Cold Comfort
- Article 8 of 26
- M-iD, July 2004
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Where an optical medium is used, it is typically as a result of legacy operations, or more likely over the last two years, compliance issues, since its write-once, read-many capabilities are still a 'safe bet' for any organisation not wishing to argue with regulatory authorities over which medium is best.
COLD typically captures print streams in one of several ways: by taking the raw output and converting it into another format, such as PDF or PNG; or by taking the output directly and storing it; or by intercepting the output further up the line so that only the position on the paper, the type of form used and the content of the text are captured.
While the first two options have the virtue of higher regulatory compliance, since they better reflect the document that customers would have received, and easier deployment to customers over the web, the latter option can save on the amount of storage space used - as little as a few bytes of data might be used per report - and also make it easier to take the text of the document and incorporate it into other documents or systems. Most COLD/ERM applications can integrate with one or more CRM systems, particularly those applications available from ECM vendors such as IBM. Siebel integration is usually a given, but Clarify, PeopleSoft and SAP are commonly catered for as well.
The degree of integration varies from system to system, with access to COLD/ERM documents usually available via a hyperlink in the corporate portal or intranet that launches a document viewer.
For COLD/ERM applications that store just text and position or the raw print stream, this viewer is usually proprietary, but some, in common with those that convert output to PDFs or other common document and image formats, will use a web 00browser in combination with standard plug-ins to view the documents.
COLD/ERM (computer output to laser disk/enterprise report management) technology can overcome that problem enabling organisations to provide faster and format-accurate access to historic legacy data for customer support or redistribution. It works by intercepting the print stream of a document as it is printed, capturing, indexing and storing the output for access by internal users and customers. So as organisations print invoices, statements, bills and so on, they are able to store the output digitally for instant access later on.
By integrating COLD/ERM systems with customer relationship management (CRM) or call centre software, users can obtain exact replicas of computer print output and an electronic history that is essentially unlimited.
Customer problems can be solved more easily because the customer service representative has access to the right documents at the right time and can even send them directly to customers by fax or email.
Typically, COLD/ERM capabilities are not built into CRM systems, but are instead available as 'point' products from specialist vendors such as DocFinity or as part of wider enterprise content management (ECM) packages from companies such as IBM, Documentum, Mobius and FileNet.
Executives from these companies, however, readily admit that COLD/ERM integrated with CRM is a hard sell - not the fault of the technology itself, they say, but a lack of appreciation by most organisations of the power of the "unsexy" technology and the benefits it offers.
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