In today's fast-paced business environment, it's crucial for companies to ensure they're producing the correct documents, at the appropriate time, in the right format and with accurate data.
Without this precision, there's a high risk of errors, which can have serious financial and operational consequences.
Typical problems that can arise
Lorries stranded at a warehouse because delivery notes or picking lists failed to print
Printing problems on an assembly line causing production to be halted
Payment delays because customer statements aren't delivered on time
To prevent these kinds of problems from occurring, it's essential to have a robust output management solution in place. This will help you streamline document workflows, automate processes and ensure timely, reliable delivery – all while your business runs smoothly, with reduced costs and increased customer satisfaction.
Output management with Macro 4
Our output management solutions are cost effective and easy to implement. Your reputation is shaped by the way you communicate, so you need to get things right the first time. We’ll help you deliver the responsive service your customers and business partners expect.
Whether you start small and scale up over time or opt for a global launch, our professional services team will provide you with expert guidance and consultancy to ensure a smooth implementation.
Here's what you can expect from a Macro 4 output management solution:
1. Greater control and visibility over document output
Business-critical output can be complex and difficult to manage. You need a solution that gives you complete control over the production process, from initial planning and document creation all the way through to successful printing or digital delivery. Our output management solutions provide you with a single point of control for all print jobs, devices and delivery channels so it’s easy to monitor workflow performance, identify problems or bottlenecks and resource gaps, and make adjustments where necessary, such as rerouting output to an alternative delivery channel if there’s a printing problem.
Ultimately, our assured delivery process gets the right document to the right place at the right time, every time.
2. Enhanced document tracking and reporting
Using our output management software you can monitor your document output from an interactive dashboard. A ‘traffic light’ system warns you about any potential issues at an early stage, so you can take proactive action. Embedded business intelligence will help you to analyze your document workflow and make any necessary changes to improve efficiency. You'll have access to a comprehensive suite of reports that can be used for forecasting and capacity planning, service level monitoring, printer optimization, billing and compliance.
3. High-impact, personalized communications
Our extended document composition and formatting capabilities let you create stunning new documents from your current data and document output.
It’s a simple process to transform data from any system into high-quality communications including hyper-personalized content. You can also breathe new life into existing documents. Formatted documents produced by your business applications can be completely redesigned or embellished by adding extra features such as barcodes, electronic signatures and dynamic graphics.
4. Reduced paper usage and printing costs
Using a single, cloud-based or on-premises platform for output management and workflow automation can help you to cut your costs and transition quickly from print to digital delivery.
With our solutions in place, you can automatically convert paper documents into digital formats that are easier to share, and more cost-effective to deliver. This also improves data security by eliminating the risk of confidential information being lost or stolen.
For the documents that you continue to print, we offer end-user options for viewing, stopping and restarting printing – as well as document splitting and partial document printing. This greatly reduces unnecessary reprinting and, therefore, paper waste. You can also transform the output into different print formats automatically – for example, to redirect documents from office printers to more cost-effective production printers.
5. Compliance with legal and regulatory requirements
We’ll help you meet compliance requirements by producing documents that conform with global document delivery and retention standards, such as ZUGFeRD, XRechnung and Factur-X for EU-compliant eInvoicing, and PDF/A for long-term preservation.
You can also securely access and manage all your documents centrally, with automated information lifecycle management to maintain compliance with data retention and data privacy regulations covering different jurisdictions.
6. Increased data integrity and accuracy
Our output management system can help you verify that the information in your documents is correct and consistent by cross-checking output from different sources, or running exception processes which kick in if a pre-set threshold – such as a maximum monetary value – is exceeded. This is important for any business that generates financial documents like invoices, purchase orders or statements – as it helps you eliminate errors, reduce payment queries and improve cash flow.
7. Reduced IT support costs
Our solutions will help reduce the amount of time that your IT team spends managing output issues. End-to-end feedback to users keeps them updated on the progress of printing and digital delivery and leads to fewer helpdesk calls. At the same time, having a single platform to handle all printer administration and multi-channel delivery, combined with greater automation of your delivery processes, reduces effort and keeps your IT overheads low.
8. Improved disaster recovery and business continuity
A good output management system can also help you improve your business continuity by making sure that you have an up-to-date digital copy of every document in case something happens to the paper copy – for example, it gets lost or destroyed.
9. Seamless multi-channel service
Today's customers demand a seamless experience across all channels. Our output management system can help you offer the flexibility they expect. It will make it easy for you to manage each customer’s delivery preferences and communicate across multiple channels such as email, text, chat and print – resulting in higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
10. Better support for different languages and character sets
We can help you print or distribute content in multiple languages dynamically. This allows you to communicate with customers and business partners globally with minimal effort. We also support multi-byte character sets to further expand the reach of your content.
11. Enhanced ability to customize and configure the system to meet specific business needs
Our output management solution is highly customizable and can be tailored to meet the specific needs of your business. You can configure the system to integrate seamlessly with your existing IT infrastructure, applications and processes. This gives you the ability to automate complex output processes without having to build them from scratch or incur high integration costs.
Output management for SAP
Macro 4's output management solutions provide a range of capabilities specifically designed to work with SAP systems. As a long-term SAP partner, Macro 4 has implemented business-critical output solutions for hundreds of SAP customers worldwide.
Our solutions can help address some common printing issues for SAP users, to achieve:
Assured delivery
Track the delivery of your documents and ensure that they reach their intended recipients on time
Assured printing
Confirm that your documents have been printed, and redirect to another device or digital channel if there’s a problem
Job status feedback
Provide real-time updates about the status of your documents, ensuring you're always informed and able to act accordingly
Want to learn more about how Macro 4's output management solutions can integrate with SAP systems? Check out our SAP solutions page for more information.
Our output management platform
Our output management technology is built on Columbus, a scalable, integrated software suite that can run on multiple operating systems and in the cloud:
- Columbus OM for assured delivery of printed output
- Columbus Central for multi-channel delivery, process orchestration and workflow
- Columbus DoXite for document design and formatting
- Columbus DW for management of all enterprise content
- Columbus Z for output management on IBM zSystems
- Columbus Accounting for embedded business intelligence
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
What does output management software do?
Output management software helps businesses manage the creation, printing, distribution and archiving of digital and physical documents throughout their lifecycle. This can include everything from invoices and purchase orders to reports and marketing materials.
Why should you invest in output management software?
Having output management software in place reduces the need for manual intervention and ensures that delivery processes run smoothly.
Output management solutions also provide transparency into the status of documents at any given time, helping to ensure that document-related processing is completed on time and to the desired quality. This is especially beneficial for businesses that have a large volume of business-critical documents to manage.
How can Macro 4 help with our output management challenges?
Macro 4 offers output management solutions that can help with your printing and digital delivery needs. Our solutions are designed to manage and streamline printing, allowing you to easily customize, format and print documents to meet your specific requirements. In addition, by implementing an output management solution, you can not only optimize the way you handle documents but also accelerate digital transformation initiatives and move towards a paperless office.