If you're like most businesses, your correspondence workflow probably goes something like this: marketing, agents, office users and business users are responsible for communicating with the customers. Yet, all the work falls to IT, because the tools weren't there to allow business users to easily set up their own documents and correspondence.

IT is responsible for setting up the correspondence documents and their variable components, while marketing and other business users must submit requests for changes or additions. IT also handles maintenance and updates, production and output, infrastructure and security. This lopsided process increases the distance between documents and the people who use and understand them most.

The demands of document development left IT with less bandwidth to focus on other strategic contributions. Swamped IT managers would routinely route applications to more junior programmers. Yet for document-centric service providers like insurance or finance, these statements, policies and portfolios are the most important documents a customer.

Read the full article here.

Quote one: features

ITP does what we had in mind when we considered redesigning our current document composition engine. It does it even better and has many very useful features we did not even think of.

Quote two: Integration and what it brings

Integrating ITP into our standard insurance applications is a very quick way to add functionality.

Specific details on this application can be found on:

http://www.traceisys.com/opentwins_brokerdesktop.html

Trace have integrated ITP/OnLine Server in their application on such a level that and end user will not notice where the Broker Desktop ends and ITP starts. Document composition has become a truly integrated part of their application.

How their customers use this

Real proof of this is the message on their website: “Sept 2009 - Miller Insurance Services implement OpenTWINS BrokerDesktop for the fast, streamlined creation of Placing Documents.”

The decision of Trace to use ITP rather than building their own document composition engine was based on thorough research and we went through a serious proof of concept to show that ITP could deliver the appropriate functionality. Trace also provided very useful feedback about enhancements on ITP

Business – HQ perspective: we have beaten the crisis

If you are working in a successful company like Aia you sometimes forget about the financial crisis that is affecting many businesses and households. We had our Aia HQ Christmas party last week and our CEO’s Paul Dirven and Leon Pillich rightfully said that we have been able to beat the crisis. OK, some of our customers lowered their demand on our professional services department, but:

• We grew our software license revenues considerably
• We managed to develop a complete new product called ITP/Customer Correspondence Management
• Leading analysts recognized us as leading CCM Vendor
• We hired so many new staff members that I have serious issues in putting names to their faces….

It truly sounds like we have been building windmills whilst the wind of change started to blow – and that whilst many of our competitors where hiding for the same wind! Looks we are doing the right thing at the right time!

Business – UK perspective

2009 was the first year that I could focus all my time and energy on developing the UK & Irish market as Sales Director. I counted the trips in my calendar – I left Amsterdam airport 27 times, flying into all London airports, Dublin, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh. Not to mention doing so many conference calls that my phone battery deserves a vacation by now! With the help of our UK team this has lead to a tremendous success. I will reveal the revenue numbers in the beginning of 2010, but expect to see three digit growth!

Our growing Partner Channel 

We put serious effort in further developing our partner channel. We closed one of the largest contracts ever with our partner Xchanging, Dublin based XRS brought several new customers and new partners IT Freedom and TCP Life did their first successful implementations. I know that our beloved competitors are amongst the most loyal readers of my blog – reason why I never talk about new names in our business development. However – expect us to announce a couple of strategic partnerships in the first months of 2010!

UK Public Sector: here we are!

We also put much effort in developing a solution for the UK Public Sector – based on ITP’s strong web-form capabilities. The first pilot of this promising solution will start in Q1 2010 and we will soon start marketing this solution to the other 399 public sector organizations in the UK.

The London Inurance Market 

Our first seminar for insurers in the London Market went very well, so we decided organizing several of these in 2010, indicating that this will still be our number 1 target market for Aia UK. Our membership of the Microsoft London Market Network supports this.

Personal: Business Nomad Looks Back Satisfied

I often felt like a business nomad this year, working in our office in the UK, our HQ in The Netherlands, in hotels, in my home office and on the road very much. I can assure you that I became efficient in this. Also, working outside formal office structures opened my mind for new, creative ideas, enabled meeting interesting people and traveling to interesting locations.

It was great to watch the UK team become self-confident and how I could contribute my part to that. 

My running shoes traveled with me as loyal companions on most trips, running off the many lunches and dinners and preparing for my first half marathon (last April, together with colleague Jeroen Huinink and friend Peter Kaemereit). My next target is the full marathon of Paris in April 2010 – a real challenge that will require serious training!

You can imagine that finding the right work – life balance was often a challenge with all that traveling. I praise myself very lucky with the fact that my girlfriend Mascha supports and encourages me very much with all this! Herself being such a cosmopolitan world citizen is surely a big plus!

Special Thanks

Thanks to all my colleagues in supporting me in my task this year! Special thanks to Jeroen de Bruijn for all his support in 2009!

Best Wishes

I wish you all a very good Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous 2010 - look forward to seeing you back here in the new year and meeting many new challenges too!

The Top Ten Myths about PDF/A

The item is composed by Mr. Thomas Zellmann - an executive board member of the PDF/A Competence Center

This is the message Thomas sent us:

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Dear colleagues,

Just recently we’ve closed the contract with Itelligence AG in Germany to resell ITP. Itelligence is a global provider of SAP software and services and has got about 1500 employees worldwide and a revenue of 160 million Euros. Together we’ve created the “it.Documents for HR” solution (the it stands for the first two letters in itelligence) and implemented this at our first customer Gigaset Communication.

