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12 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Eclipse Corporation and DocOrigin, Continued….

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If you missed the first 7, check it out here. 8. We provide a superb, efficient and easy to use correspondence management solution, Dynamic Business Documents Dynamic Business Documents allows companies to generate and preview documents in their ERP, CRM and other enterprise software systems and communicates with DocOrigin through its own web services. With DBD, authorized employees from a single department or the whole enterprise can use pre-approved document templates and content to create professional business correspondence and other personalized documents in only four simple steps through a user-friendly interface (no scripting). After modifying the template, users can select any form of omni-channel delivery and presentation. 9. We meet your needs without changing your line of business software. With our methodology, Integration Without ModificationTM, you can use DocOrigin without altering your business software. This is just another reason why DocOrigin is perfect for any industry. DocOrigin now integrates the design and creation of Universally Accessible PDFs (PDF/UA), meeting ISO 14289-1 and WCAG 2.0 standards for PDF documents, into its flagship document generation software. The World Health Organization estimates 246 million people worldwide suffer from some form of visual impairment – with 39 million of those classified as blind. With PDF/UA conforming files, readers and assistive technology, these individuals and others with disabilities can have equal access to online information. PDF/A-3 allows you to include all pertinent files in a PDF. The PDF/A-3 acts as a wrapper to contain all the documents and supporting files that make up the packet. Users can embed Word, HTML, Excel, XML files in your PDF. For instance, in production, if your ERP, MRP, HRP, CRM software is producing invoices, the invoice produced by DocOrigin in PDF/A-3 can contain the matching PO and any other files that are relevant to that invoice. With DocOrigin, you can now generate universally accessible documents and forms that are appropriate for all of these readers – without complex post-processing tools and include all important materials needed. It’s the fastest way from raw Data to PDF/UA! 11. We also do dynamic fillable forms! Your business needs to collect and present information! Most of the time, information is collected from customers, employees, vendors or partners through the use of a form and then the data is delivered to you using an appropriate web service or portal. DocOrigin is an enterprise-class software solution that combines a professional graphical form designer with a powerful production engine capable of serving up documents and forms for the most demanding global companies. Whether you are designing forms to collect data on mobile devices or desktops – or you need to generate millions of production documents in electronic or printed format – or labels for patient wristbands or manufacturing or shipping – DocOrigin provides the dynamic fillable form solution you need. 12. We have a thriving OEM software partnership program. At Eclipse Corporation, we believe the primary risks in entering OEM software partnerships are found in the time frame between the decision to add additional capability to the existing product line and the break-even point of investment and revenue generation. The solitary focus of our OEM software partnerships program is to mitigate the risks in that time frame through investment and resource commitments, allowing our OEM partners to bring new solutions to market more quickly, align investment with cash flow, and enjoy higher returns on product sales. Need robust world class form, document, and label design and delivery in your commercial software? Find out why Advantage 360, GE Healthcare, Guidewire, Tyler Technologies,… chose DocOrigin! We hope you’ve learned a few new things about Eclipse and DocOrigin! If there is more you would like to know, please contact us to get in touch!

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Are you still using outdated, antiquated forms software?

