Print Stream Engineering:
The Morphing of a Pioneer

by Scott Gerschwer

The StreamWeaver Paradox. It sounds like the title of a Robert Ludlum novel. And in some ways the story is just as intriguing.

In just six years, StreamWeaver from Pitney Bowes docSense has become a utility that businesses can not do without. It’s the most widely used print stream engineering tool in the print/mail finishing industry. The list of Fortune 500 companies that use StreamWeaver to improve the customer communications process is a who’s who of large volume mailers.

CitiGroup, Cap One, Aetna, Amex, Wells Fargo, Anthem Insurance, Conseco, US Bank, UPS, Xerox, Met Life, Amoco, First Union-Wachovia, Verizon, Bell & Howell, The Hartford, AT&T, Bank One, EDS, GE Capital, The Gap, IBM, J.C. Penney, Merrill Lynch, Oxford, PacifiCare, Prudential, Sears, Sprint, Shell Oil-- are only a few of the companies on the StreamWeaver roster.

Yet StreamWeaver is also underutilized. Despite its wide acceptance, users have barely scratched the surface of the tool's vast capabilities. Most seem content to use the versatile tool for just one or perhaps two applications.

"StreamWeaver users tend to be very project oriented," says John Lynch, Director of Software development for docSense. "There is no doubt in my mind that the overwhelming majority of StreamWeaver users exploit less than 20 percent of the tool's capabilities."

Versatile yet underutilized
How can a technology that is used so widely -- and presumably valued so highly -- be so poorly understood?

The answer according to Lynch hinges on the 'silo' mentality that impedes progress and information sharing in many large organizations today.

"For many users, StreamWeaver is a single point solution," Lynch continues. "Once they implement it to solve a specific problem, they often overlook its other functionality, and the enhancements that have been added over time, as they focus on other priorities. This is particularly true among IT staffs, which are as overburdened today as they ever have been."

Plus, the tool's capabilities often cut across both functional areas and lines of businesses. So if managers "don't share information, then the potential rewards that come from using the tool will be limited as well," he says.

The basic benefits of StreamWeaver are investment protection and improved efficiency and effectiveness. Companies use it to manipulate data and documents in the print stream to avoid the cost and delay involved in rewriting or reprogramming business applications at the mainframe or midrange platforms.

As a result, firms can extend the useful life of legacy applications, initiate process improvements, and easily customize the output from third party software products. In fact, scores of business and government organizations are using the tool, usually to:

• Enable intelligent inserting by adding or changing finishing control barcodes.
• Maximize the effectiveness of software used for address cleansing and presorting.
• Consolidate into one envelope multiple documents that are intended for the same recipient.
• Customize documents and mailings for highly personalized messaging and 1-to-1 target marketing.
• Facilitate the migration from one-up simplex to multiple-up duplex printing.
• Separate customer communications for distribution via a mix of electronic and paper-based channels, including the Internet.

But the technology wasn't always so robust. And that is part of the reason the tool isn't more fully utilized today.

"StreamWeaver was created in the mid-90s to parse print streams, such as the fully composed AFP from IBM, for just a single customer," explains Lynch. Before StreamWeaver, companies with legacy business applications used programming languages, such as COBOL or Assembler, to perform document composition duties. Or they used tools or engines such as the Document Composition Facility (DCF) from IBM. But these required highly-skilled personnel and were labor intensive, which meant that it was both costly and time-consuming to alter or update the legacy applications.

In the mid-90s many organizations underwent an IT re-engineering effort that saw a shift away from higher skilled and more complex programming languages to newer ones such as Visual Basic and C++. And a gap soon emerged between the skill levels of newer programmers and the needs of the existing legacy applications.

Easy programming
However, organizations soon discovered that the StreamWeaver tool, which is at heart a programming language, was easier to code than COBOL or Assembler. Users didn't need to know the bit and byte level of information, which made it far easier to implement, especially by the newer programmers.

So the tool soon grew in popularity among IT professionals as a quick and inexpensive way to make last-minute changes to print streams and the resulting customer communications.

