Centralized Printing System Brings New Certainty
To Transamerica Tax Services
At Transamerica Real Estate Tax Service, our business is based upon saving time and money for residential real estate lenders by procuring their property tax payment information and providing it to them in a user-friendly manner. So, when customers complained in the mid-1990s about difficulty working with the many report formats we generated in our two dozen regional division offices, the criticism struck to the core of our business.
Our decentralized operation made sense from an information-gathering perspective—tax data is collected from the thousands of counties, cities, towns and other residential property tax authorities all over the United States. Or rather, it made sense until many of our regional banking customers went national through mergers and acquisitions. In servicing as many as 1.6 million loans per customer institution—75,000 on average—the lack of reporting consistency can contribute to inefficiencies and even missed tax payment deadlines. Moreover, decentralized production was not cost-effective.
So in 1996, we began to centralize our operations in Dallas, Texas by developing IBM AS/400 and Microsoft Windows NT-based client/server systems to supplement our mainframe in Los Angeles. We also built a new centralized production printing facility. Our vision is to have a single information system that is accessible to everyone in customer service and is supported with a single print center that merges traditional copy and print center functions.
Because Xerox printers had performed well in our Woodland Hills, Calif. facility, we built our new print center around two Xerox DocuPrint 4635s, and, as expected, they have served us reliably. We have been pleasantly surprised, however, at the improved performance and job management capabilities we have gained by adding several software systems from Xerox and their partners.
The first was a third-party software, which transforms EBCDIC data streams delivered from both the remote mainframe and the AS/400 for printing on the 4635s. This gave us the capability to print from both host systems during our multi-year transition to client/server.
Job management was still a problem, however, mainly because local tax collectors sometimes supply payment information so close to the tax due date that we must perform an immediate turnaround. Missed deadlines mean we pay our customers’ late fees.
In response, we initiated a “first-in, first-out” policy, which was sometimes impractical. The reason: AS/400 jobs required print operators to manually start new command files every time a new form or paper stock was needed. So to improve overall workflow, operators often grouped like jobs together, slowing turnarounds.
We solved the problem with Xerox Document Print Executive (XDPE) software. It enables the AS/400 to send DJDE (Dynamic Job Descriptor Entry) instructions to the printer that automatically select correct forms and paper trays, saving operator time and getting mailings out on time.
One bottleneck remained, however, slow data transfer from the AS/400 to the printers. This time our solution was a Xerox DPServer, which enables jobs from both the mainframe and the AS/400 to be delivered via speedy TCP/IP Ethernet connections. One 3,500-page report that took 20 minutes to deliver previously now takes two minutes and 25 seconds.
DPServer provides many additional capabilities that we plan to implement, such as managing print jobs in multiple environments, allowing us to fulfill our strategic goal of integrating our copy and print centers. DPServer also provides our first automated load-balancing capabilities, which free operator time while optimizing print capacities. And it can manage distributed printing for some new applications we are planning.
In short, DP Server gives us a true enterprise document printing solution, both during and after our transition to the AS/400-based system. Most importantly, it ensures that we maintain the continuity of service our customers demand.