Company Info
 GPU
Inc., is an international provider of energy-related
infrastructure and services. Domestically, its
three electric utility subsidiaries - doing business
as GPU Energy - annually provide approximately
44 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity serving
two million customers in Pennsylvania and New
Jersey. GPU Advanced Resources, Inc. sells competitive
retail energy and services in the Mid-Atlantic
region. Altogether, GPU serves more than 4.3 million
customers around the world.
 The
Requirements
In conjunction with Y2K preparations, GPU Energy
started a project to migrate business applications
from mainframe processing to SAP R3 on the HP-UX
operating system platform. Packaged SAP reports
did not provide the flexibility, quality and print
processing required for GPU to conduct business.
Print software requirements included:
Flexible print formatting including IPDS and
PCL
Dynamic Formatting including multiple languages
and charts (pie, bar)
Handling of SAP RDI (raw data interface)
Integration with postal software processing
and barcode support
WYSIWYG design of applications including spell
check
AFP resource compatibility
Highlight Color and Full Color support
Decision Criteria for Papyrus
GPU selected Papyrus Document Solution based
on ISIS' response to the requirements and rapid
development capabilities. In a very short time,
ISIS was able to quickly produce a sample Papyrus
billing application using the sample SAP data
and layout that GPU provided.
The Solution
GPU's Bill Print solution uses Papyrus Designer
and Papyrus DocEXEC. With Papyrus, GPU nightly
processes regular bills for its three subsidiaries
with volumes of 50,000 to 200,000 accounts and
collective/ master/voucher processing of 10 to
100 bills, varying from 5 to 200 pages. Additional
applications include letters with volumes of 100
to 30,000 per cycle and check generation with
volumes of 25,000 monthly.
Papyrus Designers WYSIWYG design capabilities
enables rapid development and updating of new
or changed bill formats. Features used include
conditional processing to produce consolidated
billing for multiple services and for the different
subsidiaries, data-driven power usage comparison
charts, and conditional notices and marketing
messages.
To start batch processing, SAP application servers
generate RDI or plain text and print the data
to remote queues. Each data type is printed to
a unique queue. Then a series of UNIX scripts
automate formatting and printing.
-
The first script, checks for the number
of concurrent spool runs and launches the
formatting procedure.
-
The second script invokes Papyrus DocEXEC
formatting for each spool request, creating
an index file and log file that is passed
to postal processing which adds the carrier
route information.
-
The third script checks that all post-processing
is completed, merges the updated log information
and runs the postal optimization to generate
the final print order for maximum postal discounts.
Then this print order is input to the Papyrus
DocEXEC post-processing application which
imports the earlier pre-composed, indexed
AFPDS documents in the correct order, adds
the additional document information including
carrier routing and barcodes, and produces
the final AFPDS. This final AFPDS is then
processed by the OCE print server and printed
on the Pagestream 1000.
Benefits
How quickly GPU staff learned to use Papyrus
Designer to develop applications
How Papyrus handles the SAP RDI data file
How easily and quickly GPU developers can make
changes to applications
Ease of integration with postal processing and
archive software |
