Review - Selecting a Vendor
From Working EDRM
There are many factors that need to be considered when selecting a third-party vendor for the review portion of your electronic discovery project. Optimally, the vendor requirements are detailed during the initial planning phases of the project and the vendor of choice is involved in – or possibly even charged with the collection, forensic analysis and restoration portions of the project. The more involved your vendor of choice is in the overall development and execution of the project, the smarter and more prepared they will be regarding your needs and requirements.
Considerations when selecting a vendor include the financial condition and longevity of the firm to the breadth of their services, the methodologies behind their technical processing and the experience of their project managers. The first and foremost consideration when selecting a vendor is to assure that you have a clear understanding of the goals and objectives of the review: What exactly are you trying to accomplish for your client? Which vendor most adequately and efficiently meets those needs?
Section I of our report, Planning the Review, outlines the various planning decisions and objectives that need to be determined in order to foster an effective review process. Once those objectives are established, the selection of a vendor should focus on identifying the vendors that will help you succeed.
There are several high-level choices to be made when examining a review platform the for your document review. Should you go with a native format vs. a TIFF/PDF format or should you perform the review through an online system or on an in-house platform? Other factors to consider include the functionality available within the platform, IT issues and cost considerations as well as vendor reputation, reliability, scalability and security. We will examine each of these areas and provide you with some tools and guidelines to assist you in making an effective decision.
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Contents
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Online v. In-House
A critical decision in your vendor selection process is to determine whether you are performing an in-house review, that is, using an application that is loaded and supported within your internal network, or if you are using an online, or web-based review tool with hosting provided by a third-party vendor.
Software vendors, responding to the demand for better ways to manage and present evidence, have developed off the shelf solutions that litigation firms can leverage instead of trying to build the solutions themselves. The top in-house litigation support systems all have their pros and cons. It is essential that each firm carefully select the system best suited for the type of litigation the firm handles the most. Standardizing on one of the systems will provide the ability to implement standard policies and guidelines for conducting electronic reviews. Many firms have standardized on more than one system to provide them with the ability to scale up, or down, regardless of the size or type of case that comes in the door. In-house legal departments have an opportunity to standardize on one of these systems allowing for better control of what gets turned over to outside counsel for review
This type of endeavor involves a significant up-front investment and the following may need to be acquired:
- Scanning, coding and OCR software and hardware
- Electronic data processing software
- Document repository and review tools
- Adequate storage and file space on the corporate network
- Trained staff and ongoing support
Another option is to go with a web-based or online review tool. These systems typically allow access through any internet browser. While an online tool offers less direct control over the project, it does offer increased flexibility as there are a multitude of vendors on the market with different review features and functionality that can be matched to the needs of your matter. Most online vendors will provide the full range of services needed to scan, code, process and load your data into an online repository and make that system available through a secure web site. Added security may be enhanced through the use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or Secure Socket Layer (SSL).
There are an increasing number of vendors that offer the best of both worlds – providing you with an in-house software application similar to their online environment. Depending on the nature and size of the case, you can use your in-house tool, or migrate to their online system seamlessly at any point in the project.
The volume and format of the documents collected for review will often dictate where the repository will be hosted. Also, the distribution of the review team will determine whether or not the repository needs to be hosted on an enterprise wide area network, on a Citrix type system, or on a secure extranet. Every firm has limitations to what it can host internally. Items which need to be considered to determine if the project will be hosted internally or by a third party include the following:
- Who will need access? Different organizations have policies which might prevent other organizations any access to its network. With a multi-party litigation, it may be necessary to use a web-based system to allow all parties equal access to the data.
- Timing - hardware/ software/ and security may not be able to be established in time for the needs of the review.
- Expertise - there are companies who manage the workflow of a review and if your firm is new to the process it could be a good help to utilize a third party’s experience.
- Staffing - needs for reviews can cause peaks and valleys in resources needed. Planning for this in a review process can be managed by using a third party hosting company.
- Support & Training - Be aware that availability of ongoing support and training is a critical factor to consider. If you choose an in-house product, you will need to dedicate time and resource to upgrades to the system and additional user and administrator training. By contrast, any top tier vendor will offer on-going training, support, and 24 hour customer service.
- Security & Infrastructure - can the firm’s internal network handle the proposed amount of data and users estimated for the project?
