A Case for Document Assembly (Mail Merge)
A Document Assembly (Mail Merge) solution should provide information workers with a
set of tools that enable the creation of dynamic forms and rules to
gather information and use that information to automate the creation of
documents. Unlike traditional forms, Document Assembly (Mail Merge) should provide a
high degree of information-gathering flexibility. Because the native
file format for Document Assembly (Mail Merge) is XML the information gathered in
Document Assembly (Mail Merge) can easily be integrated with an organizations
databases and servers. This means that any information gathered with
Document Assembly (Mail Merge) can be reused by anyone or process in the
organization.
Document Assembly (Mail Merge) supports three main activities:
- Provides a robust, flexible, easy to use design environment that
enables the creation of Forms that information workers can use to gather
and store information.
- Provides an application environment in which information workers can
fill in forms quickly and easily.
- Can assemble this information to document templates
For example, Document Assembly (Mail Merge) can help improve the efficiency and accuracy of a
companys debt collection department. Before Document Assembly (Mail Merge) was available a
debt management officer that was in the process of sending demands to overdue
debtors had to manually create each correspondence entering the customers
details, amounts and other personal detail each time. This potentially
introduces errors and inconsistencies with previous correspondence. Further more
if the correspondence was for a 90 day account rather than a 30 day account then
the correspondence may require an optional clause citing extra penalties. This
is an example of a business rule that Document Assembly (Mail Merge) is perfectly designed to
manage.
Document Assembly (Mail Merge) can improve this error-prone and labor intensive process.
Using Form Designer users should be able to quickly and easily create an Account
Receivable Form containing the fields, logic and Document template containing
the actual correspondence and layout. The debt management officer can then use
this Form and Document template and enter the information into the form,
automatically linking from company data sources with customer account details.
They can then run the assembly (automation) process producing the document and if finding any
errors re-run the assembly (automation) process essentially re-assembling the document
without having to manually recreate the document.
The information collected by Document Assembly (Mail Merge) is now easy to reuse elsewhere in
the organization even though these may be in different systems and locations.
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