In recent decades, electronic documents have become increasingly important, so the concept of Document Output Management has evolved significantly. Today, we could define it as the management of document outputs throughout the entire document process, from generation to storage and distribution, with the goal of optimizing the quality and duration of the end-to-end process, as well as the associated costs.
More and more companies are looking to improve the customer’s document experience. This is where Document Output Management solutions come into play. Through the tools provided by each of them, organizations can design, generate, and distribute high-quality documents in any output format, using omnichannel delivery. The customer then becomes the center of the entire process thanks to the creation of strategies that allow the use of any communication channel to establish a relationship with the customer.
All document software solutions share the same objectives: automating omnichannel distribution, generating different output formats (PDF, PCL, PS, HTML, etc.), and carrying out follow-up tasks to reduce the workload of business applications. At the same time, performing these actions increases the productivity, performance, and stability of the overall IT system.
The above-mentioned objectives comprise the main functions of an Output Management solution. Document design, resource management, document generation, document distribution, and multi-format document generation are the five functions enabled by a document output management software.
Document design
All modern Document Output Management software offer several document design features, including: the ability to include graphics and barcodes, the ability to create the same design in multiple languages, and high quality presentation of templates or documents. With the design tools provided, the customer can design any type of business document, such as contracts, receipts, invoices, insurance policies, etc.
Management of the resources involved in document management processes.
Retrieving, converting, and merging documents are some of the most common needs of companies. These actions require the use of many resources that must be carefully managed to avoid errors. Document files, fonts, templates, or images are some of the resources that need to be retrieved from document managers, directories, and web pages. Likewise, document generation often requires transforming a document into another format and merging many documents into one – two requirements that, together with document retrieval, can be met with the implementation of Output Management software.
Professional document generation
The online, real-time creation of business documents is essential for organizations to communicate with their customers. There are still some companies who do not use the Internet, that is, they do not create or distribute online documents. This can directly affect the company’s relationship with its customers, as well as damage its corporate image, so implementing Document Output management software is a must in order to keep up with technological innovation.
Generation of varied output formats
On many occasions, the large number of available formats makes document generation difficult. For this reason, companies need to generate documents in several formats or convert them into a different one before printing, requiring the recovery of different resources such as fonts, templates, or images. Companies also demand the ability to use document software in different operating systems and the possibility of easily integrating it into the system used by the company.
Multichannel document distribution
Although document distribution mainly refers to sending documents to a remote printer, according to the user’s requirements, it actually encompasses any channel or medium such as the Web, email, fax, etc. This process requires time optimization; however, it would be a complicated task for any company with printer networks spanning multiple geographic locations. A document management and Document Output Management solution must be able to handle the requirements of a printing environment distributed by using elements such as Java, .Net and VB to integrate with each company’s applications.
Optimizing document management processes and improving customer relations are two of the requirements that more and more companies are requesting. The implementation of any Document Output Management solution satisfies these needs, in addition to providing efficiency, security, and cost savings to the whole process and to the organization.