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Native v. TIFF/PDF
Historically, most ‘electronic’ review was done using a TIFF or PDF image of the document. The electronic data was converted to an image, the text and metadata may also have been extracted and entered into a database so that the documents were searchable and the reviewers would look at the rendered image.
Today, most electronic discovery vendors provide the ability to perform your review in a TIFF or PDF format, and several vendors also provide a review platform that allows you to convert the data to an image (TIFF/PDF) if you so chose, but also keep a link to the data in its ‘native’ format, if native format review is desired. When we speak of a native format review, we mean retaining documents in their native application (MS Word, MS Excel, etc.) and reviewing the documents on a platform that allows you to view the document from within that program or with a generic viewer rather than converting the documents to an image file.
Vendors who offer review within the native format must retain the integrity of the native file so that the review does not cause any spoliation of the underlying native file. This is typically done by extracting the metadata and text of the file into a database for searching purposes and retaining a link to the native file in a read-only format. These safeguards may not be in place if you review documents natively from your workstation. The mere act of opening a document may change pertinent metadata, so be cautious and understand the differences between a ‘native review’ through an electronic discovery vendor and a native review performed on unprocessed files at your workstation.
Email files are typically not retained in their native format but may be handled in several different ways with most vendors converting email files to html or a plain text format, while keeping the email attachments and file system data in their native format. Because relationships between emails and attachments must always be maintained, reviewing e-mail in a format that preserves the metadata, conversation threads and attachments is most desirable.
To address the inherent difficulty in making sure that every reviewer’s hardware has all of the necessary applications properly loaded on their workstations in order to view the native documents, many vendors also offer the use of a generic ‘viewer’. These viewers (such as QuickViewPro) convert the native document to a plain html format that can be viewed in any browser or within the viewer itself. This eliminates the need to have the application loaded on the workstation.
This issue can also be eliminated by having all documents converted to a standard image format, such as TIFF or PDF. A benefit of this type of review is that they may reduce the amount of time it takes to open and close the applications as the reviewer moves through the documents.
There are pros and cons to each of these review formats. Using an electronic discovery vendor whose system keeps the documents in their native format during review provides these benefits:
- It saves the time and expense of converting the entire dataset to TIFF/PDF prior to review, thereby saving the cost of imaging documents that are not going to be produced.
- It allows you to see and review data that may not appear in some types of images such tracked changes, formulas and hidden rows or columns.
- It ensures that potential spoliation from inadvertently opening a native file is eliminated.
Conversion to TIFF/PDF for review provides these benefits:
- It gives reviewers a standard, locked in formatting for all documents.
- It gives you control over what metadata, and hidden information is produced to the opposing side.
- Click through rates from document to document may be faster.
- Documents are in a production ready state so production timelines may be reduced.
It should also be noted that if you choose to perform a purely native review, and then produce in a TIFF or PDF format, you should ensure that your reviewers examine the documents fully including hidden rows, columns, headers, footers and track changes. This information may be exposed in an image production so you must be sure that it is reviewed for privilege. A TIFF/PDF production from native documents may take longer to perform if there are conversion issues, or a high percentage of large spreadsheet files.
Many vendors are now offering TIFF-on-Demand service which generates a TIFF/PDF image as soon as the user requests it. This process can greatly speed up the production process as well as instantly provide an image for redaction. Some vendors also generate image files during the initial processing and offer access to both the native and the image within their platform.
There are no clear cut rules surrounding the choice between native vs. TIFF. Rule 34b of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure states “A party who produces documents for inspection shall produce them as they are kept in the usual course of business or shall organize and label them to correspond with the categories in the request.”
This would seem that parties would be required to produce natively, but the courts have long accepted alternative formats, include TIFF/PDF images as long as the ‘text’ of the documents is provided in a searchable format. In Zakre v. Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6026 (S.D. N.Y., April 9, 2004), the court addressed the right to request a certain file format. The court found that the defendant was not obligated to provide more than a text searchable format.
The native vs. TIFF/PDF decision may be driven by the requirements of your production. If the requesting party has asked you to produce in a native format, it may not be a wise choice to convert everything to TIFF/PDF first, only to have to revert back to the native format for production purposes. On the other hand, you might have more control over your production if your images are in a uniform converted format.
