DCL's format review phase is unique in the industry, but we feel it's critical to the quality of the finished product. Other vendors promise parseable SGML, but we found that parsing isn't enough. If a magazine editor sent all of his articles to a copy editor for spell checking and grammar checking, but never looked at them himself, he would soon be fired. We feel that a conversion service should have the same responsibility to make sure the data is correct, not just parseable. As mentioned above, conversion is not simply a matter of dropping off your old data and picking up finished documents.
Conversion is a team effort.
Even after the converted material is received, there is additional work for the client. As a publisher, Joe is very demanding about his documentation. A final, thorough review is done by his own staff. Without a format review, customer cleanup can be a long and costly process. And unless you provide feedback throughout the process, you may find that your data is perfectly valid, but does not meet your needs.