When Somerset installed a new UNIX-based financial package, its whole computing landscape started to change. Up to then, the Council had relied on an ICL mainframe for its processing, but the new system, QSP Financials, introduced new hardware into the equation and forced a review of how printing should be done.

Somerset wanted to retain its existing population of printers - including the Xerox 4050 that handled the bulk of high volume printing - and therefore needed to find a way of allowing the new system to share printers with the old mainframe.

Somerset called in IDS to advise on the creation of a local output management solution that would not only handle output from any processor, but would provide the council with an alternative to pre-printed stationery.

"We now have tremendous flexibility in the way we handle our printing"

IDS supplied Funasset's SpoolQ output management system that takes input from multiple hosts, archives the data for re-print capability, and automatically organises the workload into relevant queues ready for output to the printers.

The Council also took Funasset's FormServer module which allows users to design their own departmental forms on their local Windows-based application and have those designs stored on the SpoolQ system. This produces a flexible and cost effective method of printing at the point of use without the financial overhead of pre-printed stationery.

The solution was exactly what the Council needed. "We now have tremendous flexibility in the way we handle our printing," says Gary Dickins, Operations Manager for Somerset.

The local document composition facility has proved especially useful for the police, whose IT services are provided by Somerset County Council over a county-wide network. It means that if someone in one of the police departments wants to generate a purchase order, they can do it from their desktop and submit it to the Somerset system.

The data is sent to SpoolQ which selects the appropriate forms overlay and creates a PCL print file that is automatically routed to the user’s printer, complete with form.

It means there is no need for pre-printed stationery and no need for the data centre operations staff to be involved in the process. Data from the mainframe also goes through SpoolQ, which strips out the VME generated banner page and replaces it with Somerset County Council's own banner page providing a standard across all output.