3 min read

How to optimize data archiving?

Eldy Sharma

Sr. Composition Developer

Introduction

Our client, a Swiss B2B insurance company, wanted to shift its document composition process from an external Output Management System (OMS) to Customer Communications Management (CCM). A need for this solution stemmed from the requirement to resolve output management issues to generate files quickly and easily and save admin time and cost. To meet these goals, a suite of Quadient CCM tools was implemented, with migration executed by BelWo.  

Why Data Archiving is an important step during migration?

  • It helps the organization to create their structured and unstructured data maintained
  • It’s an integral part of record management
  • It helps to record the company’s activities over its entire lifecycle
  • Archived data provide business intel
  • It aids the compliance function

 

These reasons make data archiving an important step during a planned migration of a communications system without disrupting company operations, especially for document-intensive industries like banking, insurance, utility, and telecom. CCM migration can be a complex task but with expert guidance, we can simplify this process to deliver optimal output generation systems.

How BelWo optimized the data archiving process

  • Central Print WFDs (workflow that generates PDFs sent to print houses for printing final documents) was first created by Quadient based on the initial specifications and requirements provided by the client. The initial expectation was to generate one file at a time, and the volumes were much lower. This changed to a requirement for the generation of multiple files at a larger volume.
  • On volume testing of 8,500 input files, the time taken to generate about 20,000 output files was unsatisfactory. The requirement was for us to test and optimize the output generation time.
  • In the volume testing done by our internal QA Team, we observed that archiving through the Inspire native module was time-consuming, taking approximately 9 hours.
  • We carried out a detailed step-by-step testing of workflows created internally and by the clients, for a root cause analysis and found that under the resource Merging Tab, the option “Merge only TNOs” was selected, and decided to test the other option “Merge all native files”

 

The standard approaches suggested for resource merging were as below:

However, we tested multiple approaches that were contrary to the SOPs provided in the manual above and found that using the “Merge all native files” option decreases the processing time phenomenally, as opposed to the understanding that it may increase the time taken.  

The result

  • Archiving time was reduced from 9 hours to 18minutes
  • The PDFs generated were smaller in size  
  • The quality of output files remained unchanged

This transition from OMS to Quadient’s CCM combined with an unconventional resource merging route tested, implemented and migrated by us, helped our client achieve their document archiving goals.