The evolution that document software and document management technologies have experienced in the last 15 years closely parallels DocPath‘s business path since its inception in 1992. The fact is that our company probably wouldn’t have been born if it we hadn’t noticed a marketing need that wasn’t being covered by anybody else. This need was none other than providing a solution that would allow financial institutions to eliminate pre-printed forms from their business processes.
Documents have been the standard information vehicle from time immemorial. The Greeks had libraries full of scrolls upon which the wisdom of an entire people was reflected. The idea of recording history, agreements, transactions and other types of information on more or less developed physical material has continued throughout history to our present time.
Image does matter
With the passage of time, document design has increasingly become more professional, so much so that today it can have a direct influence on an organization’s corporate image with the public. Today’s organizations are not oblivious to this fact and are demanding simple, intuitive document software technology solutions that are able to provide a more professional touch to the documentation that they share with their customers.
Document software technology enabled banks to reduce the enormous costs associated with using pre-printed forms in processing their statements, invoices and contracts. It has also enabled enterprises of any size from other business sectors to acquire the same tools to automatically and professionally design, generate and distribute their documents.
Distribution channels
Traditionally, postal mail was the standard means of distributing documents to customers. Later, faxing documents became vogue. And after that email, because of its increased speed of delivery, became the popular means of distribution. Today, all three means of communication continue to be used and remain effective. However, document software technology, and specifically integrated document management solutions, have added one more means of communication to the mix: instant online Web communication.
This new means of communicating with target audiences has become possible thanks to, among other things, document digitalization and the ability to generate forms and PDF documents online. Now customers can request documents and in a matter of seconds view them on their computer screens.
The effective operation of these procedures has allowed organizations to considerably improve customer relationships and satisfaction. But these are not the only personal elements that have been impacted with the arrival of document management software technology. Some new solutions allow organizations that share information with third parties (intermediaries, insurance brokers, etc.) to control the information regards to who views and prints documents, who can edit documents, etc. Thus, security of these types of transactions is greatly improved.
Cost Savings
All of these changes along the way have contributed to important cost savings for organizations due to more efficient document management along with automatization and optimization of business processes, among other benefits.
Among these improvements, it is necessary to add two more that respond to the increasing demand of companies that have already benefited from implementing document software technologies; One being the ability that some solutions offer for controlling an organization’s printing operations, and the other the reduction in space dedicated to archiving paper documents as a consequence of electronic documentation and the development of storage and retrieval systems.
Electronic invoicing and digital signature are the latest challenges that document software technology has successfully overcome, although their implementation has a long way to go. Perhaps one of the greatest challenges of the next 15 years will be to make companies aware of the importance of this technology to their businesses, and thereby enable us providers to continue to provide increasingly innovative solutions to the market.
Julio Olivares,
President and Founder of DocPath