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What are you waiting for? Maybe you’re thinking that your current product “just works” and has continued working for a long time. So, why would you want to change now? Because: Updating to new forms technology isn’t as scary as you think! Consider: Maybe you are just afraid of change, anything new. What worked and was most efficient then is not the solution for now. These legacy software solutions have been great building blocks. Just imagine how you could benefit from an upgrade with greater innovation. Maybe you are afraid of the cost of change. This is a reasonable concern but there are options out there to make this change easier. Scalable pricing is the way to go. Look into a solution that can provide you everything you need but also provides scalable pricing that meets your company’s budget. Want the same performance and features expected by the Fortune 10 at a price you can afford? You can have it! Maybe you are afraid of the time that you believe will be spent or lost in migrating to a new software. It’s faster than you think! You can convert your Adobe Central and LiveCycle templates in seconds! Convert PDF forms and documents into templates in minutes! There are tools that will provide some automation for converting most legacy forms templates, so you shouldn’t have to start from scratch. Maybe you are afraid of tackling this on your own. Look for a product with stellar support and have a smooth transition. Assistance with migration on a template-by-template basis is possible. Migration does not have to be All or None. You can have your current system running along with the new system and migrate one form or document at time. Then, when everything is migrated, you can shut down the old system. This provides a smooth transition, with little or no disruption to your critical document generation processes. Maybe you haven’t thought about the consequences of using unsupported forms software. There is no one to call for help when problems arise. You should switch to a product that is still actively developed, upgraded and supported. Maybe you just don’t know about some of the amazing features that are now available with new technological advances… and the great benefit these features can bring to your company. Consider: Maybe you are ready to upgrade and be supported by the best! If so, check out DocOrigin and contact us today to see how we can help you move your forms, documents, labels and customer communications software forward!

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7 Helpful Articles about PDF/A-3

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You may have heard our exciting news…. we now have PDF/A-3 in production environments for DocOrigin, Business Communications Center and Dynamic Business Documents. To read more about that, click here. That being said, we’ve spent some time recently reading up on PDF/A-3 and have come across some pretty helpful articles. We lay the top 7 out here for you. Please let us know of any others we should add. Pdf-tools gives a brief explanation of the formats within PDF/A and their functions. The authorities on PDF, the PDF Association, lay out a great explanation of PDF/A-3, but even better they make an argument for the benefits of using it. 3. PDF/A-3, PDF for Long-term Preservation, Use of ISO 32000-1, With Embedded Files at LOC.GOV This is the Library of Congress Collections’ planning for the sustainability of digital formats. They provide some resources and history behind the format. They also include their notes on the PDF/A-3 and other formats. This is a 23-page document by the National Digital Stewardship Alliance, a consortium of institutions that are committed to the long-term preservation of digital information. They provide in depth background on the format along with U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Scenarios and U.S. House Office of the Legislative Counsel Scenarios. Foxit provides a summary of the format, even including drawbacks but also points out the benefit in organizing digital archives and states that, “Pragmatists in companies from various segments, such as the pharmaceutical industry or the banking and financial sector, however, applaud the concept of being able to embed other formats in PDF files, because they have real-world needs to store original file formats alongside their PDF/A file counterparts.” Here Foxit explains the build-up to the development of PDF/A-3 and the 3 types and explanations of files PDF/A-3 can embed: Source, Supplement and Alternative. Prepressure.com outlines the rules and restrictions that PDF/A-3 must meet. We thought these may be helpful in getting a better grasp of PDF/A-3: it’s history, the need for it, benefits of using it and rules and restrictions involved. Happy Reading!

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4 things you need to know about Dynamic Business Documents

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1. There are just 4 easy steps! Dynamic Business Documents allows you to design, personalize, preview and generate documents and forms with any ERP, CRM, EMR or other enterprise software in just 4 simple steps! 2. It’s not just for Customer Service! Sure, DBD is important in customer service so your team can create personalized communications specific to an exception which triggered the event. But other departments can use it too. Take HR for instance; HR receives all types of documents, employee applications, legal notices and many other forms. When your business software triggers an exception, that’s when DBD takes over. Your team can now review these exceptions and respond to them with specific, personalized information that is relevant to the individual or entity. DBD provides fields so your representative can manually type in the specifics related to the exception, while ensuring that all legal and compliant business information or legal communications are included in the form or document. When exceptions occur in your business software, they will automatically appear in DBD as shown below: 3. Omni-channel presentation and delivery! With DBD, there are so many options to update your documents presentation and delivery methods, and customers want it their way. DBD delivers information when and where your customers and employees want it. Millennials want it on their phone, Baby Boomers want it on their PC or Tablet and the Silent Generation want it printed and mailed to them….I want it sent to my portal and a notice with a link sent to my cell phone! 4. Positive and Simplified User Experience! DBD empowers authorized employees from a single department or the whole enterprise to create personalized, highly professional business correspondence and other personalized documents spontaneously, on an as-needed basis. This is done in real time, using pre-approved document templates and content, which keeps your communications consistent and compliant. Customer service and other departments can set up exceptions that will allow them to provide personalized messaging within an existing compliant document set. If someone places an exceptionally large order from your company, you can now send a personalized message or notification that they have earned extra points, a free widget, etc. –all without making modifications to your existing business software. Click here to set up a demo today so we can show you how Dynamic Business Documents can benefit you.

