Introduction
In every organization, a database plays an important role in holding the entire organization’s data across functions/departments. This data is used to create many documents by organizations. They create sales proposals, invoices, after-sales documents and procurement contracts, NDAs, etc.
Documents play an integral part in many transactions, including those in legal, mortgage, or real estate. Document-generation requirements can vary greatly, from the creation of one document to the creation of hundreds of documents at once.
Documents created by organizations are shared with customers, vendors, partners, and other stakeholders. This is done to comply with legal requirements and to communicate information.
Organizations are responsible for generating documents from data in their databases and distributing them.
Databases allow for the creation of documents directly
Traditional databases store data in tables. They also have a logical relationship between them. Hence, Database solutions don’t have document design capabilities. Document databases/NoSQL/document databases store information in JSON or JSON-like documents. They are not great for document generation.
If you’re a skilled SQL command user, there are many options available including off-the shelf PL/SQL packages. The options for non-technical users/business users are limited. First, you can call IT to get help. It is not easy to get IT bandwidth for document generation because business documents are subject to frequent changes.
Business users are more likely to seek out a solution that will allow them to do their jobs.
Easy to create/modify templates in accordance with your organization’s brand guidelines and design guidelines
Click a button to generate documents
Let’s take a look at the tools that can be used to address these needs.
Common Tools and Approaches
Most solutions are not designed for document generation and offer little automation.
Reporting/BI tools: Tableau, Jasper and Crystal reports generate reports, but they lack document design. These tools are best suited to creating interactive reports. Although they make document generation simple, business users still need IT support for template creation and modification.
Publishing tools: Indesign and Microsoft Word offer data merge and mail merge functionality. However, these tools are only good for basic document merging. A publishing tool is not the best choice if you want to create a report with bullets, conclusions, and other written text. These tools are not able to suppress blank rows or correct date and number formatting errors.
Software for Document Generation
The Document Generation software addresses these issues very well. Business users can edit templates in their preferred editors. They can use a DIY interface to populate data into templates to create documents.
EDocGen, a tool that makes it easy to create templates, takes it a step further. Existing documents can be used as templates to create document templates.
They provide dynamic text, tables, and images. They are also very flexible to accommodate different types of business documents. These cloud applications enhance collaboration, intelligence, mobility, and collaboration of your team. They can be used from any device, anywhere.
Zapier allows you to automate document generation and delivery. Zapier integrates with both traditional databases like MSSQL, MySQL, and online databases like Knack, Caspio, etc. You can create a trigger to fire for each new record in the database. This trigger creates a new document for each record that is added to the database. Even email delivery of documents to recipients
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