"When it was first developed," continues Lynch, "StreamWeaver was geared more toward processing line data, such as ASCII text or records-based information, also known as print image data." " If you looked at it," he says, "it appeared to be standardized text, with the spacing controlled by tabs and without any dynamic or proportional fonts, spacing or graphics."

Later enhancements enabled the tool to parse page description languages such as IBM's AFP or Xerox's MetaCode, which allowed users to separate embedded formatting controls that are specific to output devices and make last-minute changes on those controls.

For example, users could now alter the commands that tell a printer to draw a rule, shade a box, or call in a graphic. This allowed users to easily update or revise a company logo, for example, without the need to alter the legacy business application.

As printers evolved and improved, StreamWeaver emerged as an easy way for production mailers to take advantage of the wider (11" x 17" or 11" x 30") print path or duplexing capabilities to achieve 2-up or two-sided printing -- again, without the need to alter the legacy business application.

Other recent enhancements broadened the tool's print-related functionality, such as support for PCL PostScript and highlight color, while new features such as the capability to insert control and PostNet barcodes enabled users to bolster mail piece integrity and speed delivery.

More recently, the launch of a visual engineering development tool lowered the skill levels needed by users by giving them an easier and faster way to perform print stream analysis as well as application development and testing.

Easy application development
But to broaden the appeal of StreamWeaver still further, and to make the software even easier to implement, a new tool set for developing and testing applications is now available.

Called the StreamWeaver Professional WorkStation, the new tool set is a significant advance because it allows users to develop applications more quickly and work more productively.

"The StreamWeaver Professional Workstation features a new graphics-based interactive environment, which lessens the need to learn and understand programming skills or print stream syntax, making the tool far easier to use for both novice and expert users alike," says Joseph Chmill, Product Manager for StreamWeaver.

"It also provides users with the ability to inspect and test changes during the application design phase," he adds, "which speeds turnaround time." According to Chmill, both new and experienced StreamWeaver users will now be able to work faster and operations managers will have more flexibility to allocate resources and respond to changing priorities.

Plus, with a "demographic crisis looming over the document creation industry," according to some observers, the release of the Professional WorkStation may be especially advantageous.

"The vast majority of highly-trained developers are expected to retire over the next five to seven years," says Bill Broddy, Vice President for Prinova Technologies, (one of the premier document engineering and application development firms in North America). And organizations that have invested millions of dollars in core business applications will soon be turning to newer personnel to handle the essential task of re-engineering mission-critical documents.

Since he and other observers believe these younger professionals will likely lack the training and specific programming language expertise needed to enhance output without impacting the underlying systems, the demand for a easier way to develop and test print stream engineering applications could "sky rocket as the change in personnel takes hold."

And as it has for hundreds of companies with hundreds of problems hundreds of times before, StreamWeaver will answer that call.

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Thinking 'Out of the Box'
It's not just for bills and statements
StreamWeaver is a tool that can enhance a myriad of business applications. Here are just a few 'out of the ordinary' examples.

Data mining – Pitney Bowes docSense uses StreamWeaver to facilitate invoicing. Instead of writing a custom program, the docSense uses the tool to extract key data from its Gold Mine customer database, eliminate duplicate information, and forward the data to its Finance Dept. for fast, accurate billing.

Fulfilling orders – BMGDirect, one of the nation's largest distributors of music CDs, uses StreamWeaver to boost the efficiency of its automated fulfillment operation. By using the tool to re-sequence customer orders in the print stream, BMGDirect is able to maximize the use of its highly automated handling systems, compress the amount time required to fill orders, assure the integrity of each order, and reduce the cost of fulfillment by nearly 70 percent.

Automating correspondence – One of the nation's leading consumer finance organizations uses StreamWeaver to automate the preparation of correspondence to new customers. Each day the firm receives nearly 5,000 credit card applications that are incomplete. The firm uses StreamWeaver to send each applicant an automated and personalized letter that is commingled with a copy of a new application form custom-designed to solicit just the precise additional data required for credit approval. The tool is also used to access software for address cleansing and postal presorting.