More information at ...

http://www.atac.com.au/barr.htm

http://www.atac.com.au/emtex.htm

Email David Kirk
or call  +61 3 9521-8070

More information at ...

http://www.atac.com.au/barr.htm

http://www.atac.com.au/emtex.htm

Email David Kirk
or call +61 3 9521-8070

More information at ...

http://www.atac.com.au/barr.htm

http://www.atac.com.au/emtex.htm

Email David Kirk
or call +61 3 9521-8070

More information at ...

http://www.atac.com.au/barr.htm

http://www.atac.com.au/emtex.htm

Email David Kirk
or call +61 3 9521-8070

More information at ...

http://www.atac.com.au/barr.htm

http://www.atac.com.au/emtex.htm

Email David Kirk
or call +61 3 9521-8070

Using Emtex for Virtual Insertions

Insertion of marketing materials into our utility and bank statement envelopes is fairly commonplace now.  It usually happens in the back print room where the mailing equipment resides, with special marks on the statement triggering the equipment to insert one or more pages into each mailpack.

This requires the document to be pre-coded in some way to trigger the insertion(s).  Additionally, the mailing equipment has to be setup and tested appropriately, insertion stock must be ordered, warehoused, conditioned etc. and one imagines more staff are involved in the entire process at several levels.

Emtex can insert duplex pages with full-colour images front and back as the file is processed; these are called "Virtual Insertions".  These can be inserted conditionally, based on any criteria in the document itself, such as the CLOSING BALANCE or ACCOUNT TYPE etc.

Rather than inserting physical pieces of paper into mailpacks at the mailing equipment stage, Virtual Insertions can provide many benefits including:

• No insertion stock to order/warehouse/condition etc.

• Last minute changes can be made at the last minute.

• Insertion based on external factors or document content.

• Easier setup in the mailing room, as mailpacks are already fully composed.

• This process takes chargeable  impressions off the typesetter and gives them to the print shop.

A number of print bureaux and large Emtex customers are already testing this functionality, expecting to make a large difference to responsive, targeted mail campaigns.

Contact Atac to further discuss Virtual Inserts today.

Liberating Xerox Printers

In the beginning, it was advantageous to load all your print resources onto your Xerox printer.  You had to send much less print data to the printer and it created lots of jobs for everyone running around keeping printer resource libraries in sync.  Printers were sometimes set up for one particular client or another and swapping them was a real pain, sometimes taking up to an hour to backup/restore printer resources to/from tape.

This approach simply doesn't cut it today, where major customers are insisting that:

• their jobs do not run on a printer with anybody else's resources present

• nobody else's jobs run on a printer with their resources present

So, it's best to have the printers completely empty, yet ready to print any job for any customer.  Every Xerox job built by Emtex can have printer resources built-in as temporary resources which are loaded to the printer at job start, then deleted at job end.

No more libraries to maintain on every printer!  One central Emtex library is all that is required.  More flexibility in the print room; any printer is available to print at any time!  Better printer utilization and higher ROI, therefore, is obtained.

Emtex can maintain one or more central libraries with a customizable search hierarchy used to locate required resources.  So, for example, the Customer Special library may be searched first and if no matches are found, the Standard library is then used.

For more detail on how Emtex can help to revolutionise your Xerox resource handling, and liberate your Xerox printers, here's a link to a white paper

http://www.atac.com.au/docs/Emtex_VIP_Resource_Management_for_Xerox_Users.pdf
or contact Atac today.

Deconstructing & Mining Print Data

Emtex is primarily a software product for transforming and manipulating print-ready files such as Postscript, PCL, Metacode, LCDS, AFP and PDF.  Recently, Atac was asked to code a job to extract raw information from a print-ready file, effectively deconstructing the print data.

Although not used in this fashion frequently, the process was straight-forward enough and resulted in a set of raw data from which a completely new application was able to be coded.  Customer name and address details, account number, account balances etc. were able to be extracted from individual documents within the input file and were written out to a CSV data file for subsequent processing.  Transactional information could also have been extracted and used if required.

On occasion, this process has been used as a "last resort" when the original customer data is no longer available.  More typically it's used when the existing print-ready file is available and matches the required criteria (e.g. everyone who got a statement last month).  It's also a useful alternative when going back to the original source data involves too many people and/or too much time.

So - think of your print files and print archives as an important resource to be mined, not just historic copies of printed documents.

Contact Atac if you'd like to chat in detail about printfile mining.

Q & A

Q.  How does the Barr/Web Interface work?

A.  The Barr/Web Interface allows you to remotely control BEPS units from your BROWSER.  The Barr/Web Interface runs under IIS, either on the BEPS machine itself, or on an existing IIS machine.  Each client runs via its browser, with multiple clients able to connect to a single BEPS machine at once if required.  Functionality can be restricted according to Network ID or Group.  Almost all Operator functionality has been replicated, with the screen's look and feel being practically identical to the BEPS screen.  Some major players run all their BEPS units via the Barr/Web Interface from a central location with almost no interaction at the "coal-face" itself.

Q.  How can I run an external program on a file once I've output it from BEPS?

A.  You can now use scripting to run an external program after the Barr File Port writes a file to disk.  The Script field located on the File Options tab must be populated with two strings, the path of the application you want to run and the folder where the script file is located.  The application that will be run must be previously installed and the folder of the script file must be entered in quotes.

Q.  Who is/are Atac?

A.  Atac is the Barr and Emtex Distributor for Australia, New Zealand and South-East Asia.  With over fourteen years experience in the market, we support systems running 24x7x365 from Christchurch to Tokyo and Perth to Mumbai, in most of the largest print shops in the region.

Our customers include banks, print bureaux, financial institutions and petro-chemical companies as well as printer and mainframe vendors.  Outsourcing organisations and facilities management companies make extensive use of Atac's expertise.

Atac is privately owned, with an extensive technical background stretching back over forty years of continuously profitable operation.  Our website is at www.atac.com.au.

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