Manually creating customized communication documents like quotes, invoices, contracts, and reports is an inefficient process prone to human error. That’s why more enterprises today rely on business document-automation software like customer communication management (CCM) systems to simplify and accelerate document generation while enhancing accuracy. Solutions like Cincom Eloquence® CCM empower users to effectively manage high-volume customer communications across both digital and traditional channels.
If you’re considering implementing a document-automation solution for your organization, there are several key capabilities to evaluate during your search. Below, we’ll explore the must-have features you should prioritize and how they can transform document creation for your business.
Related: What Is Customer Communication Management Software?
What Is Document Automation?
Document-automation software streamlines the process of creating personalized documents like quotes, invoices, contracts, letters, and reports. It does this by pulling data from various backend systems and automatically populating pre-built templates to quickly generate documents customized for each recipient.
For example, a sales rep using Eloquence could instantly produce a detailed quote by having the automation tool pull the prospect’s information from the CRM system, the latest pricing data from an ERP or e-commerce platform, and discounts from a pricing database into a quote template. This assembles a customized, accurate quote document in seconds rather than the hours it may take to manually create quotes.
How Document Automation Works
Document automation solutions work by integrating with the various data sources in an organization like CRM and ERP systems. Users build templates for documents they frequently generate, embedding fields that link up with data sources.
When a document needs to be created, the automation software pulls data from connected enterprise systems to populate the template. This creates a customized document that can instantly be sent to the recipient. The automation tool handles rendering the completed document into any desired format like PDF, Word, text, email, and print.
Advanced tools apply additional logic and personalization, such as inserting paragraphs or images conditionally based on customer data. This further customizes documents at scale without added effort.
Must-Have Features in a Document-Automation Tool
When researching document-generation solutions for automated customer correspondence, make sure to look for these key features:
- User-friendly interface: An intuitive, simple interface allows staff across the organization to create templates and documents without relying on IT assistance. This makes adopting and scaling document automation much easier.
- Flexibility and customization: The ability to handle complex logic and data relationships ensures accurate, personalized documents tailored to each customer’s unique needs.
- Speed and efficiency: Automating document assembly should accelerate processes like insurance policies from weeks to minutes. This drives big productivity gains.
- Seamless integration: Tight integration with systems like CRM, ERP, and e-commerce provides easy access to data needed in documents for accuracy and customization.
- Strong customer support: Because document automation touches many business functions, responsive customer support ensures that users can get answers and guidance efficiently.
- Compliance capabilities: Tools with compliance features like automated legally required inserts, version control, and approvals help mitigate business risk surrounding sensitive or regulated documents.
Related: Why Is Customer Communication Important?
What Industries Can Benefit Most from Document Automation?
Virtually any document-intensive industry can achieve major ROI through automation. Top examples include:
- Manufacturing: Quote complex configured products faster while ensuring the accuracy of all configurations and pricing data.
- Healthcare: Build patient estimates and bills pulling accurate medical codes and health-plan details automatically from connected systems.
- Finance: Insert personalized disclosures, disclaimers, and t’s & c’s automatically into customer agreements by integrating with your systems.
- Insurance: Pull information into claim documents and easily stay compliant with any updates to required legal statements.
- Contracts: Link up with CRM data and product/service info to rapidly build quotes, contracts, and renewal notices.
If your teams handle a high volume of mission-critical business documents, chances are document automation can significantly boost your productivity.
Why Is User-Friendliness Important in a Document-Automation Tool?
Ease of use is one of the most critical elements to evaluate when selecting document-generation software. Because creating and managing templates requires no technical skills in a user-friendly solution, adoption accelerates across the organization. User-friendliness also minimizes the learning curve for staff and the need for extensive training. This results in faster time to productivity gains using the new automated approach.
How Document Automation User-Friendliness Enhances Organizational Capabilities
Business Users Can Create Templates Independently
Cincom’s Eloquence uses an intuitive template editor that works like everyday office software, allowing subject-matter experts in departments like Sales, Marketing, and Finance to easily build document templates without relying on overburdened IT staff. This frees up developer time and expedites template creation using insights from field experts.
Minimized Training Speeds User Adoption
When document-automation tools use familiar software interfaces like Word rather than complex, hard-to-learn editors, virtually no training is required for template creators. Staff can instantly start working using their existing software skills. This results in rapid user adoption across business units, maximizing the value of your investment.
