a complete production workflow lifecycle solution.

Pitney Bowes successfully integrated DFWorks, VIP and VDE, and Doc 1 Series 5 with Content Author, Bluetree, and MapInfo to provide document production solutions including production workflow. The scalable and modular Pitney Bowes Mailstream Suite allows configurations for any size solution. Although hardware is not included in this market report, it bears noting that Pitney Bowes offers a full line of automated inserting and sorting systems that integrate with Pitney Bowes’ ADF workflow and production solutions.

Sefas Innovation offers Open Print 6.0, a suite of software products designed to provide document production solutions from design and composition through production and delivery. Open Print 6.0 consists of MiddleOffice, a collaborative document design tool; FrontOffice, an interactive ad hoc document production tool; Remake, a print stream transform and enhancement tool; Delivery; a post-composition optimization tool; Projector, a document search and retrieval tool; and Producer, a workflow and automated production management system.

Where to Go from Here?
It makes sense to start production workflow at a high level, within the complete enterprise output strategy. Organizations must possess a clear understanding of enterprise-wide goals and objectives for overall customer communications before determining how production workflow practices fit within their structure and culture. It’s always important to review the critical considerations, steps, practices, and technologies that organizations should assess before moving forward with a production workflow initiative.