White-Paper Printing Brings Flexibility

White-paper printing functionality provides the ability to revise the content and layout of standard TROPOS documents, so they contain the information required, presented in a format conforming to the customers corporate image. Emphasis can be placed on particular information by the use of different fonts, font sizes and even colours, while data can be easily bar-coded, providing a route to more efficient data collection.

Cost Savings

An additional advantage is the ability to eliminate the requirement for pre-printed stationery. White Paper Printing can include graphics such as company logos, lines, boxes and shading and multiple copies so high quality documents can be produced on plain paper. The costs of pre-printed stationery can be significant, but with White Paper Printing, any change in company details would not necessitate the ordering of new stationery and the scrapping of existing stocks. The company details held electronically in the White Paper Printing product can be updated and all documents produced from then on will contain the new details.

Optional Solutions

Recognising varying depths of requirement, SSI offers two alternatives: base package functionality, provided by TROPOS Form, and FormScape, developed by SSI’s business partner, DataTrade.

TROPOS Form

Aimed at customers where cost is a major issue or where the more advanced features of FormScape are not required, TROPOS Form provides base white-paper printing functionality on both UNIX and Windows NT platforms. Starting from a standard form template, fields can easily be moved, reformatted or deleted, using a text editor as the user interface. TROPOS Form has been designed for use with HP Laserjet compatible printers.

Basic reformatting may include the inclusion of a company logo and the addition of lines, boxes and shading. Fields can be printed in different fonts and sizes, or converted into a barcode.
Where necessary, logic can be included for further refinement. For example, using conditional processing, digital signatures could be included.

Intelligent routing may be set up, so that two copies of a purchase order are printed in Purchasing and a third copy in Accounts.

Multiple layouts for a single document type may be developed. A TROPOS purchase order could be produced in different formats, dependent on the recipient, so that the supplier, Purchasing Department and Accounts Department all have different formats of the same purchase order.

In addition to providing printed output, documents can be emailed and/or configured to produce data files suitable for conversion into EDI messages.

FormScape

The alternative white-paper printing product, FormScape, provides WYSIWYG document design in a full GUI environment, enabling the easy development of customised TROPOS documents.

The additional functionality provided includes a wider variety of barcode standards and the ability to print to any Windows printer driver.

Taking intelligent routing one step further, the printer on which the purchase order appears can be dependent on the buyer that raised the order.

FormScape can be integrated with fax packages such as LaserFAX, Zetafax and Faxination, enabling documents to be faxed automatically to customers and suppliers without the need for printing them first. This can result in appreciable cost savings, through reduced manual effort and printing costs.

E-mail messages can be sent, for example, to inform the Finance Department that an invoice print run has completed successfully. Using the optional Archive module, documents can be stored electronically, then viewed and reprinted at will.

Note that although FormScape runs on NT Server, it is equally suitable where TROPOS is running in a UNIX environment, as long as the NT server is visible on the network.