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Is your business omni-channel ready?

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What is omni-channel all about? Omni-channel or multi-channel presentation and/or delivery are the various ways you can get your forms, documents and customer communications to your customers, partners, employees, and vendors. Providing omni-channel delivery gives the receiver the option to select how you communicate with them. With all of the possibilities mobile devices offer and the need to serve people from the Silent Generation to the Post Millennials generation, omni-channel delivery can get complicated. Millennials expect you to communicate with them their way. They also want you to give them the opportunity to make changes to their options without the need to communicate with another human. Today, they may want their information via the portal; tomorrow, they may want to have info sent to the portal and their phone. If you can’t meet these demands and delivery choices, you may lose their business. And as much as we hear about the paper less world, the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers are likely to ask you to print and mail the information to them. Why should you care? Most importantly, to please your customers! They want you to come to them where they want it and when they want it! And so do your partners and employees, by the way! Omni-Channel communication is the most customer-centric way to deliver critical documents and provides you an opportunity to include customer communications for branding, up-sell, cross sell, safety messaging, etc. It also helps save time and money. So now, let’s say you have generated your document, or customer communication – maybe an invoice, health history report or a monthly statement. How should it be delivered? One customer wants you to serve information to their smart device, another wants it mailed and yet another wants it saved in their portal. They also want you to send them a text message with the link so they can view, download and/or print whenever they want. Can you meet the personal needs of every customer? Yes! How can you get to be a fully functioning omni-channel organization? In order to provide this convenience and stay up to date with your industry, you need a system that knows how you want your documents presented/delivered. If you are like many companies, your business software and your forms generation software does not have the ability to provide omni-channel delivery. However, there are customer communication solutions that can provide omni-channel communications without changing your business software. Does your customer communication need to be delivered via one or more channels: FAX, print, portal, text message with links, browser in HTML, PDF, PDF/A, PDF/UA, PDF/A-3? Does your system know if a segment needs to be archived, while the rest doesn’t? Well, if you select an enterprise software solution like DocOrigin, you can present documents by omni-channel options such as on mobile devices, PC, text message, FAX, portal, or print and mail. You don’t have their delivery preference in your current data for their statements, order acknowledgements, invoices? No problem. DocOrigin can use web service calls, APIs or a database lookup to get the delivery preference at delivery time and make sure the information is delivered based on the most up-to-date customer preferences. If you want advanced presentation features, high performance and the same reliability that our Fortune 10 customers demand, give Eclipse or one of our partners a call now and see why companies like AT&T, GE, and Tyler Technologies selected DocOrigin.

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Is your Business Correspondence Helping…or Hurting…your Customer Experience?

