Francis Dion on Document Output Automation

Commentaries from AIIM2010

Hello all!

Just a quick from the AIIM 2010 conference that is just wrapping up here in Philadelphia. We are very excited to report that Forrester's Craig LeClair, one of the foremost analyst on document output automation and client communication management, publicly said that Xpertdoc had a very impressive offering for Microsoft SharePoint and was the one to watch in this space.

I will add other notes from the conference in the next few days, so be sure to come back!

Francis Dion

Customer Communication Management

Deb Smallwood - founder of Strategy Meets Action (SMA), a Boston-based firm that provides analyst and consulting services to the insurance industry - comments on the challenging conditions for insurance industry players today and the increasingly demanding requirements from their customers:
 
"In our recent research effort into the current challenges for insurers in North America, we uncovered the key initiatives all insurers should be considering. 'The Top 10 Imperatives For Insurers' summarizes our findings from 100’s of hours of interviews with insurers. One top focus is the need by insurers to holistically link their customer communication management (CCM) efforts. This initiative revolves around integrating voice, data, and paper interactions with all channels and processes across the enterprise.  Managing document creation and output is an essential aspect of CCM, with many insurers looking to upgrade their current legacy technology with modern solutions available in the marketplace. Insurers need to address their communication strategies and document output technologies right now if they want to stay competitive."

Here's the link to SMA's study: https://strategymeetsaction.com/our-research/

Insurance Technology

Xpertdoc was at the 2010 P&C InsuranceTechnology Conference hosted in Toronro Ontario, February 22: 

 

This year's focus was a marked shift from previous years that typcially guided carriers on how to deal with the tough economic climate.

This year, the shift in focus was towards preparing for the future growth coming to the industry. A recurring theme across many sessions focussed on how carriers and suppliers need to address the need for real-time delivery. The conference theme - “Real Time Insurance: Agile, Integrated and Aligned” sums up the key message from the various sessions: that firms need to ensure their processes and systems provide an environment in which the business can react rapidly to the ever-changing face of its consumers. 

 

On the topic of Customer Communication Management, there was an emphasis on the shift carriers are making towards having to manage multi-channel communications that must deliver greater client satisfaction, reduced costs and improved efficiencies. While most insurers have old legacy technologies in highly complex environments, the constraints of these systems do not address the present realities faced by insurers, nor do they allow for strategic growth in the coming years. Relevant new platform technologies are available with sufficent industry installs to prove their viability and value. Firms should consider shifting to these future-proofed solutions that will not only address the constraints of legacy systems but provide scalability and configurability to the changing landscape for carriers.

 

http://www.insurance-canada.ca/seminars/seminar20100222.php

 

Varsha Bhat, March 2010

i4i ruling is of no consequence to Xpertdoc and users of Xpertdoc’s technology

A recent injunction regarding a patent held by Toronto-based i4i is forcing Microsoft to withdraw a specific feature from Word licenses sold to the United States. As this story unfolds in the headlines, we thought it would be a good idea to clarify what it means – or more specifically, what it does not mean – for Xpertdoc’s clients and partners.

Let’s start with a little bit of background. Gray Knowlton wrote an excellent piece on which part of the Word software functionality is impacted by the litigation, and which part isn’t.

 

In a nutshell:

-   Xpertdoc makes extremely clever and unique use of a powerful feature called Content Controls which is not impacted by the i4i litigation.

-   Xpertdoc does not use the Custom XML Tags which are subject to the recent injunction.

Furthermore, we have been gearing up for months now for the upcoming Office 2010 release from Microsoft. Our Xpertdoc Designer software works completely and beautifully inside Word 2010, including in the latest beta release which does not contain the piece being disputed with i4i.

Finally, we are as always working very closely with Microsoft to ensure our clients and partners can safely benefit from all the productivity and business agility enhancements provided by the latest innovations from both of our firms.

Better Together – A tale of SharePoint, InfoPath, CRM... and Xpertdoc!

