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Preserve Your Investment in Word-based Document Automation

Make Your "Wordiness" Work for You

It's been a few months now since I joined Xpertdoc and I am getting to a state where I feel pretty comfortable with the technology, especially with the knowledge that a great team of experts is at the ready whenever I need help. While working on several projects for clients from a variety of industries including insurance, property management, communications and public relations, I have seen adopters of Xpertdoc experience the many merits of the solution with very quick implementation cycles. I have also been in touch with many of my friends and contacts from the past and I continue to witness the struggles and challenges facing users who remain stuck on legacy document automation platforms such as Mosaic, Calligo and IStream.

Prior to departing my previous post at Oracle, I participated in several sales cycles and proposal development efforts for users of Calligo that were looking to move to something current and supported. With Oracle's decision to abandon the Calligo/IStream product line, they were selling the Documaker suite as the replacement application. Anyone who has evaluated the potential conversion from one of the legacy Word-based document automation tools has quickly realized that the paradigm for document authoring and assembly is substantially different in Documaker. The mere fact that Microsoft Word is not leveraged automatically means that a risky and integrity-threatening change in file format is going to be required. Such conversion attempts were soon observed to be fraught with challenges such as:

• Loss of document fidelity
• Complex and un-trackable migration processes requiring much manual intervention
• Excessive learning curves for users to learn unfamiliar new authoring environment
• Poor test results requiring exhaustive regression testing iterations

I recall participating in several humbling discussions with Calligo users trying to explain why a conversion from their system to the 'next-generation' successor offering would require two years to complete, cost millions of dollars and be exposed to a high risk of document fidelity loss. That was a tough sell!

I am happy to say that one of the things I have been working on since joining Xpertdoc has been an evaluation of the conversion options for legacy Word-based document automation systems. It would seem obvious that a transition to Xpertdoc, a system underpinned by Microsoft Word templates, would be a far more natural and less burdensome transition for users of systems that also leverage Word. And that theory has proven to be the case. There are a few distinct advantages of Xpertdoc that will pay significant dividends in lightening the load of an effort to modernize your current Word-based system:

• No file format conversion necessary - i.e. continue to take advantage of your significant investment in creating formatted Word documents that reflect your regulatory, branding and marketing preferences
• Functionality, features and familiarity of Word will not intimidate your authors
• Minimize re-training as there will be no need to learn a new and complex document authoring environment
• Easy creation of one-to-one baseline for testing by producing snapshot of Word document output of current system for comparison against Xpertdoc generated Word documents post-conversion
• Opportunities for manageable optimization of documents by implementing Xpertdoc's ability to isolate technical complexity from document content conducive to business user management
• Leverage Xpertdoc's powerful content auditing technology for conversion analysis and execution as well as testing assistance

I'll make a point of talking about it in more detail in a future posting, but one detail to highlight is that with the move up to Word 2007 or higher, you will be adopting a new file format in Word that is based on the Office Open XML(aka OOXML or OpenXML) standard - the .docx file. This is an XML-based file format that has become the new benchmark for representation of office document types. In bringing your documents up to this latest file type, you will not only be able to continue to experience the advantages of working in Word but you will also future-proof yourself from using a proprietary format on its way to obsolescence. This may not seem all that important but for those of you who may have done Word upgrades from very old versions of Microsoft Word in the past or even worse, WordPerfect to Word conversions, the advantages will quickly become evident. It's also worth mentioning that leveraging the OOXML format helps to overcome some of the shortcomings of legacy Word-based systems such as the reliance on Winword.exe for document automation, document integration and re-purposing challenges, etc. Xpertdoc was the first software provider worldwide to be certified by Microsoft as an integrator of OpenXML.

There is one final point I'd be remiss in omitting as it perhaps offers the most potential beneficial and impact to those of you who may be considering an undertaking to convert your Word-based document automation platform. Among the biggest struggles that I have seen while participating in conversions in the past was the inability to analyse, track and test the activities required to complete the process. I remember seeing many a project plan where task after task was defined for environment installation, component development, integration and so forth, yet only one or two lines allocated for Document Conversion and Document Testing despite these being among the most time-intensive components of the project. The document conversion was the black hole of project planning if for no other reason than a lack of understanding of what it entailed. Xpertdoc has developed a different approach to conversion, thanks to our Content Auditor technology, whereby a much deeper understanding and decomposition of your documents is possible to help you determine the optimal approach for conversion and to assess its scope and size. Add to that a unique ability to compare and report on document contents at a very granular level, your ability to track what is happening to your documents is much enhanced. The net result: you have a conversion process that is much more well-defined, easy to track and monitor and thus much simpler to manage.

I think I'll flex my technical muscles in my next posting…which is about as intimidating as a boxing bout between Strawberry Shortcake and Dora the Explorer (boy, it's obvious I have a 3 year old girl at my house); perhaps talk a little about the merits of OpenXML and the architecture of Xpertdoc. In the meantime, head on over to www.xpertdoc.com to find out more about us, I recommend the Business Value section for some interesting analysis and even some video clips on our new e-signature integration.

This entry was written by Xpertdoc team posted on February 22, 2012 . Follow any comments here with the feed for this post. You can post a comment.

Related pages

• Legacy Document Automation Systems
• Imminence of the SBC

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