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“Customer Experience” is on everyone’s mind these days…and for good reason. What customers say about you and your company has a direct influence on the perception of your organization in the marketplace. Provide a great customer experience, and the word spreads. Provide a poor customer experience, and the word spreads, but you better watch out; customers will quickly go elsewhere. As a result, C-level decision-makers are turning their attention to building brand loyalty and sustaining a superior customer experience. A Great Experience Builds Brand Loyalty But building brand loyalty can be difficult. According to Nielson, 78% of consumers are not loyal to any particular brand, so keeping customers is already an uphill climb. But the effort pays off for companies willing to do the work. Analysts tell us that a repeat customer spends 67% more than a new one. And since it costs significantly more to land a new customer than it does to sell to an existing customer, working to brace brand loyalty makes good business sense. Business Correspondence is Key How can you keep customers loyal to your brand? One way is by examining how your common business correspondence serves to help, or hinder, the everyday experience of your customers. Over 70% of customers who leave a brand say that a poor experience and/or perception of the brand is their reason for leaving. So the question becomes: Do your everyday documents — things like statements, acknowledgments, invoices and notifications — provide a level of service and experience that will keep them around? If the answer is no, it’s time to do something. Are you aware that you can implement customer communication software in weeks – not months – using the documents you already have, to improve branding, customer satisfaction and your bottom line? And you do not need to change your business software or have programmers involved. Marketing, Sales and HR departments can now create their own campaigns. Loyal Customers At Eclipse, we are experts at making everyday documents into vital tools to improve and maintain customer loyalty and experience. Our flagship solution, DocOrigin, was built from the ground up to enable business units, marketing specialists and IT departments to work together to create customer-facing documents that make a difference. You can easily add targeted content, include relevant messaging and coordinate campaigns across multiple documents, accounts and lines of business. With a common and easy-to-use platform like DocOrigin, you’ll save money, increase effectiveness and boost the lifetime value of each customer. Want to find out more? Check out this brief video on DocOrigin to learn more

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Guest Blog: Know your “Document Constituency”

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By Kevin Craine Question: What is the one single thing that can stop business cold, yet no one is in charge? Answer: Documents. Pick any key business activity in any organization, in any industry, and you can bet that documents are essential to getting the job done. But while many organizations have a “chief information officer,” few have a “chief document officer,” or a “chief experience officer.” Without this centralized responsibility, how can you design meaningful strategies and spur innovation that will make a difference? For any document, it is possible to identify a “document constituency” – the people who influence the document process. Collectively, these people are in charge. And since we create documents to be used by people, it stands to reason that the people who create, use and care about your documents are the best people to provide the finer points of navigation within your strategy. These same people need to have the ability to control the presentation of the document campaigns without IT involvement, without scripting or modification of the core business software. The Document Constituency The people who make up your document constituency are the people who use your documents, have responsibility for their existence and have a stake in how well they perform. Chances are, you already know many of the people who make up your document constituency. But there may be other people whose membership is not immediately apparent. You can identify members of your document constituency by using these four categories: Each of these people has a different set of needs, expectations and constraints. Document authors are concerned about what a document says and how readers will react. An author could be an individual, a team or an entire department. Corporate documents often contain information from various sources and are authored by several different departments who may, or may not, be working in concert. Regardless, each has a common objective to convert information into action and to ensure that the right message is effectively communicated to a reader. Document producers are the individuals, work groups, departments, or vendors who provide the “output” of your information systems. It is impossible to meet the needs of the other members of your document constituency, if the needs of your producers are not met. Producers need the right information from the right sources at the right time, as well as the right staffing and equipment in order to produce documents with acceptable quality, timeliness and cost. Document stakeholders are customers of document performance. They are concerned with both the strategic and tactical aspects of your documents. Stakeholders might include marketing executives concerned about whether consumers will purchase a product or receive relevant information, financial officers concerned about how quickly they will pay, or divisional vice presidents concerned about the costs involved with document production. Other stakeholders might include government regulators, internal auditors or corporate legal counsel. Document readers are the audience of your documents. They are the people who react and respond to the information contained in your documents. Reader reaction is the litmus test of any document’s performance, so how information is converted into action is high on the list of concerns for both authors and stakeholders. As a result, the expectations and requirements of readers are of top importance. Readers may be internal or external, i.e. communications with customers, partners, employees or vendors. Getting the reaction or response you want from your readers is the primary objective of the document. Know your Document Constituency It is easy to become enamored with technology. But in the end, people are the reason documents are produced. It seems reasonable, therefore, that the people who populate the document process are the best people to improve the process. Knowing your document constituency and understanding their needs and objectives will bring about more meaningful and lasting benefits. Kevin Craine is the author of the book “Designing a Document Strategy” and host of “Everyday MBA “on C-Suite Radio. He was recently named the #1 ECM Influencer to follow on Twitter. For more information, visit CraineGroup.com.