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System Functionality
The features and functionality provided by the review platform is probably the most important factor when selecting your vendor. If you have done your homework and took the time in your planning process to define your requirements and review strategy the selection process can be performed systematically. Frequently, a matrix defining the essential requirements can be used when comparing vendors and can greatly simplify the decision making process.
The following outlines some of the basic review features that need to be included in a review system and questions to ask the vendors regarding their functionality:
Tag, Code or Annotate the Documents
This may be simple Responsive, Non-Responsive and Privilege coding, or in-depth subjective coding. The system should allow you to create your own coding scheme and apply it to the documents loaded into the system. Some questions to ask are:
- Can the administrator add codes as needed?
- How many codes can be used?
- Can emails be coded separately from their attachments or are the bound together?
- Can we do batch coding of, or batch delete coding from, a large group of documents?
- Does the system provide tools or safeguards against inconsistent coding?
- Can you auto-code duplicates with the same code? If so, is there a way to apply an exception to a particular document(s) and how are family sets handled?
- Can you enter attorney notes and are they searchable?
- Can documents be highlighted?
- Can documents be easily redacted online?
Search
The review platform must allow basic Boolean or other robust searching of the text and metadata of the documents. Phrase, proximity, wild cards, concept, fuzzy, near-dupes and other types of search tools are beneficial, but their importance will be determined by your review strategy. The system should also allow you to sort your results by various criteria such as date, custodian, and subject line.
Organization Tools
Organization tools to create and assign folders or review sets to attorney review teams. The ease and simplicity of creating logical sets of documents to assign to reviewers is essential. You should ask:
- Can the administrator create their own logical review sets?
- Can the administrator easily assign these review sets to a user?
- Can the administrator monitor the progress being made on each review set?
- How many review sets can be generated in the system?
- How many can be assigned to a single reviewer?
- Can access to a review set be secured from other reviewers?
Integration of Electronic and OCR/TIFF Data into the Same Platform
Most discovery projects have both paper data as well as electronic. Identifying a vendor whose platform can handle both formats will allow you to centralize your review in one place.
Production
Your vendor must be able to meet the production requirements as determined by your overall strategy. Most vendors can produce TIFFs or PDFs, but some productions now require native productions or load files for Litigation Support databases such as Concordance or Summation. If that is the case, be sure to fully understand the capabilities of the vendor around generating native documents. Many of these issues will be covered in more depth in the Production module, but you should factor in these issues when selecting the review platform. Questions that should be addressed here include:
- Can the vendor handle TIFFs, multipage TIFF, PDFs or native productions?
- What type of load files does the vendor have experience generating?
- Do they have full Bates numbering and other branding capabilities?
- How do they handle native production of emails?
- How does the vendor handle attachments? And do they retain the connection to the email?
- Are the documents identified with any unique naming or numbering?
- Can the vendor create digital signatures or a simple hash of the documents to assure security?
- Can they reintroduce produced data back into the online review platform and provide production tracking?
- What is the turnaround time to complete a production?
- Can they handle multiple productions of the same data with multiple prefixes and bates numbers?
- How are files processed before they’re converted to TIFF or PDF (i.e. are columns expanded, print areas cleared, speaker notes produced)?
- How do they handle dates codes?
- Does the vendor support bringing the data in-house after the initial review is complete?
Redaction
Depending on your review requirements, redaction capabilities may be an essential feature for your review. If you are in a native review platform, be sure to understand the workflow the vendor uses to generate and post TIFFs for redaction purposes. Many vendors now offer TIFF-on-demand so there is no delay in getting the redaction accomplished.
During the production phase, you will want the text that has been redacted to be removed or hidden within the produced dataset. It is important to understand how the vendor handles this procedure.
Batch Printing, Download or Emailing
The system should have some functionality to print and/or share documents offline. Be sure to understand what capabilities you have available and any limitations or possible hardware or software requirements. Also ask if your documents can be printed with overlays?
Administrative Functions
Administrative functions in the system should include the ability to:
- Create new users and assign passwords
- Apply security to dataset as needed
- Generate review sets and dynamically assign sets to reviewers
- Monitor productivity of users
- Monitor review set completion
- Create your own production sets. If not, can you review the production sets prior to bates numbering?
