DOCCM is Document Output for Customer Communications Management
A Forrester report entitled "Document Output For Customer Communications Management, Q2 2009" (see here for an excerpt) explored the capabilities of a sample of vendors and products in a very specific sector of the Document Automation space.
What the Forrester Report said
ActiveDocs Opus and DOCCM
"Enterprises today require flexible output solutions that empower business users, support multichannel output, personalize content, and provide rapid return on investment (ROI)."
ActiveDocs Opus empowers business users in the design, management, and use of Templates and shared content for a broad range of document creation needs (even beyond customer communication).
ActiveDocs Opus supports multi-channel, multi-format output to a range of storage options, with powerful rule functionality and data integration to ensure effective personalization.
ROI? Imagine 100,000 complex documents in one year. Imagine saving, with ActiveDocs Opus, just 1 hour per document in creation or rework. Every year, that's 100,000 hours, or more than 12,000 working days, or nearly 50 FTEs. What do your FTEs cost? Could you save a few million dollars like that?
"Communications...should be consistent visually (in terms of logos, images, and other brand elements) and content-wise (such as the degree of personalization, language, and contact information)."
ActiveDocs Opus achieves consistency through easy management of content, and sharing of common content like branding, logos and other images, presentation standards, and standard text.
A significant but often overlooked advantage of the ActiveDocs Opus approach is that you can respond very quickly to business drivers like regulatory and market changes.
Integration with your line of business data sources also improves consistency, as the risk of using incorrect information is significantly reduced. This means you can be confident that personalization, the language that you use, and the information that you present to your customers is as good as it can be.
"Movement to on-demand output comprises the second major market force...Rich Internet application (RIA) support, strong integration capabilities, and architectures that support real-time and straightthrough communications are important technology drivers."
Extensive integration and high throughput capabilities mean ActiveDocs Opus can be used for on-demand output from just about anywhere, with real-time output and straight-through performance.
"Enterprises are migrating to ondemand applications because structured output types (statements and bills) prove expensive, pose environmental challenges, and allow limited personalization."
ActiveDocs Opus fully supports both the on-demand and structured output models.
Structured output with ActiveDocs Opus doesn't need to be expensive. Document generation can be scheduled for low-demand timeslots, and powerful rule functionality means that only necessary documents are generated.
Structured output with ActiveDocs Opus doesn't need to be environmentally challenging. You may not always be able to avoid printing to paper and snail mail, but when you can, ActiveDocs Opus supports fax and email as well.
Structured output with ActiveDocs Opus allows maximum personalization. Powerful rule functionality and optional content means that no two documents need be alike. And if you're thinking about your legacy applications, ActiveDocs Opus can reinvigorate their output too.
"Many enterprises still rely on Microsoft Word templates with custom macros and mail merge to compose and generate correspondence. DOCCM squarely addresses this output and improves on traditional tools by enabling easier conversion and reuse for Web, print, and email."
Raw Word Templates with custom macros require IT skills for design and maintenance. The functionality is limited, and in use they are neither user friendly nor easy to deploy for programmatic document generation.
ActiveDocs Opus is designed for business users to take control of, and manage, design of Templates and common content via Content Manager.
ActiveDocs Opus Templates and Snippets are easily usable for user-driven or programmatic document generation, and mail merge processing is fully supported in both modes.
"Enterprises want to move DOCCM out of IT infrastructure and control and into the business process because reliance on more costly IT resources can affect significant ROI."
To reduce reliance on IT resources and longer update cycles, and to enable rapid response to changes in the business environment, ActiveDocs Opus is designed for business users to take control of, and manage, design of Templates and common content via Content Manager.
The underlying DOCCM infrastructure of servers, websites, and databases necessarily remains under IT oversight.
"A diverse range of roles and skills currently perform document design..."
ActiveDocs Opus has a flexible Design environment that allows different groups of users to design Templates, Snippets, and Data Integration.
The Design Approval feature means that other groups of users can approve content before it is published for use, ensuring quality and reducing risk.
"...Structured content, once overseen by IT, now gets input from marketing professionals, who provide design direction and elements for documents such as TransPromo statements."
ActiveDocs Opus is a highly effective Document Automation solution for the type of transactional documents that form the basis of TransPromo marketing.
ActiveDocs Opus delivers the customization and messaging management that underpins truly effective TransPromo marketing.
"Interactive content can benefit from a tailored front end that prompts the author and pulls in the correct form, product information, marketing message, or compliance language based on the author’s responses."
The ActiveDocs Opus Document Wizard provides a consistent interface for interactive document creation.
The Document Wizard allows form selection, contextual and dynamic rule-based variance and content selection, data validation, and integration with existing data sources.
"Interactive DOCCM products will make template management easier."
ActiveDocs Opus uses a component-based approach for creating intelligent Templates.
All ActiveDocs Opus Design Components are created, maintained, and managed via Content Manager, a desktop application that links with server-based Template repositories.
"[one named solution] for example, supports form fragments that can be assembled into document templates."
ActiveDocs Opus employs Snippet technology to share common content - both static and dynamic - across multiple document types.
Examples include page headers, page footers, standard address formatting, legal clauses, disclaimers, and terms and conditions.
Snippets are linked to Templates for document generation, and can also be used independently for ad-hoc document creation through the Microsoft Office Research Pane in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
"Vendors with proprietary authoring argue that their technology drives greater performance and avoids issues with version upgrades in Word. While Word is familiar to the author, often the DOCCM output processing engines are separate from composition tools."
The advantages of using Microsoft Word for authoring (Design) include the product's ubiquity and extensive formatting capabilities - and more importantly, not requiring users to learn another limited formatting tool.
With ActiveDocs Opus, you don't have "issues with version upgrades in Word". As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, we work ahead of the curve to ensure our products are always compatible with Word and other Microsoft technologies.
ActiveDocs Opus supports multiple output formats and channels, and the underlying XML of Word makes further repurposing possible with Opus' extensive integration and customization capabilities.
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