Is Document Generation THE Killer BPM App?

In a recent blog post, Scott Francis, a Co-founder and CTO of BP3, posed the question: has BPM crossed the chasm? In case you’re not familiar with chasm-theory marketing (Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore), Francis is basically asking if BPM has become a mainstream technology in today’s IT environments. Francis goes on to conclude...

Takeaway vs. Home Cooking

Sometimes there is no substitute for a home cooked meal, freshly made to a family recipe... and sometimes you just want to order takeaway. Is it better to do it yourself or just buy off the menu? It’s a question that hungry people ask every day, but it can be applied to many things, including business processes like document generation.

Network TV to Twonky: A Case Study in the Long-Tail Corruption of Two Senior Citizens

The term long tail was coined by Chris Anderson in his book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. If you happened to miss it, there’s a chance you haven’t fully grasped the effect the Internet and supporting technologies are having on our lives. Key to Anderson’s thesis is...

Why Parameters and Local Variables in HotDocs 11 Rock Document Generation

A few years ago, one of my midlife crises was to take an introduction-to-programming class. Previously, I had come from a right-brain, literary background where authenticity and “originality” were given top place. Every project was to be a work of art. So, for my programming class, I wanted to write every program from scratch, ensuring what I perceived to be the most efficient

Eight Things BPM Suites and Document Generation Platforms Have in Common

Business Process Management (BPM) is a major movement in the IT world. According to Gartner, 41% of the Global 10k companies have already invested in process automation technology, and another 30% will make investments during the next 24 months.

Document Control Equals Compliance and Risk Mitigation for Corporate Services Company

A corporate services provider had a difficult problem, stemming from its lack of control over its contract generation procedures. When putting together a deal with a new customer, the company’s independent sales reps would often choose an out-of-date form or, in some cases, choose the wrong form altogether.

Document Generation Software for Home Builders, Part 1

Using Answer Files within Document Generation Software When I purchased my first home, one thing I will never forget is how long it took the home builder to generate the necessary documents. My wife takes 30-40 minutes just to choose which type of shampoo to purchase at the grocery store, but she decided on the...

The Case for HotDocs: “The Proof is in the Pudding”

I have no idea where the phrase, “the proof is in the pudding” came from . . . maybe England, where they tend to overwork the word pudding, applying it to everything from congealed animal blood to dinner rolls. Regardless of where the phrase originated, we all know what it means—the quality of something is uncertain until it has been user tested.

Is Document Generation a GRC Technology?

Ask a room full of IT professionals to define Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance (GRC), and you’re likely to get a lot of blank stares. The fact is it’s not easy to define GRC, in part, because each of the three terms seems to require its own definition. This reality was driven home by French...

Designer vs. Programmer

Many newcomers to HotDocs and document generation have a solid grounding in producing documents in more traditional ways. They often understand issues like layout, style consistency, margins, headers/footers and pagination. It’s essentially an art: how do I present this text in the most pleasing/consistent/clearly branded/professional/etc. manner? Document specialists—sometimes authors, sometimes knowledge owners, often both—generally approach...

Governance, Risk Management and Compliance

Jim Sinur, a Vice President at Gartner Research, is a leading authority on process automation technologies (BPM) and their relationship to Governance, Risk Management and Compliance (GRC). Jim recently posted a blog highlighting a government agency that addressed its GRC problems using HotDocs document generation technology and got dramatic results. Click here to view his...

The Pilcrow Road

When developing templates in HotDocs and Microsoft Word, the pilcrow is incredibly important—arguably the most important character in any template. Oh, you don’t know what a pilcrow is? Don’t feel bad, you are not alone. Some Word users are familiar with the pilcrow (that odd-looking, backwards-P shaped character that lounges nonchalantly amongst the Standard toolbar...