An intuitive user interface multiplies the power of your team by removing technical barriers to template design and maintenance. This allows the field experts closest to documenting business processes to take ownership of optimizing those automated documents.
The Benefits of Flexibility and Customization in a Document-Automation Tool
While virtually any document-automation software can handle basic templates, the most powerful solutions provide robust customization during document assembly. Eloquence offers advanced tools built upon simple mail merge-type templates with additional logic and personalization functions like:
- Conditional sections, paragraphs, and images that appear based on customer data
- Complex if/then scenarios to further personalized content
- Data calculations
- Dynamic charts and graphs integrated into documents
This functionality ensures the highest level of document customization tailored to the unique needs of each customer.
How Does Flexibility Improve Business Document-Automation Tools?
Delivers Highly Tailored, Engaging Documents
When correspondence features relevant personalized content for each customer, engagement increases. For example, quotes with custom configurations and incentives based on purchase history prompt faster sales conversions. Or, renewal notices with policyholder-specific cost/benefit analysis promote customer retention.
Supports Complex Business Requirements
Some business documents require intricate relationships between data sets and systems that basic solutions cannot configure. Advanced tools bridge together enterprise platforms to transfer precision data into documents requiring multifaceted logic flows.
Future-Proofing through Configuration Instead of Coding
Simple solutions require hard coding of templates for enhancements like adding new conditional sections as business requirements evolve. Cincom’s powerful Eloquence CCM enables authorized staff to update templates through configuration alone. This minimizes reliance on IT skills to accommodate change.
While basic document generation has value, long-term success requires an enterprise-class automation solution capable of growing with sophisticated content demands down the road. Prioritizing flexibility ensures that your selected software can scale without forcing trade-offs later as document complexity increases over time.
How Can Customization in Document-Automation Tools Improve Business Processes?
Policy Renewals
By connecting a document-automation solution to policy administration systems in insurance, renewals can be exponentially more efficient. Agents can kick off personalized renewal packets in minutes instead of days spent manually checking details and generating individual letters.
Advanced tools can further customize renewals by automatically pulling in policy details, coverage explanations, and pricing breakdowns from integrated systems. Conditional content can remind customers of optional add-ons they declined previously. This degree of personalization ensures seamless, tailored renewal packages featuring the most up-to-date information that helps retain more customers.
Customer Onboarding
New customer welcome packets often involve the manual assembly of generic promotional literature lacking personalization. An integrated automation solution can build customized onboarding kits full of engaging content like:
- Account summaries with pending orders, ship dates, etc. from order systems
- Promotions like member discounts based on demographic data
- Conditional sections welcoming VIP customers
- Calculations like estimated yearly cost savings from member benefits
This level of tailored content gets new customer relationships off to an impressive, personalized start.
Considering the Speed and Efficiency of a Document-Automation Tool
Accelerating document turnaround is core to the value proposition of document generation software. The rewards of automation directly correspond to how much faster your staff can produce finished documents compared to manual methods.
When evaluating solutions, carefully analyze expected throughput. Quantify productivity metrics before and after automation using benchmarks like:
- Documents produced per employee weekly/monthly
- Template creation time
- Document generation turnaround time from request to sent
- Time spent correcting errors
This productivity and efficiency data will reveal exactly where automation introduces speed advantages over current manual processes.
How Speed and Efficiency Drive Productivity
By injecting automation into points of friction surrounding manual document creation, enterprises often yield substantial throughput increases long-term after accounting for optimizations. These dramatic gains result from:
Streamlined Processes
Automation eliminates inefficient aspects of manual document generation like:
- Staff bouncing between multiple systems collecting data needed to build documents
- Tedious retyping or copying/pasting of repetitive text and images
- Waiting for reviews and approvals of finished documents
- Searching through shared drives to access master documents
Automation orchestrates connected systems to feed data directly into templates for hands-free personalized document output. This streamlined process allows a single staff member to accomplish substantially more document output.
Error Reduction
Workers waste a considerable amount of time fixing preventable mistakes. Automation curtails errors stemming from manual data entry, outdated copied content, formulas, etc. This quality boost reduces the need to double check or reproduce inaccurate document drafts.
Productivity Multiplication
The combination of streamlined document creation plus higher output quality leads to exponential productivity gains. Staff relieved of tedious tasks can focus on higher complexity document types to drive even greater impact. Supported by automation, an employee can feasibly produce five or even 10 times more documents daily thanks to data-driven templates.
