printing started to become what we understand as “data driven” in 1887, the year when Tolbert Lanston demonstrated a hot-metal linecasting machine controlled by punched paper tape. Modern digitized production systems may be vastly more powerful than Lanston’s original Monotype, but they’re still recognizable as direct technological descendants of that ingenious invention.
It wouldn’t be accurate to call data management synonymous with printing, but there’s no disputing that in many if not most of today’s printing applications, the two activities are inseparably intertwined. Nowhere is this clearer than in plants that mass-produce direct mail, bills, financial documents, medical records and other items reincarnated from digital data into hard-copy form.
Many leading practitioners of this kind of printing belong to Xplor International, a trade association that promotes best practices for the design, production and delivery of electronic documents. Skip Henk, Xplor’s president and CEO, defines data management as “the development and execution of architectures, policies, practices and procedures that properly manage the full data lifecycle needs of an enterprise.”
What this means in printing terms, says Christina Esparza, VP of operations at InfoIMAGE, in Coppell, Texas, is doing whatever it takes to “help the client make the most of the data they already have.” That includes acquiring the data, storing it securely, prepping it for output, and entering it into the mailstream (as postal pieces) and electronic channels (as email) for distribution to precisely the right groups of recipients.
Esparza believes that being able to show mastery of these tasks can be a major competitive advantage for printing businesses. “Clients entrust their data to marketing service providers that are constantly sharpening the proverbial pencil, looking for new ways to make data relevant and bringing new offerings to market,” she says.
Trust has to be the keynote, because the information contained in data-managed printing environments is almost always sensitive.
Based in Morrisville, N.C., AccuDoc Solutions produces up to 175,000 billing and transactional documents per day for health care organizations, hospitals and large medical practices. As such, says Robb Cass Jr., president, the company is the vehicle by which these entities communicate with their patients about payment - meaning that everything it does must be timely, tailored and, above all, accurate.
Maintaining integrity of data is crucial for printers with health care industry clients, agrees Brett Coltman, VP of Direct Technologies Inc. (DTI) in Suwanee, Ga., which serves the country’s top four health care providers. Acting as the data’s “source of truth,” making sure it has breach control against hacks, and shielding it from malware are all part of the assignment, he says.
“Your customers have got to trust you with that data” before they will permit you to come near it, insists Scott Stephens, COO of Atlanta-based DATAMATX, which specializes in print and electronic bill presentment for a variety of industries.
Customer-supplied data consists of records coming entirely from the customer or blended with input from external sources such as Equifax, First Union and Jack Henry & Associates. Purchased mailing lists may also be part of the mix, depending on what the customer wants to accomplish. From this raw material, the service provider fashions channels for outreach.
“We receive a portion of the data to score clients that fall within a targeted matrix,” says Jeff Meyers, director of information technology systems for DTI. “These counts are passed to our clients to make direct marketing decisions” about mailings to individuals and businesses.
Data compilation on the provider’s end can be an art form in itself.
