Business Profile
The Louisiana Office of Technology Services (OTS) provides centralized, high-volume printing and mailing services for state agencies. Processing more than 24 million first-class letters annually, the team supports critical government communications, including Certified Mail for the Louisiana Department of Revenue, with automated production, mail tracking, and delivery.
Industry
Government, In-Plant
One Platform, Many Agencies: The State of Louisiana Automates and Modernizes Statewide Print with Solimar Systems
Introduction
In a state print operation, there is no such thing as a typical job. Tax notices for the Department of Revenue. Voter registration materials for the Secretary of State. Licensing documents for the Department of Education. Checks that demand MICR printing and a locked-down chain of custody. Motorboat renewals. Each arrives with its own data format, regulatory framework, and definition of the word “urgent.”
That variety is exactly what Louisiana set out to master. Working with Solimar Systems, the state built its statewide print operation on the Solimar Chemistry® Platform — an integrated production environment where data transformation, optimization, tracking, and re-engineering work as one system rather than a set of disconnected tools. The platform is flexible enough to provide each agency with a workflow tailored to its rules, and standardized enough that the team can run it all without reinventing the wheel each morning. The payoff is leverage: a small team with the capacity to serve an entire state’s worth of agencies, and the room to keep saying yes to what comes next.
“Solimar Systems is the single most important platform in our entire stack, and the relationship lives up to that. When we run into something difficult, the support team is there,” says Ethan Gremillion, IT Statewide Director 3, Enterprise Print & Mail, State of Louisiana. “Being part of the Customer Advisory Council means we help shape where the platform goes next. That is why we are not just staying with Solimar Systems. We are building on it.”
Predictable Files, Predictable Output
Underneath every agency workflow sits ReadyPDF, doing the steady work that keeps the rest of the shop calm. Every job is preflighted and converted for the state’s cut-sheet devices, so files reach the floor already known to be good. Output stays consistent across a fleet built around production cut-sheet printers, including a MICR printer dedicated to secure check production. The team is now evaluating JDF to further trim conversion steps. That foundation is what makes everything above it possible.
Certified Mail, Automated End-to-End
If you want to see the payoff, look at certified mail. Certified pieces for the Louisiana Department of Revenue, including tax verification notices, carry legal weight. Every piece needs a cover sheet, a tracking barcode, and defensible proof that it entered the mailstream — precisely the kind of exacting, repeatable work that rewards automation.
Today the state runs that process as an automated pipeline. The Solimar Systems workflow produces a data file that lands in a hot folder, where EasySend Automate from partner Digitalized Software picks it up without anyone touching a keyboard. EasySend generates banner sheets carrying Intelligent Mail package barcodes, builds the USPS Form 3877 Firm Mailing Book, and produces the electronic acceptance file. Those outputs flow back into the Solimar Systems workflow, are merged with the recipient communications, and are released to print as a single, coherent job. “The whole point of EasySend Automate is that certified mail should run without anyone babysitting it. Dropping it into the Solimar Systems workflow is where that really pays off,” says Mike Bogad, VP Business Development & Partnerships, Digitalized Software. “The data comes in, the compliance pieces get built, and it all flows back as one job. For an operation serving an entire state, that kind of hands-off reliability is exactly what you want.”
At-A-Glance
Locations (USA)
- Baton Rouge, LA
Business Solution
- Document Re-engineering
- Data Stream Transformation
- PDF Optimization
- Output Management
- Workflow Automation
- Data Indexing
Solimar Products
- SOLitrack™
- Solimar® Print Director™ Enterprise (SPDE)
- ReadyPDF®
- SOLfusion™
- Rubika®
- Solimar® Indexing Tools
Benefits
- Automated certified mail: cover sheets, IMb banner sheets, 3877 firm book, and electronic acceptance generated automatically.
- Federal Tax Information (FTI) compliance: addresses stripped for barcoding, then remarked by Rubika, delivering compliance and accuracy in one pass.
- Preprinted stock eliminated: Rubika overlays replaced nearly all preprinted forms, cutting inventory and cost.
- Proof of delivery on demand: USPS tracking and POD retrieved automatically, retained for eleven years.
- Multi-agency flexibility: tailored workflows for Revenue, Secretary of State, Education, and more on one platform.
- Production visibility: SOLitrack job and document tracking, with controlled customer proofing on the roadmap.
“Solimar Systems is the single most important platform in our entire stack, and the relationship lives up to that. That is why we are not just staying with Solimar Systems — we are building on it.”
Ethan Gremillion
IT Statewide Director 3, Enterprise Print & Mail, State of Louisiana
From there, the postal side runs itself. Mail.dat electronic documentation goes to USPS PostalOne!. Tracking and proof of delivery are automatically retrieved and retained for 11 years. The Automated Certificate of Mailing generates a unique eight-digit COM ID per piece; postage is settled through an FCM-3600 permit imprint statement that declares the mail’s weight, volume, and class and authorizes the USPS to deduct the correct postage. The move to Intelligent Mail Indicia rounded out the modernization.
