Best Practices in ECM Document Consolidation and Migration

Document data streams. Your business likely prints customer documents such as statements and policies on large, high-volume printers. These printers, from vendors such as HP, IBM and Xerox, work with documents in specific data formats including HP Printer Control Language (PCL), IBM Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) and Xerox Metacode.

Documents in these formats are not designed for viewing except after being printed. They must be transformed into another format before being presented to users electronically. Document data streams tend to be very large, multi-gigabyte files that contain hundreds, thousands or even greater amounts of documents.

Any given page on a document makes use of print resources such as fonts, images, overlays and forms. Resources can be stored “in-line,” meaning they are included in the document data file. However, most print resources are stored externally, typically on the printer, and are brought in when required.

Which format your business should use depends on which users require access to documents, and how documents will be used:

• Users over the Web: This potentially implies a requirement for low-bandwidth formats, depending on the average size of your documents.
• Internal customer support: Customer service representatives often require access to an identical version of the statement that was sent to the customer on the other end of the phone, in a format that is easy to rapidly navigate. Features such as bookmarks and full-text search become important here.
• Reprints: This implies that the original print format or image should be stored, in order to accurately reproduce the same printed statement that was sent to your customer in past periods.
  

The most common technique is to store the original print data in the ECM system, using document transformation “on-the-fly” to produce output sufficient for all of these scenarios and others you have yet to anticipate.

Best Practices: The DETAIL Methodology

In the past, the document migration process was time-consuming, resource-intensive and mired with challenges that often far outweighed the benefits. Today this has changed.

The Xenos DETAIL™ methodology is used by enterprises to migrate their documents quickly and efficiently, while realizing additional value from their documents. Benefits that can be realized include
providing additional means of accessing documents, extracting customer information already locked away in your documents or enriching the customer experience to differentiate you from competitors.

1. Discovery: Understanding your current ECM system(s), and the types of documents contained within them.

2. Extraction: Establish the available means to extract document data from each ECM system, select the best approach and execute it at the appropriate time.

3. Transformation: Re-purpose document data and manipulate it to add additional value.

4. Auditing: Throughout the process, documents and other related data must be tracked to ensure that all information is accounted for, in order to maintain the chain of custody.

5. Indexing: Indexes or metadata provide actionable information about your documents, and the migration process provides an opportunity to add or enrich the indexes available.

6. Loading: Insert, or load document data into the new ECM system using the appropriate metadata or indexes.

Delivering documents to your end-users is done via the document retrieval process, in which documents are retrieved from the ECM system, transformed into a human-readable format, and presented to the user through a customer-facing channel such as a document portal, email or application—to name a few.

Choosing a vendor who has experience with multiple ECM, IDARS and COLD systems can significantly lower the risk (and pain) associated with any document migration project as well as reduce the time to return-on-investment.

Best Practices: The Document Retrieval Process

Now that the migration process is complete, users can conduct searches on your ECM system to locate and then retrieve documents. Document transformation ensures that documents are delivered in the appropriate formats, as well as providing other benefits. How you choose to deliver and present documents at this point depends on your business objectives.

Retrieval methods. From a technical standpoint, ECM systems provide a couple of standard mechanisms with which to query and retrieve individual documents:

• ECM client: Most ECM systems provide a graphical client front-end in the form of a desktop or Web application. This client is generally not designed as a customer-facing interface and thus is suitable for internal use only.
• Application programming interface (API): To integrate with your Web application, modern ECM systems provide a means by which to write a program to search upon and extract documents in a raw binary form. Depending on the format they are stored in, documents can then be converted for presentation, or delivered directly to a user’s Web browser.
  

Document transformation. In addition to providing the document in the appropriate format for the user, transformation provides a number of benefits. At this point, direct marketing messages can be applied, color and images can be added and sensitive information can be removed, all without affecting the original document. More importantly, an intelligent transformation process can import the appropriate print resources based on revision control information added during the migration transformation stage.

To minimize the average time your customer waits for a given document, any
transformation solution that your business considers must be highly efficient. Re-purposing, by nature, is memory- and processor-intensive, due to the “richness” of most documents. To mitigate these issues, a high-performance transformation solution utilizes multi-threading techniques, and caching of commonly used resources to deliver documents in the fastest way possible.

Meeting Your Objective

No matter what methods you choose for retrieving and presenting your documents, being flexible will allow you to meet the changing needs of your users, and provide the best customer experience possible.

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Xenos (TSX: XNS) is a leading global provider of high-performance software solutions that automate the processing and delivery of data and documents. Xenos solutions are embraced worldwide across a wide variety of industries including financial services, insurance, transportation, telecommunications, manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, retail and government sectors. Additional information is available at www.xenos.com.