The power of a great platform is that it allows you to achieve amazing results quickly and easily. As a case in point, I would like to describe to you this monthly client reporting process that was recently implemented by our professional service team.

Requirements

Monthly activity reports are sent to clients to let them know of what happened in their projects, what cases were opened and closed, what is the status of their bank of hours, etc. Done manually, this was a tedious and error-prone system that was challenging to complete in a timely manner following each month’s end.

Technology Featured

DOVICO Timesheet

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Microsoft Office SharePoint System (MOSS)

Microsoft InfoPath

Microsoft Word 2007

Xpertdoc Designer

Xpertdoc Document Output Portal

Usage Scenario

-   At month-end, client reports are automatically generated in Microsoft Word and stored in SharePoint.

-   Account Managers validate the reports. Edits are tracked seamlessly as document versions.

-   When Account Managers are done, emails are sent to the Practice Manager with an hyperlink for reviewing the documents and another one to a form for accepting or rejecting it.

-   Once accepted, the document is automatically converted to PDF using Xpertdoc Document Converter, and then sent to the client using Xpertdoc Relational and Transactional Email solution.

Workflow diagrams

 

 

SharePoint 2010 Key Highlights

SharePoint is undeniably one of Microsoft’s most successful products; one that Rob Koplowitz of Forrester says has striking resemblances in its impact to what the PC did for the Redmond-based company a few decades ago.

The 2010 release of this powerhouse collaboration platform takes all the good things that were already present in earlier releases and literally pushes them to the next level. Here is a quick recap highlighting some of the most significant of these improvements:

-   Improved Data Access

From web services to REST to the Business Connectivity Services and WSRP, enterprise developers now have vastly improved means of accessing and working with data captured into or exposed through SharePoint.

-   SharePoint Designer coming of age

Now freely available and incredibly improved, this add-on tool allows non-programmers to develop SharePoint sites quickly and easily.

-   More deployment and usage scenarios

Better support for Intranet, Extranet and Internet scenarios, improved wikis and blogs, etc.

-   Search

Much improved search, indexing and taxonomy capabilities.

-   Server Document

True collaborative authoring becomes a reality, with multiple users able to seamlessly edit the same document, at the same time.

-   Office Web App

New options to visualize and edit Office documents.

-   Server-based printing and conversion

This one is especially dear to us for it is such a natural extension to our industrial-strength document output technology. It offers similar capabilities to Xpertdoc’s own, field-tested, Document Converter and Fulfillment products, with probably a slight performance edge in our favor. We’re thrilled to see this new offering from Microsoft and are gearing up to support it through our comprehensive management environment and user-friendly interface.

Got questions regarding these and other SharePoint features? Send your questions to [email protected] and we’ll be happy to help if we can.

Competitors all agree: Xpertdoc is Simply the Best!

One of the nice surprises of this last SharePoint conference was to see how concerned the competition is with our rapid progress and the traction we are gaining in the market. At least three other vendors went through all sorts of tactics and contraptions to deal as best they could with the disturbance we are creating. Here’s a sample of the behavior we witnessed:

-   Downplaying and misrepresenting our capabilities

-   Sneaking into our booth while we were away

-   “Discretely” taking pictures of our amazing user interface

-   Coming to our booth, asking questions with their arms crossed over their name tags hoping we wouldn’t figure out who they were.

I guess the winner in this odd contest was this company founder and co-exhibitor who elected to pose as a representative from another non-descript company, apparently putting more value to spying on us than to connecting truthfully and meaningfully with clients and partners.

Interestingly,  these guys publicly confessed to working their staff at 20-hour day just to play catch-up with us!  While they seem to think there is some kind of a feature war between us, we are quite content to focus our energies on helping OUR clients win THEIR battles with our best-of-breed, trend-leading technologies. The most recent case in point: APPQ receives top-10 placement in the INNovators 2009 Award after our Insurance Management and Claims Processing Solution allowed them to reduce costs by 50% and increase productivity by 20%.

That, they truly can take to the bank!

Office 2010

Earlier this month I had the privilege of attending the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana (great food, great music, friendly people :-).