How Speed and Efficiency Result in Profitability and Sustainability
Beyond impressive productivity metrics, consider the tangible financial upsides introduced through efficiency gains from document automation.
Profitability
Accelerating document output directly generates revenue and reduces costs by enabling:
- Faster sales conversions finalizing quotes into closed deals sooner
- Increased order value as reps have time to develop more custom quotes
- Lower operating costs with smaller teams producing higher document volumes
Customer Retention
Customer loyalty strengthens when document turnaround times decrease. For example, clients receive quotes faster, policies renew promptly, and invoices are delivered on time. This reliability retains accounts that may otherwise defect to competitors seemingly more responsive to their needs.
Business Sustainability
By extracting more value from existing document creation staff instead of inflating headcount, enterprises gain sustainable leverage from their workforce year over year. Teams stay lean, focused, and effective thanks to automation multiplying individual employee productivity. Increased profitability funds business growth without the drag of administrative bloat that holds back competitors still reliant on manual processes.
When assessing document generation tools, calculating potential speed and efficiency lift will help build an accurate ROI model tied directly to your automation investment.
How Integration Features Affect the Value of a Document-Automation Solution
The effectiveness of a document-automation system directly relates to how successfully it draws data from existing business platforms into templates during document creation. Seamless, real-time connectivity minimizes manual efforts while enhancing accuracy.
Tight integration avoids teams constantly switching between discrete systems to assemble data required in documents. This fragmentation inevitably invites mistakes that reduce document quality.
The Importance of Integrating with Other Business Applications
At scale, superior integration amplifies a document-automation tool’s capabilities and optimizes benefit realization. Our Eloquence software enables easy connectivity through pre-built integrations and customizable APIs to link templates to any enterprise data source. This centralized access enhances efficiency by:
- Increased access to source data: Tapping into platforms like ERP, CRM, and e-commerce centralizes the real-time data needed to populate precise documents. This saves staff hours wasted tracking down inputs across systems.
- Multiplied customization ability: Connecting customer, product, and transactional systems allows for the inclusion of additional layers of personalization based on data like purchase history and demographics. This further tailors documents to each customer’s unique situation.
- Automated synchronization: Scheduling automatic sync between document templates and connected systems ensures that content always stays current. For instance, pricing updates in the commerce engine instantly flow to quote templates without any manual data entry.
- Risk mitigation: Compliance paragraphs required in documents often reside across multiple departments and legacy systems. Centralized templates drawing from integrated repositories future-proof accuracy as regulations change.
Robust integration amplifies document-automation benefits exponentially across an enterprise. Seek tools with APIs and connectors that simplify linking templates to data sources like CRM, ERP, and e-commerce platforms that underpin your business.
How Does Integration with CCM Software Enhance Document Automation?
Platforms like Cincom’s Eloquence CCM incorporate easy connectivity. This comes through pre-built connectors and APIs that smoothly integrate document functions with data sources essential for accurate customer documents, such as policy and claims systems. This seamless data syncing enhances speed, compliance, and overall ROI generated from the document-automation capabilities.
CCM systems serve as centralized hubs that connect to all the various customer touchpoints—print, email, web, chat, mobile notifications, and more. This presents a holistic view of all current communications fed by integrated data sources. Using built-in templating tools similar to standalone document generation systems, users can then create and manage templates that output documents needed to deliver across integrated channels.
CCM solutions take communications functionality much further by enabling:
- Omnichannel distribution from a single template
- Two-way communication flows tying back into data sources
- Automated rules-based journeys with multiple steps and conditional logic
While document outputs resemble standalone document-automation tools, CCM software contains additional communication abilities like personalization and built-in delivery mechanisms that boost effectiveness, particularly for customer-facing documents.
Why Strong Customer Support Is Essential in a Document-Automation Tool
Because document solutions touch virtually every customer-facing process, strong customer support ensures that users extract maximum value from the software long term. Vet potential document automation vendors carefully regarding the capabilities of their support teams and overall customer satisfaction rates. These indicators will directly impact your real-world experience using the software day to day.
How Good Customer Support Can Improve Your Document-Automation Experience
Responsive customer support makes a world of difference by helping administrators and users thrive while confronting inevitable questions surrounding configuration, customization and daily usage. See how exemplary support uplifts your document automation success:
- Accelerated onboarding: Dedicated reps guide new admins through optimal configuration, saving weeks of launch plans. Customized blueprints align tools tightly to specific business objectives based on industry best practices.
