How to be truly data-centric with Document Automation

Understanding Document Automation Potential

In the world of document automation, I have worked with a long-standing vendor in the industry, undertaken an extensive academic study of the state of the automation market at a product-agnostic consultancy and been privileged to have worked with a Magic Circle law firm. All these great experiences have helped me gain insights, use cases, understand challenges and opportunities, and deliver value to our clients. I wouldn’t claim to be an industry expert, but I have gained much experience reviewing some 200 products, working with industry leaders, and listening to clients’ daily challenges. What I found interesting with many of those touch points is that too many products and clients focus only on the document.

Data First Document Automation

Document Automation has many descriptions, and like so many technical terms, there isn’t a single agreed standard of what should be offered. However, using a data-centric approach to generate perfect documents should be the gold standard but equally the minimum that is offered. If we think about use cases such as repapering, the relationship between grandparent, reuse of data for parent and child documents, having a playbook for negotiated positions, data modeling for risk analysis, business intelligence reporting, real alerting and dashboards for business leaders to see what the team are working on, you should notice that the key for each of these scenarios is your data.

To meet these operational needs, some technologies will reinvent the wheel and thus could become overly sophisticated for their own good. And while meeting your requirements in a single solution sounds like a great idea, you pay more for the privilege. So, why not reuse what you already have available? Most firms have Enterprise level subscriptions to tools from Microsoft which give access to all the tools that teams need to become more efficient and effective at what they do. All too often though, they are torn between buying a “we do everything solution” and “doing nothing”, with the latter often winning the change management battle.

KISS

I love the idea of “Keep it Simple S*****”. If you have enough back-office technology (SQL databases, PowerApp’s PowerBI, SharePoint, MS Teams), why buy a proprietary version from a vendor? We all know that even if you don’t use these features, you will be charged for their development anyway.

At Kim, we want our clients to be frugal, reuse what they already have, reuse their data, and reuse their back-office systems because by doing so, your investment is in your business becoming more efficient and effective. Kim Document plays well with other technologies, allowing Kim to be integrated with any REST API-enabled service. And whilst that sounds techy, some parts of a project are a bit techy – but techy doesn’t mean expensive. We don’t charge clients an enablement fee for a connector for the privilege of reusing your data.

Keeping up with the Joneses

Kim Document also takes care of the really important parts of Document Automation: Clause Libraries. Starting with an MS Word document so that you gain the unrivaled precision and functionality of the world’s most popular word processor, being able to send links to internal and external recipients for their contribution, sending those same links on mass to two thousand recipients at once (I bet you never thought you could use your Document Automation solution to manage your RFI’s, Supplier engagements, KYC updates like those marketing tools do campaigns), internal collaborations and external negotiation as well as eSignature integration and a whole host of other features and business benefits.

What makes us unique?

One of the key USPs of Kim Document is the subscription model; only those people that are creating these unique no-code Applications are subscribed users. Let us just take a breather to realize the implications of that…all those collaborators, both internal and external to your business, have no additional costs. This allows your business to grow with no limitations. Importantly our costs are not gold-plated, unlike our service. Feel free to browse our website and see our price plans for yourself.

Kim has the capability for a professional (not an IT person) to be up and running on the same day.

Book a demo or a free consultation to discover more.