Document Template Management Software: Features, Benefits, and What to Know Before You Buy
MHC Team 
September 22nd, 2022
For enterprise organizations and any business that deals in large volumes of documents, managing templates effectively is a major factor in maintaining strong customer relationships. The higher the volume of document templates you have to manage, though, the greater the challenge of making sure you’re creating and distributing those documents accurately and efficiently. Learn how automation can eliminate template overflow, improve customer communications, and create a faster, more agile document template management process.
Table of Contents
Enterprise Documents Built by the Business, Not IT
Document templates form the basis of all document automation solutions. The template defines not just how a document will look, but also what data will appear in it. Organizations must consider many factors when creating each communication template. These factors include:
branding language(s) tone (formal or informal) delivery channels (paper or electronic)
formats (PDF, interactive HTML5, Word, etc.) business rules that impact content or format data sources
embedded analytics many, many others
With so many options to consider, most document automation providers rely on their customers’ IT departments to build out their company’s templates. This adds an additional burden on IT, frequently overbooked in developing other business-critical applications. The time and cost associated with relying on IT to build new templates and update existing ones become a high hidden cost in many document automation solutions.
MHC’s visual design tool empowers business users to create and deploy communication templates and manage document creation without costly IT involvement. IT is therefore freed to focus on higher value-added work. Meanwhile, with MHC’s document template management software, company assets such as logos, branding, and document fragments are maintained in a central repository and automatically update across multiple templates to ensure a consistent customer experience.
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Document Template Management Features
How does automation make managing and creating templates and business documents more efficient, more accurate, and less time-consuming for your organization? Let’s take a look at some of the key features of a quality document template management system to see how you can benefit from an upgraded software solution.
Online and PC-Based Designer
Empower super-users to build complex templates in a PC-based visual designer, as well as a broader audience with a browser-based tool. A quality document template management solution helps you leverage the depth of thick-client capabilities along with the power of thin-client tools. Define which components online users can modify at a document-by-document level. Enable complex template design with software that supports the memory requirements of large templates and images.
Content Repository
Proactively maintain a single, version-controlled, company-approved, content repository of logos, branding content, legal disclaimers, images and other content fragments for use in all company communications via template management software. Enable business users to easily develop compliant, visually stunning documents without having to start from scratch every time. Modify digital assets automatically across all communication templates where they are used with a single update.
Free Template Library
Accelerate time to market and reduce costs associated with document design management. Take advantage of best practices developed for each specific industry with dozens of baseline templates. Customize projects built by document automation experts rather than recreate the wheel. Achieve rapid return on investment by reducing the work involved in the most labor-intensive component of document automation.
Review/Approve Workflow
Empower business users to create communication templates while ensuring they comply with legal, marketing, operational, and other standards. Define review and approval workflows for document templates that ensure all relevant parties inspect versions to new or existing communications before publishing them to production. Present approval task lists to individuals or teams to streamline the document development process.
Analytics, Tables, and Graphs
Create interactive documents and online experiences that empower customers to sort, filter, and interact with data such as billing and usage statistics. Design sorting, filtering and other investigative features directly into documents delivered electronically. Create templates that generate documents in all media (print, PDF, email, etc.) with compelling graphs, charts and tables that facilitate self-service, reduce call center costs, and build customer satisfaction.
eSignatures
Create legally-binding documents by incorporating native eSignature capabilities into a true digital experience. Enable eSignatures on any device at any time, eliminating the need for the old cumbersome print-then-sign-then-scan-then-email process. Easily capture when, where, and by whom documents were signed as an embedded component of any document template that would otherwise require a manual signature.
Interactive Documents
Leverage MHC’s template management software to create an engaging, customer-driven experience that provides an always-on, available anywhere, on any device view into real-time information. Deliver the right content to each individual customer via personalized communications and reduce call center demands. Empower customers to control their experience in a manner consistent with the company brand and image. Store and present responsive documents for customer interaction.