Reporting
The review system should allow you to effectively manage and report on your review team and document set. These reports should be produced daily, or even better, a dynamic report generated through the administrative function in the system. At a minimum, it should provide the following reports:
- Daily User Productivity report that tracks volume of documents reviewed and tagged by each reviewer.
- Daily Documents Reviewed report to monitor volume of documents completed and volume remaining.
- Data reports breaking out the review data by multiple criteria: custodian, date range, recipients, etc.
- Search term frequencies reports.
- Production tracking reports.
- Privilege Log creation.
- Chain-of-Custody reports.
Joint Defense
If you are part of a joint defense group, you need to assure that the vendor you select can handle multiple parties and provide effective security to the data being used by multiple parties.
Other Review Features
Other review features that are not essential, but certainly beneficial may include:
- Hit highlighting
- Concept search
- Auto-categorization
- Email threading
- Email visualization tools
- TIFF-on-demand
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Metadata
The review platform of choice should provide access to the metadata contained in the documents. This is the case whether you are doing a native or TIFF/PDF based review. Depending on the nature of the case and the issues at hand, the metadata may be extremely important. Consider a situation where there is an allegation that an email has been altered or falsified. Analysis of the metadata for that email will verify where and when the message was sent, where and when it was received, and the size of the message.
Metadata is typically described as data about data. There are three sources of metadata. Most often we think of it as the operating system data that appears in Windows Explorer when you view a file list (title of document, date created, date modified, size, folder name, etc.) and the “Properties” of the document (original author, page count, template used to create, date printed, etc.). E-mail metadata contains even more information regarding the creation, forwarding information, delivery path and receipt of the email.
Metadata is also the data found in the body of the document such as comments inserted by the author or document deletions or revisions. This type of metadata is viewable in a native document with just a few mouse clicks. Depending on the review platform being used and whether you are viewing native documents, html rendered documents or TIFF/PDF files will impact your ability to access and review this information.
A review platform should not only accommodate the display of this data for review, it must also allow for searching of the data in conjunction with as well as separate from the text of the actual document. The system should also allow sorting by these fields for ease of organization and review.
Another issue to consider regarding metadata is the ability of the vendor’s platform to ‘normalize’ the metadata fields for ease of searching. A single document collection may have MS Word documents, MS Excel, Adobe PDF, MS Powerpoints, RTFs or plain text files as well as email. Each of these software applications contains metadata, but the naming conventions used for their individual metadata fields are not standardized.
To make things even more complex, different versions of the same application may also use a different naming convention. This may result in metadata fields with labels such as: Creation Date, Created Data, Created on, and Create date. Intuitively, we all know that these field names mean the same thing, but computers, as smart as they may be, are not that intuitive.
It is critical that the vendor’s platform or conversion process have the ability to normalize these field names and offer one aggregated date field for searching and sorting purposes. It is also imperative that the vendor retain the original naming convention so that when the data is produced, the original name can be used in the load file or other accompanying documentation.
Comments and revisions made to documents can be incriminating or exonerating, so ignoring them can be potentially damaging. Not only must be reviewed for responsiveness, but also for privilege. The review platform must allow this data to be easily exposed to the reviewers, either in a native application or in the accompanying data load file.
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IT Considerations
IT issues need to be thoroughly reviewed and discussed before selecting a online or in-house vendor so that you assure the system is compatible with your internal infrastructure (see Planning the Review). Any vendor should be able to provide you with a list of its system technical requirements so that you can review with your internal IT department.
Typically it would be necessary to have your internal IT group approve any software applications being installed within their network environment (an in-house solution) and they will likely have a standard evaluation process your selected vendor will need to go through.
It may not be necessary for an online vendor to go through a rigorous process since access is typically through your internet browser, but at a minimum you should discuss the following IT related concerns:
Disaster Recovery, Security and System Performance
Hopefully a catastrophe never happens, but you must be aware of the contingency plans your vendor has in place in case the unforeseen does occur. You need to understand the security around their physical plant, their employees and their data center. Questions to raise:
- How is the database architecture configured?
- How often are backups of the system taken?
- Where are these backups stored?
- What are the recovery procedures and costs for a recovery?
- What is your average downtime per month?
- For maintenance?
- For other outages?
- How are the systems monitored?
- Does the vendor provide a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for support, uptime, etc?
- How do you screen your employees?
- Is your physical plant locked at all times?
