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If your organization is still printing and distributing paper reports, it may be time to move that information online. In addition to saving time and money, the latest in report distribution software will help you out with security and compliance issues as well.

Business reports have been a source of scorn in many organizations. The "TPS reports" were a central theme of the 1999 workplace comedy Office Space, although viewers never learned what purpose they served, only that they needed cover sheets. The joke was funny, but in real life reports can become a costly issue.

Since the beginning of business report time, the printing and assembling of reports has been a process rife with inefficiencies. For one thing, few people read an entire report. It's more likely they stick to the information that is relevant to them. In large enterprises, vast print rooms that house printers used to create reports are still a common sight, despite software that collects and distributes content for a fraction of the cost.

"Many of them are doing excessive amounts of printing," said Alana Dzwonkoski, solutions support engineer for Cypress Corp. Cypress' Report Distribution Manager takes advantage of the traditional role of printers in the report process by presenting itself to enterprise applications as if it were a printer. The software dismantles a report into pieces and houses it in a generic format.

In addition to managing the output, Cypress can deliver the report in any number of ways. It could convert the report to a PDF and e-mail it to those who need it and prefer the traditional paper version, but all those attachments can clog up infrastructure.

"What we prefer to do, and what most customers prefer, it to provide a Web address," Dzwonkoski said. A universal viewer eliminates the need for licenses for different types of software to view the reports.

Cypress got its start doing output management for Unix mainframes. It started to develop software for Windows systems when Windows NT debuted. The company was recently acquired by ASG, a privately held enterprise software and professional services vendor.

ASG likes to tout a concept of "Total Information Ownership," which means getting the right information to the right people at the right time. According to Theresa Kollath, director of product management for content management at ASG, the company was looking for a content management solution that addressed output for mainframe clients. Because Cypress is not tied to any specific application, ASG sees the software as a tool that customers could use to help them battle information glut as more content goes online. "I see a move to needing to become more adaptable and more agnostic, so you're not tied to any platform or operating system," Kollath told Intranet Journal.

Cypress is used to gather report information from applications like SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, and any number of applications across all the major industry verticals. In the healthcare and insurance fields, audit trails are a necessity because of sensitive information. For compliance and audit purposes, Cypress reports are archived immediately and the software tracks who views the report, how they view it, and whether they print it or e-mail it.

Compliance is one of the three main benefits of automating report delivery, according to Steve Jones, director of infoWeb product marketing at Toronto-based Xenos. The other two advantages are operational cost reduction and improved efficiencies.

Like Cypress, infoWeb captures a printstream and sends it where it needs to go. "We had great technology in the transformation of printstream technology," Jones said. Then nearly four year ago, Xenos bought the technology for distribution from Rush Creek Software.

In a large implementation, such as printing customer statements, infoWeb can capture the printstream and convert it to a PDF from Metacode (a language understood by most Xerox printers). The software then breaks up the document and indexes it. Pieces of the document are then secured for delivery to certain individuals. The delivery can then take place through a Web portal using a SOAP API.

InfoWeb's process engine can deliver the printstream in several ways: as an e-mail, an e-mail attachment, a Web link, fax, FTP, or it can re-distribute the file to a local printer or file system. "The preference for delivery depends on people's function within an organization and their ability to receive," Jones told Intranet Journal. "When available, certainly the Web browser environment is preferable."

As the information in the document is indexed, infoWeb sets up rules for who has rights to view the information. The first task is to keep people from seeing what they shouldn't see. "We can ensure you are only seeing what you're allowed to see," Jones said.

Logs track how the document is delivered, and if it's in a repository, it records views of the document.

In early May, Xenos released version 5.1 of infoWeb. Where it formerly worked only with ASCII printstream formats, it now has the ability to handle multiple printstreams. It can work with PDFs and the printstreams for Xerox and IBM printers, making it easier to integrate disparate systems.

InfoWeb is now a full Web-based application with a Web-based administration interface. Other performance enhancements allow infoWeb to prioritize jobs, and index information and stream it to people. Extended delivery options allow for e-mail attachments and faxes. infoWeb can also can reach through a firewall to deliver to a portal.

Jones said he expects that in the future, paper reports will give way to information that is not just delivered, but actionable across all environments, from anyplace at anytime. Far from paper reports, he foresees a future that is less document-centric and more about data and information flow.

"Baby boomers are just happy to have an electronic document," he said. "Generation X wants to be able to work with it."