MAPPING Suite: Useful functions around your ERP

MAPPING Suite: Printing Solutions For All ERPs

General issues

Enterprise Resource Planning software packages (ERPs) integrate all data and processes of an organization such as personnel, accounting, sales, buying, etc. into a unified system. A typical ERP system will use multiple components of computer software and hardware to achieve the integration. A key ingredient of most ERP systems is the use of a unified database to store data for the various system modules.

However, as powerful as they may be, ERPs usually omit to offer efficient printing solutions, and printing is often completely left behind or even forgotten. And yet, printing is essential to most users in their daily work.

ERPs usually provide standard print functions in text mode or PDF®. Some of them, such as SAP®, provide data files (e.g. RDI® files for SAP®, XML for GOLD®) and sometimes offer basic formatting functions in PCL® or PostScript®.

Although standard print functions are usually enough to start using the solution, they rapidly reach certain limits in the following areas:

Document formatting: Text mode offers too limited options in terms of data presentation especially if the documents must be sent to recipients outside the company. PDF mode makes it difficult to automate output.

Information included in the printed documents: Some information is often missing in the documents that are printed out.

Ease of use and daily operations: ERPs such as SAP®, GOLD®, JDE®, Navision®, etc. rarely offer advanced spooling options. If these options are not included in the operating system (i.e. Unix, Linux ...), managing your printing on a daily basis can substantially increase the workload of technical support staff and operational teams

Archiving: ERPs do not provide open archiving solutions to archive all documents.

Emailing and faxing: ERPs do not usually provide mass-emailing and faxing solutions with tracking options.

Solutions

To help you solve all of these important issues and satisfy your users, MAPPING Suite brings a series of solutions that can easily be implemented in many different environments to help manage printing in a more efficient way.

Let us see how MAPPING Suite addresses the issues mentioned above:

Document formatting: The module called MAPPING makes it easy to add overlays and logos to your documents in Text mode, edit data presentation according to document content, insert bar codes and use Windows® fonts. A conditional logic can be set up at any level. Regarding PDF®, MAPPING can generate very compact files in the PDF® format. MAPPING can also process PDF® files as input, extract the required information in Text format and then reformat them to your liking.

Information included in the printed documents: The Mapping module makes it possible to retrieve information from a database to remap your files. However, in order to avoid any performance issues, it is recommended to use this feature with care. MapReport is another module of MAPPING Suite that allows extracting information from databases (DB2®, ORACLE® ...) or files (XML, CSV, RDI® ...) and generating print files in Text format. The resulting files can then be reformatted using the Mapping module.

Daily operations: Using our Robot, MAPPING Suite can fully automate print management tasks. Combined with our spooler (available in Unix, Linux and Windows® environments), this gives a fully integrated solution that fits most printing needs.

Archiving: MapOut and MapWeb are other modules in the software suite that enable archiving print files coming from your ERP, all of your business output (and input), consult your documents in a Web browser, and create standalone lookup CDs...

Emailing and faxing: MapCom is the module you need to email and fax documents on a large scale and also includes tracking options. A summary of what has been sent can be made available in the ERP or supervision system to help manage the documents sent outside the company.