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.