Legacy Data Conversion

Many organisations have valuable assets in the form of the technical information used to support products. These products are invariably used for many years and their lifecycle may involve continuing change of documentation creation and management systems.  A significant event, such as the development of a new field-centric support environment or on-line spare parts ordering, can lead an organization to the realization that these valuable information assets need to be unlocked.

Identifying Customer Needs

Technical information may exist as paper or electronic formats which may have been developed over many years. These then have little consistency as methods and staff may have come and gone. This limits the scope of re-purposing the commodity to be used in the future. By converting this information to a consistent non-proprietary data structure, it is possible to make this information asset flexible enough to be re-used in different parts of an organisation. 

How We Can Help

Infomill’s team of experts analyse samples of your different document types and develop a series of conversion guidelines and standards to create the desired output structure. The source material – paper or electronic files – in a variety of formats is then captured using in-house and outsourced facilities. Infomill have created extremely robust relationships with leading partners that provide the capacity to cope with millions of pages of information. Of particular note is a pdf to XML conversion tool that Infomill has developed. This automatically generates structured text from industry-standard pdf – and automatically hotspot illustrations and link item numbers to associated parts lists.

Benefits

High volume technical data conversion forms one of Infomill’s core services and has been used by companies in verticals including aerospace, high tech, materials handling and HVAC. Infomill has provided cost-effective, quality services in accordance with our ISO 9001 accreditation.

Some examples include:

• Infomill provided high volume data conversion services for a major aerospace organisation for many years. Data as pdf, other electronic formats and hardcopy were converted to a consistent structure for use by airlines maintaining aeroengines.

• An on-going service was provided for a major electronics company requiring accurate product registration data capture.

• HVAC market leading product Gas PartsArena involves Infomill’s data conversion services to capture OEM data from multiple sources on an on-going basis.