Business Profile
Integrated Document Solutions (IDS) is a full-service, end-to-end document management operation. IDS serves as the Colorado State Printer and Branding office, and provides a wide variety of document solutions.
Industry
Print Service Provider
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Rapid Response for the State of Colorado with the Solimar Chemistry Platform
Introduction
Recent events have forced significant changes on all print businesses, but the level of change within the State of Colorado’s Department of Personnel & Administration’s Integrated Document Solutions (IDS) division was unprecedented. Since its founding in 1977, the department has been responsible for the print requirements from the executive branches within Colorado. Over the past decade, IDS started printing for local municipalities throughout the state and, as an example, manages and prints for motor vehicle divisions in 56 out of the 64 counties within the state.
More recently, IDS has absorbed the print needs from the State’s Departments of Transportation, Public Health & Environment, and Revenue. IDS also became responsible for distributing all personal protective equipment (PPE) across the state during the pandemic. The resulting increase in responsibilities and print volumes meant IDS had to install and integrate new, high-speed digital printing equipment into their workflow to meet those demands.
One of the tools the State relies on is the Solimar® Chemistry™ platform to speed the integration of new clients and solutions. “Since our staff can use and configure the Solimar Chemistry CCM platform in a DIY way, it gave us advantages to be nimble and onboard customers much faster,” said Mike Lincoln, the Colorado State Printer.
At-A-Glance
Locations (USA)
- Denver, CO, USA
Business Solution
- Data Stream Conversion
- Document Re-engineering
- PDF Optimization
- Job Proofing & Batching
- Piece Level Tracking (PLT)
- Output Management
- Workflow Automation
Solimar Products
- SOLitrack™
- Solimar® Print Director™ Enterprise
- ReadyPDF®
- SOLfusion™
- Rubika®
- SOLsearcher™ Enterprise
- Solimar® Indexing Tools
Benefits
- Enhanced and automated workflows to handle a 12% increase in print volume
- Reduced time to process applications from 14 hours to 2-4 hours
- Normalized data to a PDF workflow to support proofs and approval, piece level tracking and job batching
- Intelligent Mail Barcodes (IMB) marking process resulted in significant cost savings
- Upgraded their print environment with new high-speed, roll-fed printers without having to replace existing workflows
“With one of our largest customer’s applications, we saw 70% time savings in RIP time just by using ReadyPDF which gave us the ability to get those on the printer and printing faster.”
Mike Lincoln
Colorado State Printer, State of Colorado
A Surge of Printing
In periods of predictability and economic stability, print needs and volumes are steady but increase dramatically when there are shocks to the system, like a pandemic. Within a short period, the increase in print volumes for IDS increased by 40% within their existing customer base. As the in-plants at the Department of Public Health & Environment and the Department of Transportation were decommissioned, IDS faced the challenge of adding over 12% more print volume, or roughly, 10 million impressions and 6.2 million mailings.
Using the Solimar Chemistry CCM platform capabilities, IDS was able to enhance and automate many of the workflows brought over from the 22 divisions within the Department of Revenue. One application requires processing a job with 1,000 unique correspondence letters; IDS was able to group (concatenate) them into like-finished letters working with the department after adding a “white ink” qualifier, then using Rubika to reassemble the workflow. The challenge was indexing since the letters did not have any common content. After consulting with the Solimar support team, IDS worked with their customer to add strings of white-colored text that could be identified by SOLindexer, but not printed. The result was a streamlined workflow to reproduce this recurring job accurately.
Other efficiencies have been possible using Solimar tools for adding Intelligent Mail Barcodes (IMB) to existing documents using Rubika, which saves on mail costs. In fact, improvements to data and print workflows have resulted in significant annual savings for the Department of Revenue, with even more savings in postage due to IDS’ commingling of all the State’s outgoing mail and householding capabilities. “What makes the results more remarkable is our ability to make this transition within six months when a previous study suggested a timeline of 3 years,” said Lincoln. IDS only added one more full-time employee from the Department of Transportation to accomplish these transitions.
The Chemistry Solution:
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 with ReadyPDF®
Output management solution combining integrated connectivity with fast, accurate print stream conversions, PDF optimization, and job routing & tracking capabilities.
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 dynamically modify print data.
SOLsearcher™ Enterprise
ePresentment & archive solution designed to index, store, search and retrieve large collections of transactional and scanned documents.
Solimar® Indexing Tools
Powerful PDF indexing tools to design, test and manage indexing templates for data extraction.
A Rapid Response to the TABOR Challenge
The State of Colorado passed legislation in 1992, known as the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), limiting the amount of revenue the government can retain and spend by linking it to inflation, plus, population growth. As originally implemented, the refund was incorporated in state income tax returns due each April. In 2022, new legislation passed in April and signed into effect by the governor in May to have checks printed and mailed to taxpayers as part of the “Colorado Cash Back” program, beginning in August 2022.
The timeline required a rapid response by IDS to ensure the checks could be mailed starting August 1, 2022, for the first large distribution of 2.4 million printed and mailed over 5 business days, with a target of all being delivered by September 30, 2022. For this program, IDS is leveraging Solimar SOLitrack so staff from the Department of Revenue can review, verify, and approve the amount and batch distributions from the bank to ensure they match the statement generated by their processing partner. The use-case had already been established as a process for state income tax returns and was quickly applied to the TABOR challenge. “We had transitioned from a previous provider to SOLitrack in late 2020 and continue to find it is an invaluable tool for collaborating with our customers,” says Lincoln.
“We had transitioned from a previous provider to SOLitrack in late 2020 and continue to find it is an invaluable tool for collaborating with our customers.”
Mike Lincoln
Colorado State Printer, State of Colorado
Chemistry is the Calm in the Storm
Nearly 90% of all jobs printed by IDS are processed using the Chemistry platform. The remaining jobs are static, graphic arts jobs like stationery and letterhead. Lincoln describes IDS’ ability to support customers as being the wide end of the funnel that can accept any data or file format, and then ultimately deliver a PDF or other digital format for any output channel.
Having a flexible and independent workflow solutions partner, IDS was able to seamlessly upgrade their printing platform by installing a Ricoh VC60000 high-speed, roll-fed printer without replacing their workflow. According to Lincoln, the ability to use their existing workflows and simply point output to the new printer likely saved at least three months of time off their go-live schedule.
Regardless of what new challenges lay ahead, the IDS team is confident in its ability to provide the solution. Based on their recent successes across more branches and municipalities, IDS is now viewed as a technology partner that is often referred to by the Office of Information Technology as the go-to for any document solutions required by the State — a competency reinforced by their experience, expertise, and partnership with Solimar Systems.