- What security is there on your internal data center?
- What security does the online system provide?
- How is access to the system granted and by whom?
- What security is available (Terminal Services, SSL, VPN or other)?
- How often are passwords required to be changed?
- What preventative measures are in place against hackers?
- What preventative measures are in place to prevent your data from being accessed or viewed by their other clients?
Configuration of Reviewers’ Machines
You need to understand if the vendors system requires any special hardware or software on the reviewers’ machines.
- Are there any downloads necessary in order to view or access the data (i.e. java applet, viewer, etc.)
- Are there browser requirements or configuration settings that need adjustment?
Internal restrictions
It is possible that your internal infrastructure may present some roadblocks to accessing the vendors system. If this is an in-house solution, you will need to work closely with your IT group as noted above. If it is an online, web-based solution, there may still be potential issues. Be sure to review these with your IT group and vendor.
- Does your IT group have any internal restrictions for viewing or accessing documents over the web?
- Does your internal document management system automatically intercept documents viewed through your web browser?
- If you are going to be printing and downloading documents, does your internal firewall have any restrictions that may impede the process?
- How does your virus checking software work and will it impact the viewing or downloading process?
In-house Support
Is your internal IT team available for user support to resolve these and any ongoing IT related issues?
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Vendor Considerations
There are many factors beyond price, processing capabilities and system features to consider when selecting a vendor. Of course you want a vendor that is knowledgeable, experienced and responsive to your needs, but you also want a vendor that is financially stable and is still going to be around two or three years from now when your case finally gets to court. The following outlines several key areas to examine during the selection process:
Experience, Stability & Longevity
How many years of experience does the vendor have and how many of those years were spent doing electronic discovery? Many print vendors have moved into electronic discovery fairly recently and may not have the depth of experience that you require (or want) for your project. Be sure to ask about the nature of projects they have been involved in, how much electronic data they have processed, what types of data they typically deal with, how they run their productions. Perhaps the most important step you can take is to get references for their electronic discovery projects and call those references for their input.
It is also important to understand the financial stability of the company. There has been some consolidation within the industry of late, and more likely to come. A pending merger or outside investment may distract the company from its core business. Be sure and understand how the company is financed and whether it is profitable, recently merged or perhaps even struggling. The bottom-line here is to be sure your vendor is going to be around for the entire life of your case.
Project Management Skills and Knowledge
The project managers, or in some cases account managers, who oversee the day-to-day work on your project are your lifeline into how the project is going. You should question the vendor about the project management team that will be assigned to your job. Find out who will be assigned; ask for information on their backgrounds. Determine how many years of experience they have, not only in electronic discovery, but in litigation support. What is the make-up of the team? Do the project managers have assistants who help with some of the day-to-day work? What technical support do they have to resolve technical issues? The manager should know and be able to work with your internal tools such as Concordance, Summation, IPro and other litigation support applications. Ask for a dedicated project manager for the life of the case to prevent turnover.
Your project manager should also be experienced in standard project management practices and techniques such as proper client communications, project tracking and status reporting. Ask how often you will receive status reports and set a schedule upfront if the project is predicted to be long and/or complex.
Depending on the nature of your project, your project manager may need to have fairly high level of technical experience. At a minimum, he or she should have easy and immediate access to IT personnel, developers or system engineers that can supply answers to your technical questions.
It may or may not be important to you where your project manager is physically located. As long as the vendor is willing to accommodate your work hours, this should not present too much of a problem, but certainly consider it during your selection.
Flexibility
Often the needs, direction, deadlines and deliverables may change during the course of the Review. It is essential that vendors are flexible and have a formalized change process in place to track and record changes made to the original specifications.
Support
The level of support you receive from your vendor is critical. Find out what the hours of support are and what it means when a vendor says they have 24/7 support. Does that mean you get a live person on the phone whenever you call no matter what time, or do you get an answering machine or pager? Every minute can be critical when you have a large review team working 20-hour days.
Who is going to answer the phone when you call? How knowledgeable is that person? Your dedicated project manager is not on duty 24 hours a day, so understand the chain-of-command and escalation policy and procedure when they are unavailable.
Obviously your vendor should be thoroughly knowledgeable about their own tools, but gain an understanding of how technical your vendor is – are they familiar with supporting applications like IConnect, SummationBlaze, Ringtail, Concordance or other applications normally used by your firm? This can only be helpful to you in the long run to work with a vendor that can provide advice across the board.
