HINT: IT’S PROBABLY LESS THAN YOU HAVE…
Many documents used by in-house document operations and print service providers are very similar to one another. Differences in colors, logos, company names and addresses, or signatures may vary, but the general purpose and layout of the documents is much the same. When document designs are the same, organizations gain efficiencies and cost savings such as using a common outbound window envelope or combining small jobs into larger work units.
In a typical environment, when changes are necessary, companies must modify hundreds of document templates – and hope they don’t miss any.
Let’s take a print/mail service provider that specializes in credit union account statements as an example. The service provider could maintain separate statement templates for each of their credit union clients, however it is likely that these documents are all formatted similarly. Credit unions commonly use software supplied by a small number of vendors, so the data that appears on the statements is much the same from one credit union to the next.
If they were using DocOrigin from Eclipse Corporation, the service provider could create a single template driven by Profile Files to create branded documents for all their credit union clients that share a common format.
DocOrigin Profile Files control the logos, color palettes, languages, and other variables that might change among client documents.
Why would a print/mail service provider or an in-house document operation want to take this approach with their documents? It’s all about efficiency and productivity.
Suppose new government regulations forced every credit union to add disclaimer language to their statements. If the print service provider defined each document in standalone templates, they would have to change each of them manually, one at a time. With the DocOrigin Profile Files approach, mandated changes need be made only once, in the master document that produced all credit union statements.
Producing all the statements from a single template based on parameters allows document operations to combine documents from several clients into a single print job. This strategy has become desirable as companies transition to high-speed inkjet print devices at the same time that transactional document print volumes are dropping. Print operations can merge documents from several clients into a single print job, which reduces set-up times and keeps high-speed presses running at top capacity.
Documents controlled with Profile Files reduce the risk of accidentally producing materials bearing obsolete information. Fewer templates to support means organizations have more control over updates and versions. No longer will companies worry about using outdated logos, taglines, or executive signatures because they neglected to update a template in their vast document library.
For a demonstration of how to use Profile Files for reducing document template inventories, watch this video from the Eclipse video collection.