Cost Savings and Improved Document Quality
Automated Document Testing Software
In today’s constantly changing world of customer communications, it is extremely difficult for companies to reduce document production costs while maintaining document quality. But there remains one large and untapped source of document development and production cost savings that actually improves document quality – automation of the document testing process.
Document testing automation definition
All too often, development personnel are pulled into the document testing process to act as proofreaders, manually comparing stacks of “pre-change” and “post-change” printed documents. Not only is this a tremendous waste of their talents, but forcing developers into this role often leads to job dissatisfaction.
In addition, manual review of modified or upgraded document applications takes too much time, costs too much money, and allows too many document errors to slip through the cracks, many times all the way to your customers.
Document Management Solutions
Real document testing automation solutions transform what is typically a manual, labor- intensive, subjective, and error-prone process into a fully digitized process that is objective, magnitudes of order faster, and much more reliable. Rather than relying on developers to manually test modified or upgraded document applications, a document testing automation solution digitally compares your document applications with as little human intervention as possible.
While a human can compare roughly 100 pages of output per hour (with a highly questionable degree of accuracy), a fully automated document testing solution can digitally compare tens of thousands of pages per hour with an extremely high degree of precision. What this means for any company is dramatically reduced document testing costs, improved document quality, and substantial risk mitigation by eliminating document-based errors.
Who should automate document testing?
Any company that produces customer focused documents will benefit from document testing automation. Examples of the types of document applications for which testing can be automated include:
- Insurance contracts and policies
- Retail credit card statements
- Bank statements
- Brokerage and mutual fund statements and confirmations
- Customer correspondence
- Telecommunications and broadband access billing statements
- Utility billing statements
- Direct marketing communications
Companies Using Automatic Document Testing Software
What types of companies are automating their document testing processes? Any company which produces customer focused documents, including:
- Print service providers serving the retail credit, financial, telecommunications, and insurance industries
- Insurance companies
- Banks
- Retail credit card issuers
- Brokerage and mutual fund companies
- Telecommunications companies
- Utility companies
- Direct marketers
Projects that benefit from document testing automation
Document testing permeates any organization that regularly communicates with its customers through printed or electronic means. A few examples of projects where document testing automation has been implemented to dramatically cut testing costs, save time, and improve document quality include:
- Document composition software upgrades – for example, upgrading from one version of
- HP Exstream© to a newer version
- Document composition software migration – for example, moving from Documerge© to newer tools such as Documaker©, xPression©, HP Exstream©, or Thunderhead©
- S. Intelligent Mail Barcode remediation
- Regulatory modifications
- Document marketing modifications
- Document conversion projects – for example, converting AFP to PDF for electronic delivery or presentment
- Document standardization efforts
- Administration system migrations/modifications
- Operating system upgrades or changes
- Insertion equipment upgrades
- Barcode modifications
- Signature, logo, and address changes
- UDAP remediation (due to TILA and/or CARD Act mandated changes) – which was particularly relevant in 2010
Benefits of Document Testing Automation
What have our clients told us about their document testing automation success with the Print Perfect solution? In their words:
- “In testing our applications as we implemented changes for IMB, we went from an original testing estimate of 6 man-months, down to an actual testing time of 6 man- weeks.” – Top-5 US bank
- After five weeks of using Print Perfect - "So far, the tool has worked out really well and has already paid for itself. We've had to test several versions of our report generating software and the Print Perfect tool has enabled us to do a very quick regression test on all of our reports - something that took us days before now only takes about 2 - 4 hours. We LOVE the tool and are looking forward to the new release." – Leading payroll outsourcing provider
- “With Print Perfect, not only are we testing faster and at a lower cost, but we are much more confident in the quality of each new document or software release.” – Leading telecommunications and broadband access print service bureau
- “Time is cut by at least 75%. There is no print time; no waiting for mainframe connected
AFP printers” – leading U.S. mutual fund company
- “We save at least two weeks of testing time on every regression test.” – Midwestern insurance and financial services provider
- “When we approached Paloma, they had a reputation for providing completely automated document testing solutions that we felt would help us improve our upgrade process while lowering document application testing costs and improving quality. What we didn’t fully realize at the time was the number of applications in which Print Perfect could be used within our organization. For example, not only did we use Print Perfect for our HP Exstream upgrade, but our document developers and testers continue to use it on an almost daily basis for changes made to our customer documents for regulatory or marketing purposes. Paloma Print Products have surpassed our expectations not only with a superior solution, but also with their impressive ability to integrate Print Perfect into our existing operation.” – Savings Bank Life Insurance Company of Massachusetts
Automating document testing processes with the Paloma Print Perfect solution can cut your document testing time and costs by more than 75% and dramatically improve the quality of the documents you send to your customers.