The most interesting information I got there was news about the upcoming Office Web offering and Word Services.

Scheduled for public release sometime in 2010, the Microsoft Office Web Apps will open up a host of new possibilities for genuine Word document creation and editing on the road and over the web. This will be especially great in conjunction with the subdocument feature of Xpertdoc Designer - that allows light clients to provide rich content when filling portions of enterprise-governed templates. My hope personally is that it will spell the end, once and for all, of the antiquated RichText format that is still prevalent in many web-based solutions.

Another exciting feature is the rich capabilities enabled by the upcoming SharePoint Word Services. Much like Excel Services today allow an Excel document residing on a SharePoint server to be updated without having to first download it locally, server-side Word documents will allow for pretty compelling collaboration scenarios. I have seen a cool demonstration where two writers work at the same time inside the same document. As one of the writers starts editing a specific paragraph, the other one receives a real time visual cue indicating that this section is currently locked by his colleague. Once the first writer commits his changes to the server, the second one has the opportunity to synchronize his view to see and work from the modified document.

  

Another cool capability is when a primary writer assigns tasks to her colleagues right from within the document she’s working on. The assigned portions of the document actually look like SharePoint or Outlook tasks, complete with assignee, due date and current status. The collaborating colleagues receive the task notifications and, once they’ve completed their assigned tasks, the primary writer can, with a single click, integrates everyone’s sections, proofread them and finalize the output. Looks like these scenarios might finally bring collaborative document authoring to a much needed “next level”.

Vive le Québec!

Today June 24^th is Quebec National Holiday.

Here are a few quick facts about us:

Quebec is a province (similar to a State) of Canada.

We are located in the North East quadrant of North America, a little over one hour flight from New York.

Google Map Link: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Montreal+Qu%C3%A9bec&sll=49.325122,-72.158203&sspn=51.538977,77.431641&ie=UTF8&ll=39.774769,-79.628906&spn=59.303575,77.431641&z=4

Primary spoken language here is French, although most of us, especially in business settings, are fluent in English.

Montreal, our largest city, is renowned for its “joie de vivre” and overall quality of life, with an exceptional mix of cultural and linguistic diversity.

Quebec benefits from lots of national resources, including clean hydro-electricity. It also has a unique pool of creative talent, from lead singer Celine Dion to Cirque du Soleil to a thriving software industry and world class game designing excellence centers.

Oh, and it is also the home of Xpertdoc Technologies Inc., global provider of document output solutions with a primary focus on the insurance industry… and proud to be “Québécois” J

Windows 7 Release Candidate

The RC (“Release Candidate”) version of Microsoft Windows 2007 is available since April 30, 2009. This is an important milestone in bringing to the general public the much anticipated update to this desktop operating system (OS).

 OK, what’s the deal?

Windows 7 might very well be the first OS in history to have LOWER system requirements than its predecessor and to actually run FASTER on similar configurations. According to Microsoft’s own development team, “this time, they got it”. Although it provides the usual bunch of user interface improvements and goodies, Windows 7 is simply a leaner, faster and more robust evolution.

Yeah, but what about what really matters?

Since you are like me fanatical about automated document output, you’ll share my enthusiasm about this feature improvement oddly overlooked by most other reviewers: With Windows 7 comes a new release of WordPad (a basic but free text processor) which now supports the Office 2007, OpenXML standard, DOCX file format.

We’ve tested WordPad with a Word document containing killer features (to the left), with reasonable results (to the right).

 

WordPad did very well with standard text formatting and images, OK with the table (losing some of its format) and could not handle headers, footers, table of content and charts. Still

Going back to Windows 7, should I install the RC?

Although the Release Candidate is impressively solid and stable, I do not recommend you install it on a production computer. Unless you really like toying with computers and living (somewhat) dangerously, you’re better off waiting for the general availability scheduled for October 22, 2009.

Windows 7 Official Web Site:

Download page for the RC

Minimum System Requirements:

1 GB of RAM for the 32-bit version

2 GB of RAM for the 64-bit version