Document Workflows
Automate complex communications processes from initial design to final delivery and beyond. Define participants and the workflows associated with customer communications. Bring internal and external stakeholders together to design documents. Automate data collection and aggregation, redlining, review/approve processes, final document assembly, distribution and post-delivery activities.
Personalized Correspondence
Extend the digital experience to all users, enabling data collection for quotes, applications, account creation, and other document automation needs. Complete forms, personalized letters and other correspondence by gathering data from agents, customers from an online portal, or automatically via integration to business applications. Interact with customers 24×7 without expensive call center support.
Document Workflows
Automate complex communications processes from initial design to final delivery and beyond. Define participants and the workflows associated with customer communications. Bring internal and external stakeholders together to design documents. Automate data collection and aggregation, redlining, review/approve processes, final document assembly, distribution and post-delivery activities.
Business Communications Made Easy with Document Template Management
TEMPLATE OVERFLOW CHALLENGE
In many ways, delivering personal, targeted communications through an in-house system can be more complicated than necessary.
The tools may not be accessible to all the departments, putting pressure on more technically-driven personnel to oversee the accuracy and visual appeal of the communications. On most legacy systems, delivering via customers’ preferred channels means designating a different template for each channel.
Additionally, as changes are made to each template, several different versions are created, making it easy to lose track of which templates are the latest version and which are outdated, standard or ad-hoc.
One key factor in cutting down customer communication management complexity is reducing the number of templates that proliferate over time. The problem, simply put, is that templates are too many, and stakeholders are too few.
With fewer stakeholders involved in customer communications processes, there is an increased risk of overwhelming them and not achieving the full potential of communication people expect from your company.
TEMPLATE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION
An integrated document template management solution provides for templates to be channel-agnostic, meaning that a single template can be rendered in any format and delivered by the desired medium. The template can also be re-used, and/or edited over time, without staff having to produce more individual templates on a case-by-case basis. Depending on how often customers receive brand documents, this could reduce templates ten or twenty-fold.
As far as digital documents go, template management software eliminates the stress brought on by too many slightly altered versions of the same thing. Document template management software alleviates the pressure of dealing with document production overload by organizing document templates in a hierarchical structure, so new templates are only created when absolutely necessary.
This lightens the load carried by the staff as they work efficiently to deliver the communications that customers want and enables tech staff to work alongside designers and content managers to best engage customers. Simplify content management by reducing the number of templates (the workload), and increasing the parties involved in document production (the workforce).
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The Benefits of Using MHC’s
Template Management Software
Template management software optimizes document assembly, approval, and delivery, making it an essential tool for any business. It simplifies the workflow, enabling management to fine-tune customer communications down to the smallest of details without requiring technical assistance. Discover the essential benefits that come with using MHC’s template management solution:
1.
It produces complex documents on-demand and on the fly.
2.
It does not require IT department involvement, freeing it for other tasks.
3.
It ensures full compliance with both branding and legal requirements.
4.
It boosts company productivity by reducing document production time.
5.
It ensures that all template-based documents are free from human errors.
6.
It produces channel-agnostic documents that deliver an omnichannel experience.
7.
Document templates are approved by a group of users – management and marketing.
8.
Document templates are stored in a centralized location available to assigned users.
Is your organization ready to reduce the time and confusion of document management? Start getting your document creation and template processes under control with automated MHC template management software. Contact us today to arrange a free demonstration of MHC NorthStar CCM and see how much easier and more efficient your workflow management can be.
Team MHC
Team MHC consists of a multitude of roles, functions, and expertise within MHC. With extensive combined experience in accounts payable and customer communication management, Team MHC has a unique insight into how to empo wer people using solutions that streamline processes while enhancing customer communication. Working alongside field experts in various industries and company sizes, Team MHC has garnered impressive thought leadership knowledge that we are excited to share with our readers. Including Aragon’s 2022 Women in Tech winner Gina Armada, CTO Dan Ward, VPs of Finance and Customer Service, and other talent that runs the spectrum of technology ability, Team MHC offers a mastery of skills to benefit our customers and prospects alike.