Finally, does the vendor have a service level agreement or its equivalent in place that outlines the specific level of support and procedures for the support team? If not, ask for one.
Training
Be sure and get satisfactory answers to the following questions regarding training from your vendor:
- What training does the vendor provide to you and your team?
- Does the vendor charge for training?
- Do they provide separate administrator training from reviewer training?
- Do they provide onsite training?
- How about ongoing training for new employees?
- How often do they release ‘new’ versions of their software and do you get training on the new features? Is there a charge?
- Do they provide training manuals that cover all aspects of their system?
- Does the manual provide definitions for the vendors’ specific terminology?
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Cost Considerations
The desired outcome of any electronic discovery investment should be a reduced discovery bill and the more expeditious completion of the discovery effort. Understanding the total cost of electronic discovery requires combining expenses from two primary categories: technology cost and attorney review cost. An estimated attorney review cost can be determined by multiplying the blended hourly attorney rate by the number of total hours required to review all material. The technology cost is the aggregate of fees associated with collecting, processing and hosting data in addition to any software expenses related to the review of documents. Project management and/or consulting fees related to this technology can be included in the technology cost.
An obvious factor in selecting the appropriate vendor for your electronic discovery review is the direct costs involved in choosing that system and the potential cost savings that can be gained through tools or features the system offers. The associated costs for collecting, restoring, processing and producing the electronic data are covered in those respective sections. Costs and cost savings associated with the actual review process or methodology may include:
Monthly Hosting or User Access charges
These charges could be based on factors such as:
- Per file
- Per megabyte
- Per page/image
- Per named user
- Per concurrent user
Project Management Fees
Project management fees charged by a third-party vendor may be extreme if the matter is complicated and you require daily assistance in administering the site. Be aware of what those charges are, monitor them closely and negotiate a flat monthly fee if possible.
Universal Viewer or Application Software
If files remain in their native format, either a universal viewer will be required that can render the file in a readable format to the reviewer, or the reviewer will require individual copies of each potential software application. While costs can potentially be minimized with a universal viewer, there may be technical limitations associated with such viewers. They may not have the capability to view the metadata or features such as hidden text, hidden rows, comments, embedded or linked graphics.
Impace of File Formats on Review Speed and Efficiency
The format of the files can also potentially affect the speed or efficiency of the individual conducting the review. Advantages in terms of speed, and therefore reduced costs, can often be realized if the reviewer works in a uniform environment. If they are continually working with TIFF/PDF images or renderings through a universal viewer they will become comfortable and familiar with the software features and controls such as page up/page down, end/beginning, zoom etc. This efficiency may drop however if a reviewer is in native applications and switching between spreadsheets, word processing files, databases, etc.
Redactions
Most review applications developed by litigation support vendors today include features that allow for blackouts or other redactions to be applied to the images that will ultimately be produced to opposing counsel. While some limited redaction features have recently become available for native word processing files, this is not the norm today. This represents both a technical and cost consideration for reviewing in native format.
Keyword Searching
Keyword searching can be used to automatically flag potentially relevant or privileged documents (or conversely to exclude documents that do not need to be reviewed). Examples would include searches on subject matter, mentioned names, date ranges, etc. Using these automated approaches can significantly decrease costs by either excluding a large percent of the population or increasing the efficiency of the reviewer by highlighting the terms in context. See the Emerging Technologies section for recent advancements in searching and organizing the data for review efficiencies.
Grouping Similar Document Types
Grouping of similar document types (contracts, drawings, reports) can also result in a quicker review process as the reviewer gains familiarity with the documents and understands what they are seeing. In addition to grouping on document types the system might also be able to group on attributes relative to the collection. In other words, all files collected from the Accounting Department can be funneled to one set of document reviewers whereas all files collected from the R&D Unit might be sent to other more technical reviewers. Familiarity, understanding of the information being presented and uniformity, all lead to increased efficiency and lower costs.
Training and Support Costs
Training and support costs charged by a third-party vendor should also be factored into the decision. Some vendors offer these services free of charge but some may charge nominal fees. Most vendors will charge extra for expedited or rush services, so planning ahead to contain those costs is essential.
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