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Six Myths Busted Regarding Section 508 PDF/UA Compliance and Production Generation of PDF/UA Documents

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Myth #1:  Section 508 compliance doesn’t apply to PDF documents. FACT:  Since June 2001, the law has required all content on government hosted or contractor hosted websites and intranet sites to be 508 compliant. PDF files tend to be produced by someone other than the website developers or administrators. This content often goes overlooked with respect to accessibility – even though PDF files represent a huge volume of the documents that site visitors use every day. SOLUTION: DocOrigin has advanced PDF/UA preprocessing capability. Myth #2:  Good assistive technology can solve all accessibility problems. FACT:  However advanced, Assistive Technology (or AT) can’t follow the continuation of an article split through multiple pages or guess what is meant by a particular graphic. That information has to be provided within the document structure. AT can only work with the information provided. Accessibility is nothing more than providing the information in a format that is easily understood. SOLUTION: DocOrigin provides the capability of creating business forms and document templates in the correct logical document structure for AT to provide the highest level of positive user experience. Myth #3:  A document is fully 508-compliant if it has passed Acrobat’s Accessibility Checker. FACT:  Adobe Acrobat’s Accessibility Checker cannot verify compliance with Section 508 since, among other limitations, it is incapable of verifying correct logical reading order. A combination of automated and manual checks are required to test a document for 508 compliance. SOLUTION: DocOrigin is capable of establishing the correct “logical” order for the reader to follow. This is done once at composition time using DocOrigin Design. In production, DocOrigin merges data (CSV, FRL, XML) from the line of business software without requiring changes to the data being generated today. The logic in the form design software dynamically structures the PDF/UA, so no post-processing step is required to produce the PDF/UA. This makes it possible to generate thousands of PDF/UA documents per minute. Myth #4:  Section 508 compliance means it will read well in JAWS. FACT:  It’s possible to tag a PDF to be compliant with Section 508 and still deliver a negative experience in JAWS or other screen-readers. The current Section 508 regulation permits, for example, a 100-page document to include nothing but paragraph tags, offering no navigational accommodations to AT users. SOLUTION: DocOrigin will assist in providing a positive user experience in accessing the information contained in the PDF document using pre-document generation sequencing and tagging. Myth #5:  A PDF is accessible if it can be read using Adobe’s Read Out Loud feature. FACT:  Adobe’s Read Out Loud feature is not considered assistive technology and cannot be used to verify compliance with Section 508. This is because the Read Out Loud feature cannot represent the document’s logical structure (tags). SOLUTION: With DocOrigin, the logical flow can be designed into the document. Myth #6:  I can tag my PDF file to be 508 compliant by using the Advanced > Accessibility > Add Tags to Document function in Adobe Acrobat Professional. FACT:  This is only the first step to creating a 508 compliant PDF file. Formerly, no software could achieve full accessibility and usability without human assistance. SOLUTION: With DocOrigin’s advanced PDF/UA composition capability, the user is able to create a fully compliant PDF/UA document or form that can generate high volume production PDF/UA documents. The design of the PDF/UA is created in the composition software and once completed, it can be run in production without user intervention.  No post-processes software or PDF to PDF/UA conversion is required. Finally, you can generate production PDF/UA statements, invoices, and order acknowledgements with a Design Once, Generate Many process you can rely on. Learn more about DocOrigin’s PDF/UA capability here or contact us for more information here.

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