- Ongoing optimization assistance: Periodic tune-up check-ins help shape enhancements around updates to connected systems, new automation opportunities, and changing communication requirements. These insights multiply ROI continually.
- Technical troubleshooting: If integrations, templates, or workflows face interruptions, skilled teams quickly diagnose issues through backend system access, resolving more problems remotely and avoiding the need for onsite support dispatches.
- Product advice and training: For many applications, user manuals and help docs cover the basics. However, communicating complex business processes requires more strategic guidance. Seasoned customer teams interpret unique needs into workable templates and automation strategies.
A vendor committed to customer experience minimizes deployment risks and sustains value realization through extensive engagement models that proactively optimize productivity long after the initial setup.
Why Businesses Should Consider a Document-Automation Tool Provider’s Customer Support
Businesses should vet document-automation solutions for capabilities and viability on surface-level factors like features, price, and company size. However, what’s potential beneath the hood sits equally important: reliable support cementing enduring success.
- Customer retention rates: High customer longevity indicates solid support experiences overall, more so than competitive features or value alone. Longer customer retention spans signify that the vendor actively works to drive continued value from their software.
- Accessibility: Look for vendors with strong track records regarding response times, contact channels offered, and transparency in communicating status during issues. Even some advanced automation tools fail to address user needs rapidly without mature support programs to maintain uptime and continuity.
- Breadth/depth: While opening tickets for break/fix scenarios seems standard, probe how willing support teams engage in optimized adoption. For example, some vendors assign technical account managers to customers to provide strategic guidance on applying the software more innovatively as business needs evolve.
- Customer satisfaction: Ask vendors to quantify hard customer-satisfaction metrics over time. High customer-satisfaction marks confirm that support teams resonate with users’ needs. This positive reception continues at scale over years of working relationships. It should extend beyond early adoption stages when vendor attention typically peaks on new installations.
Beyond system features and capabilities, businesses should factor real-world support reception into their selection processes. Document lifecycle impacts across an organization depend on consistent, high-value vendor/customer collaboration, empowering users to extract full utility from automation tools in the long term.
Leverage Superior Document Automation with Cincom’s Eloquence CCM Software
Not all document solutions provide the same ROI and impact for complex business communication requirements. For document-intensive enterprises like manufacturing, financial services, insurance, and more, only advanced tools deliver automation capable of transforming productivity.
Cincom’s Eloquence offers enterprise-grade CCM proficiency, wrapping robust document automation within comprehensive capabilities and managing complex customer interactions across digital channels.
Key benefits include:
- Intuitive business user interface: Our Eloquence software allows anyone in your business to quickly design templates and manage document libraries without IT help using an interface similar to familiar mainstream office software.
- Broad integration ecosystem: Pre-built connectors simplify linking Eloquence to vital data sources like policy administration, claims, and billing systems essential for populating accurate documents and legal statements.
- Omnichannel distribution: Output finished documents from a common template across delivery mechanisms spanning email, text, web portals, chat, and print.
As the speed of business accelerates, meeting customer demands depends more than ever on responsive, personalized communications as part of every touchpoint and transaction. Manual document creation bottlenecks this progress. With Eloquence, you can say yes to more business and no to unnecessary complexity slowing critical communications that hinder customer experience and revenue velocity.
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FAQs
What is document automation and generation?
Document automation is the use of software to automatically create customized documents like quotes, invoices, contracts, policies, and reports by drawing data from information systems to populate templates. This eliminates tedious manual formatting and data entry traditionally needed in document creation.
What features should you look for in document-automation software?
Leading solutions that can handle complex business requirements should have features like:
- Easy-to-use template editors requiring no coding
- Tight integration with data sources
- Ability to apply advanced personalization logic
- Cloud-based for accessibility
- Compliance capabilities
- Strong technical support teams
What are the benefits of document automation?
Major benefits include:
- Faster document turnaround (from hours, days, or weeks to minutes)
- More personalized, engaging documents
- Elimination of errors from manual processes
- Increased productivity
- Reduced operational costs
- Better customer experience
What is customer communications management (CCM) software?
CCM software helps manage the entire lifecycle of both inbound and outbound communications across all channels to customers. A key capability is document automation, tied directly into delivery and analytical tools to optimize two-way customer interactions using personalized content.