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Automated Document Processing Solutions: Which One is Right for Your Business?

By Garry Klooesterman | 2024 Nov 14

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5 min

Summary: Generating and processing documents are essential tasks for any business, and doing this efficiently is crucial to success. Apryse offers flexible solutions, such as Apryse SDK, Fluent, and Apryse WebViewer SDK, to automate document processing, resulting in increased efficiency, enhanced productivity, and more. Learn about the key features and use cases for each solution, and which one is right for your business.

Introduction

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Documents have been around for what seems like forever. In fact, the earliest recorded business document is a receipt from ancient Mesopotamia, dating back to around 3000 B.C. It’s hard to think of a business today that doesn’t use documents in some form or another, whether it’s an order form, receipt, or tracking log.

Producing these documents manually, stone tablets aside, is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to errors. This is where automated document processing saves the day. Let’s take a closer look.

What is automated document processing?

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Automated document processing, or automated document creation, is the process of automatically generating documents, singularly or in bulk, based on predefined rules and templates. This is especially useful for creating documents like invoices, contracts, reports, and more.

What are the benefits?

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While businesses enjoy many benefits from automated document creation, some of the main ones are:

  • Increased efficiency: Save time and effort by automating tasks like converting documents, extracting data, and creating and filling forms.
  • Improved accuracy: Reduce errors by creating documents and importing data automatically, ensuring better accuracy and consistency.
  • Enhanced productivity: Get more done by letting the software do the work for you, reducing time spent on manual tasks.
  • Reduced costs: Lower operating costs with quicker turnaround times, more efficient collaboration, and reduced manual efforts.
  • Better customer experience: Improve customer satisfaction with faster document delivery and issue resolution, simplified processes, consistent documents, and more.

Challenges

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Businesses deal with many challenges in their daily operations. Everything from data security to integrating new technologies into existing systems, from regulatory compliance to scaling systems as the business grows. Apryse has the right tools to help conquer these challenges and more, allowing businesses to focus their attention on other areas.

Solutions

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Now that we’ve looked at what automated document processing, or automated document creation, is and its benefits, let’s look at what solutions are available to accomplish this. These options fit different business needs and cater to various skillsets, and knowing what each has to offer and for which scenarios each is best suited is crucial in helping you decide what’s right for your business.

Apryse SDK

Apryse SDK is a feature-rich toolkit that can be run directly within a browser or from a server and is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Key features

  • Create documents from a template: Generate PDF reports, invoices, letters, and contracts based on DOCX, XLSX, or PPTX templates using JSON data.
  • Make creating forms simple: The Apryse SDK fully supports manual and automated reading, writing, and editing of PDF forms, and includes tools to make working with them simple and efficient.
  • Complete document workflows: Add digital signatures, redact sensitive information, and convert documents to other formats, including PDF/A for long term storage.

Use cases

  • Professional Invoices and receipts: Add invoicing capabilities allowing clients to merge branded templates with financial data to easily generate invoices and receipts tailored to their needs.
  • Compliance reporting: Standardize reporting requirements with a PDF that can be signed digitally and converted to the required format.
  • Onboarding documentation: Build onboarding documentation once with digital forms and only revisit when changes are required.

Fluent

Fluent is a unique solution for easily creating reports and templates in popular file formats like PDF, HTML, DOCX, and more, on a large scale with minimal coding. The Microsoft Office plugin offers unlimited formatting options to suit your unique needs. 

Key features

  • Work within MS Office: Generate high-volume, complex, ever-changing templates in MS Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.
  • Deployed by developers; maintained by end users: Embed automated reporting into your application with minimal code or use a Java or .NET Engine for a robust and flexible framework for generating documents programmatically.
  • Easily connect to multiple data sources: Merge data from JSON, XML, SQL databases, and 150+ supported integrations.

Use cases

  • Batch reporting in Word: Generate consistent, brand-compliant reports at scale for internal stakeholders, partners, or third parties.
  • Forecasting in Excel: Create complex, data-rich Excel files, and let users tailor it to their needs. From sales forecasts to financial models, Fluent simplifies it all.
  • Customer proposals in Word or PowerPoint: Craft compelling proposal templates in Word or PowerPoint. Impress prospects with polished, professional proposals.

Salesforce

Salesforce is a powerful CRM platform able to manage the complete document lifecycle when combined with the Apryse WebViewer SDK, an all-in-one developer toolkit for document processing.

Key features

  • Reduce external SaaS applications: Customize the solution to fit your needs with a feature-rich, single suite of SDKs.
  • Salesforce data security: Keep digital content secure with no file transmission to servers or external sources, and without server-side dependencies, connectors, or third-party software.
  • Support for 30+ file formats in salesforce: Create, view, edit, and manipulate various file types, including Microsoft Office, audio, video and many more.

Use cases

  • Case management: Case management involves complex processes across various industries. Apryse WebViewer SDK automates workflows and reduces manual tasks with automated merging and programmatic redactions tailored for Salesforce objects.
  • Contract management: Enhance Salesforce's native contract management with the WebViewer SDK for template generation, editing, and signing. Reduce reliance on multiple applications and simplify workflows with features like redlining, and workflow automation tied to signing events.
  • Onboarding: Create a complete, custom onboarding solution, including the ability to generate documents from templates, automate form filling, sign, and much more, without relying on external apps and dependencies.

Choosing the right option for your business

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We’ve just looked at 3 options for automated document processing, along with their features, benefits, and use cases. Ultimately, the option that’s right for you depends on the unique requirements of your business.

We’re here to help, so contact us to learn more about how Apryse can simplify and automate your document creation process. If you need help, connect with one of our solutions experts in real time on the Apryse Discord channel.

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Garry Klooesterman

Senior Technical Content Creator

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