Pericles Finds a Print Solution

Local government now has an easier way to design printed output from ICL's Pericles suite

Local councils adopting ICL's new Pericles suite of applications now have a quick and simple way of customising their printed output, thanks to work done by Intergated Document Solutions (IDS).

The revolutionary new suite of software from ICL, which has already won its first orders with councils, runs on Windows NT and aims to streamline IT operations for local government users.

The Pericles system comes with Seagate's Crystal Reports bundled in with a set of pre-designed output templates, but these are unlikely to satisfy the needs of local government users, according to Mark Dowson, a consultant with IDS. "The problem is that most Councils want to customise their own output and to put on their own logos," he says. "To do that with Crystal Reports, they need to use Crystal Reports Developer, which requires extra investment and training."

"SpoolQ can send output to any nominated printer with specified design elements all in place" East Lindsey District Council, one of the first councils to adopt Pericles, overcame the problem with the help of IDS. Using SpoolQ from IDS, East Lindsey were able to use its own tried and tested document composition software, FormScape, rather than being obliged to use an unknown new product.

The IDS solution channels output from the Pericles database into SpoolQ, a Windows based output management application, and then through the FormScape package, which identifies the job and applies the appropriate print overlay. In this way, the users can send output to any nominated printer with their specified design elements (logos, bar codes, signatures) all in place.

"We can save money for Pericles users by allowing them to use existing forms design packages as the SpoolQ system presents the Pericles data in a useable format that can then be manipulated. Alternatively we can supply a flexible forms design tool as part of the solution," said Dowson.

To find out more about this article, or the products, services or solutions detailed within, please use the Contact Form

View more news articles