This solution enables SAP users to create documents with ITP/OnLine Server integrated in their SAP environment. Itelligence added a layer between ITP and SAP so that only the relevant SAP data is offered to ITP on a controlled manner (important for HR). We are going to standardize this solution so that it also can be used for other SAP solutions like CRM, Leasing etc. which gives us a very good standard “SAP connector”.

Of course, as always, this was a team effort and I would like to thank everybody for their assistance!!!!

You can read more about Itelligence on their website: http://www.itelligence.de

Best regards,

Thomas de Bruijn

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Great job Thomas - sprechen Sie jetzt auch Deutsch?

As Microsoft Gold Certified Partner we can test our software with the latest versions of the MS operating systems. Our R&D team did a test with our ITP/MDK Repository 3.5 on Windows 7 – and nobody was really surprised to see that it works perfect.

So, England was not the only place that snowed under…we could have informed you months ago that we passed this compatibility test….

The snow caught me yesterday too – I had to face huge delays on Stansted airport because of snow and ice. Talking about ice: can you imagine that Europcar provided me with a rental car without an ice scraper? The only item I could find in my bag to scrape the ice of the car’s windows was a mini tube of toothpaste... I did feel a bit like MacGyver out there on that cold street in England!

Total Economic Impact study shows 9 month payback period for Aia’s document composition software

Philadelphia-PA, December, 2009 - Aia Software today announced the results of a recent study commissioned by Aia Software and conducted by Forrester Consulting on its behalf. Completed in November 2009, the Total Economic Impact (TEI) study of insurance and financial services organizations in Europe found that companies looking to implement the ITP Document Platform can see large productivity benefits and cost savings with a risk adjusted return on investment (ROI) of 277 percent and a payback period of just nine months.

Forrester Consulting conducted independent in-depth interviews with five Aia Software customers and constructed a case study depicting a composite of the insurance customers that have deployed the ITP Platform. The key findings indicate that the ITP Platform delivers:

• Rapid ROI and a short time horizon for achieving payback
• An increase in productivity for business users when document creation and delivery are made more flexible and efficient
• A requirement for fewer IT resources when business users assume ownership for and manage their own documents
• Reduced risk of errors and more assured compliance with regulations resulting from greater document accuracy and standardization of text
• Postage cost savings when documents can be combined into fewer mailings

Paul Dirven, CEO of Aia Software said, “This impartial TEI study shows the tremendous potential for insurance and other financial services companies to make significant savings by implementing Aia’s ITP Platform.  It also reinforces our ‘business managed, IT controlled’ philosophy, which is the key to achieving such a rapid ROI, while improving control, flexibility and reducing exposure to compliance and regulatory risk.”

The study indicated that by removing IT as the “broker of document construction” while maintaining IT’s role as the controller of document systems and infrastructure, organizations can gain speed, agility and customer intimacy, while making gains toward ensuring regulatory and internal compliance.

The risk-adjusted ROI of 277 percent for the composite company, along with a rapid payback (breakeven point), raises confidence that the investment is likely to succeed, especially after the risks and uncertainty that may threaten the project have been considered and quantified.

Other business benefits:

Other business benefits and drivers for investing in Aia’s document composition software include:

• Reducing staffing costs by minimizing the number of IT personnel required to manage documents.  Additionally the same or fewer staff can produce a higher number of documents while maintaining accuracy.
• Developing new documents and templates in hours rather than days or weeks as previously required.
• Addressing the high cost of maintaining legacy systems involved in document production.
• Ease of integration to link to any new insurance or financial system and exploit web-based capabilities.
• Facilitating greater compliance and conformity through use of standard text blocks and other information that is known to meet regulatory requirements.
• Increased flexibility and document intelligence as ITP enables companies to produce individual, custom-composed correspondence.
• Greater business agility allowing institutions to react to changing market conditions faster or to implement new policy wording more quickly.

Christoffel Klimbie, Sales Director, Aia Software UK stated, “The TEI framework established by Forrester Consulting shows that there is a clear business case for insurance and other financial institutions to benefit from the ITP Platform.  In addition to reduced costs and greater productivity, the business value to be gained from enhanced business agility and faster time to market/time to value leads to higher levels of customer satisfaction which in turn may lead to greater profitability.”

Request a copy of the study by Forrester Consulting, “The Total Economic Impact of ITP Document Platform”.

My colleagues Martyn and Andrew went to visit a leading CRM implementation partner in London yesterday and presented which functionality ITP offers in combination with MS-CRM. They presented:

1. Letter Book
2. Interactive Document Composition
3. Registration
4. Easy Integration

Letter Book in MS-CRM

The ITP Letter Book presents relevant documents a user can create based on a CRM Contact. The Letter Book integrates fully in CRM and is displayed as a separate Tab.

Interactive Document Composition

The creation of many correspondence type documents require interaction with the user. Think of making selections, select relevant text-blocks and enter some additional data that is not available in the CRM database. This interactive process can be done in a browser, but also fully integrated inside CRM.

Registration

Result documents are automatically registered in CRM as Activities and so building a reference table to all communication with a Contact.

Easy Integration

Integration of ITP in MS-CRM is easy. ITP integrates as an IFRAME as shown in the screenshot.

Bottom line

The bottom line of all this is that a robust, scalable document composition solution called ITP is available that can be integrated seamlessly with MS-CRM, offering full fledge document composition for MS-CRM users.

http://www.onwindows.com/Portals/0/images/fow-issue-35.pdf

Have fun reading the article.

PS

Thanks for your help Adam!