A Total Printing Solution at Experian

Part of The Great Universal Stores P.L.C. (GUS), Experian has its UK headquarters in Nottingham, England. Experian is an information solutions company, helping organizations to use information to reach new customers and maximize the value from existing customers.

The Customer

Experian offers a wide variety of services, from database management, information services and decision-making systems, to handling the printing of transactional mail (for example bills and statements) on behalf of customers. The print and mailing department of Experian is responsible for the printing of credit card statements, telephone and utilities bills, together with all associated letters on behalf of their clients.

The Requirements

Experian started a project to implement a document composition solution that would allow it to produce all the documents with one product. Experian was looking for a solution within an AFP environment that allowed it quick and easy WYSIWYG development. One of the main problems with the old system was that raw AFP data would be entered, but the result could not be seen until the document was actually printed.

Decision Criteria For Papyrus

Experian chose Papyrus out of a shortlist of three vendors for a number of reasons:

• It offered a real time, WYSIWYG development environment
• It allowed extra functionality, such as embedding variable data within a fixed paragraph, and correct placement of signatures
• There was no pre-processing work needed
• The intuitive Papyrus Designer with its 100% WYSIWYG fidelity and cross referencing between editors makes it a very powerful and easy to use workstation,? says Steve Hough, Business Services Manager at Experian.

The Solution

Experian receives a data file and details of the document layout and contents. Papyrus Designer is used to design the document, which is tested on screen using the WYSIWYG environment. The source code created on the workstation is then compiled on the mainframe. Papyrus DocEXEC for MVS formats the documents, which are printed by either IBM InfoPrint 4000, or Xerox IPS 180 printers. Experian prints in the region of 100 million pages with Papyrus per year.

The Future

Papyrus will continue to be Experian?s core document composition solution. Over the next year, Experian will look to increase its number of Papyrus Designer licenses to keep up with the increased business it will handle on behalf of its clients, as all new contracts are being delivered with the Papyrus solution.

The Benefits

The speed of development with Papyrus and the ability to develop in a WYSIWYG environment is a major benefit for Experian. It is now able to quickly respond to customer requests and produce the required documents in a professional format and timely manner.

Steve Hough confirms that Experian is seeing many benefits from its Papyrus solution. ?The solution from ISIS is a definite improvement on our old system which could not deliver us the documents we required. With Papyrus, we can develop new business and provide a better service to our clients. We certainly have no regrets in implementing Papyrus.?