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Stay ahead of the game in 2023 with the ultimate guide to document automation. Learn about the latest trends, tools and tips to streamline your workflow.
Document automation of all types – contracts, sales proposals, employee contracts, order forms, and much more – is the basic to doing business, no matter whichever industry you are working in. But because the creation of the new document usually consumes around 50% of a knowledge worker’s day, documentation can be a source of bottleneck and inefficiencies.
Streamlining the document creation offers a lot of opportunities for businesses of all kinds to not only save time but also make sure that it will improve workflows and better accuracy as well. This is what document automation is all about in today’s scenario.
Document automation is a very wide term that refers to the design and the use of workflows and systems that assist in the creation of electronic documents. Moreover, this entire process of document creation has also commonly been referred to as document assembly or document generation.
Moreover, the document automation tool assembles new documents by filling in a template with the help of pre-existing data, either being pulled from an outside source or entered by the user with the help of a questionnaire. Any conditional or variable text within a document – such as dates, names, and figures is highly populated throughout the document or even with a set of documents by the software, which allows quick and easier document creation.
Document automation is, as of now is, not a new concept. It has been around in different forms for decades. Furthermore, organizations that want to automate their document creation process either code an in-house solution for installing costly on-premises software or hire a proper consultant to help them get it up and running. As a result of which, in its early days, document automation was limited mostly due to large organizations and legal and financial services firms.
Over the past few years, there has been a high explosion of new document automation solutions serving the different sets of markets and different niches as well. With more and more organizations adopting cloud-based software solutions, integration between these apps via the APIs has allowed the organizations to automate the whole document workflows, starting from creation and review to sharing, storage, and collecting signatures.
As the types of documents organizations work with, vary greatly, so do the document automation solutions as well. Small businesses may only need a simple solution to fill out the proposals and contracts, while large organizations or financial services companies need the software that can help to automate the creation of the large documents sets involving the clauses, calculations, and conditions too.
So, in this guide, we will explain document automation in much more detail, and we will also discuss who can benefit from it.
What is document automation?
When it comes to document automation is the latest development in wider technical trends known as electronic document management (EDM). Document automation which is also known as document generation or document assembly software means creating a new document by populating a document template with data.
A document template is a framework for how a final document should be easily produced. Final documents can sometimes take the form of a PDF.
Document generation
Document generation is the process of creating new documents with the help of a document creation tool. This even occurs when you input any of the custom data into the appropriate template. For example, if you are generating a sales proposal, the data you input may include the customer business, name, and the size of the sale, while the template may be a standard sales proposal document.
Document generation is also a subset of the overall document automation process and can also be used to create any number of personalized and even distinct documents from a single template.
Who can benefit from document automation?
Nowadays, as document automation tools have become more widespread – thanks to greater simplicity and easy adoption to any organization that uses standardized documents can benefit from them. Moreover, those that will gain the most from implementing document automation solutions are in the industries with document-intensive workflows.
Lawyers
Lawyers generally used to spend a great deal of time drafting contracts and some other legal documents, tasks that can be complex and time-consuming too. Because these documents are often boilerplate – with only specific details changing in each instance, they are even perfect candidates for automation.
Perhaps more than any other professional group, lawyers can also benefit from document automation. Software and some other online tools can streamline the document creation process; this helps law firms to save time, increase profitability and reduce errors.
Finance
Financial institutions that handle complex and large transactions can benefit from document automation.
The typical set of documents that accompany a commercial transaction includes a promissory note, environmental indemnity, trust deed, guaranty, mortgage, and much more – some of which may be around 1000 pages long, with lots of optional data elements and paragraphs. Compiling and completing these documents sets is an extremely time-consuming process that is major prone to error. Automation addresses those issues and thus simplifies the process.
Document automation enables lenders, banks, financial service providers, and wealth management companies of any size to efficiently create and even deliver personalized financial documents, which even include mortgages, payment invoices, security agreements, loan application documents, statements, bills, and more.
Sales
The sales team heavily rely on semi-standardized documents to educate prospects, provide custom proposals, give presentation or quotes, and close deals.
Conclusion
So, do you want to automate your documents? If yes, then what are you waiting for? Try Crove! It gives you the power to automate complex business documents without writing any code. You can create smart templates and connect them with other apps to automate your document workflows.