Cover sheets once built by hand now generate themselves, and merged jobs remain visible in SOLitrack throughout production. The manual effort that once defined certified mail has largely disappeared, turnaround has improved, and proof of delivery has become a simple lookup rather than a research project. “Certified mail used to be the piece of the process that demanded the most hands. Now the data file drops, the cover sheets build themselves,” says Tyler Price, Statewide Application Developer, State of Louisiana, “and everything comes back into the workflow as one job.”
Compliance Without Compromise
Automation and scrutiny often pull in opposite directions. Federal Tax Information rules gave Louisiana the chance to prove otherwise. FTI restrictions limit how recipient address data can be handled downstream, which is a genuine puzzle when barcodes need addresses to exist. Louisiana solved it by stripping the full address before the file leaves the secure zone, passing only the city, state, and ZIP for barcode generation, then using Rubika to re-mark the complete address on the page.
It is an elegant piece of engineering: the compliance boundary holds, the barcode is accurate, and the citizen still gets a properly addressed envelope. The team is already exploring ways to further streamline the re-marking step — refining a workflow that works rather than working around one that does not.
Retiring the Preprinted Stock Room
Ask a print manager what they would love to stop paying for, and preprinted stock is usually near the top of the list. It ties up cash, consumes floor space, and goes obsolete the moment a form changes. Louisiana has eliminated nearly all of it. Rubika overlays now generate form content dynamically at print time, so a single stream of white paper serves agency after agency. Only a handful of specialized items, such as motorboat renewals, still require dedicated stock. Inventory complexity dropped, printing costs decreased, and a form change became a workflow update rather than a purchase order and a warehouse cycle.
Visibility That Scales
SOLitrack tracks jobs and documents across the operation, giving the team a live view of where work stands without having to walk the floor to find out. The next step is extending selected visibility outward: the state is preparing pilot proof and approval access for the Department of Education’s licensing agency. It is a smart approach that proves the model with one agency, gives stakeholders the transparency they want, keeps internal processes internal, then scales on the state’s terms.
Room to Grow
Louisiana is not standing still. Having consolidated the state’s print shops into a single central operation, the team keeps bringing more of the state onboard — schools, testing documents, election materials — expanding what one platform can serve and what the state can save. The operation has outgrown its footprint, and a facility expansion is planned within the next few years. In the longer term, the team is thinking directly about citizens. A citizen-facing application, like models emerging in other states, is a stated goal, but today is gated by legal restrictions rather than by technology. When those constraints ease, the workflow foundation is already there.
“Certified mail used to be the piece of the process that demanded the most hands. Now the data file drops, the cover sheets build themselves and everything comes back into the workflow as one job.”
Tyler Price
Statewide Application Developer, State of Louisiana
The Chemistry® Platform Solution
Every workflow described here runs on one foundation, and that is the point. Because these components share a single environment, a capability added for one agency becomes available to all of them. Four components carry the Louisiana operation:
Solimar® Print Director™ Enterprise (SPDE)
The enterprise output management engine that connects the state’s host systems to its production devices and moves every job through the shop.
Rubika®
Post-composition document re-engineering that merges, sorts, and dynamically overlays or re-marks content onto already-composed documents, including the FTI address re-marking and the dynamic form overlays that replaced preprinted stock.
ReadyPDF®
Industrial PDF optimization and preflight that standardizes and validates files so output stays consistent and print-ready across the device fleet.
SOLitrack™
Database-driven, piece-level job and document tracking that gives the team real-time visibility into where every job stands.
SOLitrack™
Database-driven output management system designed to manage, track and report on jobs through production workflows from onboarding to final delivery.
Solimar® Print Director™ Enterprise (SPDE)
Output management solution combining integrated connectivity with fast, accurate print stream conversions and job routing & tracking capabilities.
ReadyPDF®
Optimizes fonts, images, objects, colors and resources to allow PDF files to process more efficiently for production printing, eDelivery and archiving.
SOLfusion™
Automates output production tasks such as external processes & scripts, indexing PDF documents, and executing Rubika® configurations.
Rubika®
Post-composition re-engineering solution to automate manual processes, enable postal savings, add value to documents, and modifies print data.
Solimar® Indexing Tools
Powerful PDF indexing tools to design, test and manage indexing templates for data extraction.
A Platform Built for What Comes Next
What stands out about Louisiana’s story is not any single automation. It is the compounding effect of a platform approach. Because Rubika, ReadyPDF, and SOLitrack work as one environment, every agency workflow the state builds makes the next one easier. Certified mail automation did not require rebuilding the shop. Eliminating preprinted stock did not require new hardware. Extending proofing to a new agency will not require a new system.
“What makes Louisiana’s story special isn’t one feature. It’s what a small team can accomplish when the whole platform works together. They keep bringing more of the state onto Solimar Systems because every workflow they build makes the next one easier,” says Mary Ann Rowan, Chief Experience Officer, Solimar Systems. “That’s the kind of partnership we’re proud to be part of, and it’s exactly why we built the Chemistry Platform the way we did.”
For the State of Louisiana, Solimar Systems did more than automate a set of jobs. It gave a small team the leverage to serve an entire state’s worth of agencies and the room to say yes to whatever comes next.