Generating Documents in the Cloud

Generating Documents in the Cloud

CONTENTS SUMMARY Generating Documents in the Cloud STUDY Salesforce Users Need Comprehensive Document Creation Functionality THE PERFECT TOOL BIRT PowerDocs: Documents with Complex Requirements Made Easy 3 5 6 THE ADVANTAGES Get to Know More About the Benefits of BIRT PowerDocs WHAT ABOUT FUSION And While We re on the Subject: App for Oracle Fusion Users STORAGE IN THE CLOUD Connect Your CRM System to Google Drive 9 10 11 Actuate Corporation Corporate Headquarters 951 Mariners Island Blvd San Mateo, CA 94404 Phone: 1 888 242-0692 ccminfo@actuate.com ccm.actuate.com Managing Editor: Christian Rodrian Art Editor: Björn Möllers Edited by: Manuel Fink Photos & Footage: www.fotolia.de www.123rf.de www.actuate.com 2014 Actuate Corp.

Actuate Guidelines SUMMARY Generating Documents in the Cloud As large organizations migrate from on-premise to hosted business systems, they face the challenge of finding a cloudbased customer correspondence solution with enterprise-grade functionality. Unlike small businesses, large organizations produce a wide range of high-volume customer correspondence related to sales, marketing, and customer service activities, such as proposals, quotes, contracts, direct mail, web offers, order confirmations, and written follow-ups to phone inquiries. Large organizations have very sophisticated processes for designing, producing, managing, and maintaining customer correspondence. They also have to deliver this correspondence across a multitude of channels: print, email, SMS, web, mobile, social, and others. To complicate matters even further, composing a single piece of customer correspondence often requires gathering data from several different onpremise or hosted business systems, such as CRMs, ERPs, and repositories. To address their challenges, large organizations need a comprehensive, enterprise cloud solution that functions as a single source for customer correspondence across all use cases, channels, technology platforms, and business systems. Sincerely, yours Manuel Fink, Manager Product Line Cloud Business While there are many cloud-based customer correspondence systems on the market, most are actually point solutions targeted at small businesses. Actuate Page 3

COMPANIES ARE DEMANDING HIGH STANDARDS FOR CLOUD SOLUTIONS

Actuate Guidelines Study: Salesforce Users Need Comprehensive Document Creation Functionality Companies that use Salesforce typically integrate it into additional applications and environments. In a survey carried out by Actuate, 43 percent of the 153 companies interviewed said that they had already integrated Salesforce into additional systems, while 29 percent claimed to be in the process of doing so. Have you integrated the Salesforce CRM solution into additional applications and environments in order to systematically increase its benefits? Within the context of customer management, Salesforce users considered the advantage of such a solution to be that it would enable them to generate personalized written customer communications on all communication channels in line with their exact personalization needs. Almost half of them considered this aspect to be extremely relevant, and only one third of the sales and marketing managers interviewed thought it wasn t particularly important. How important is it for you to be able to generate personalized written customer communications on all communication channels in line with your exact personalization needs? 43 % Extremely important (46 %) It s becoming more and more important (31 %) Not particularly important (23 %) 28 % 23 % 29 % 46 % Yes, we have (43 %) 31 % We re in the process of doing so (29 %) We re not planning to do that (28 %) There is also an obvious need for complementary solutions in the form of tools that enable users to create professional documents. In fact, four out of ten Salesforce users considered them to be absolutely necessary and an additional 35 percent thought that they would be a valuable addition. Only one quarter of users said that they were not currently interested in this type of solution. Do you think that a tool designed to help with generating documents would be helpful? Another survey question drew interesting results. Whenever there was a need for professional document creation tools, three quarters of the approximately 153 companies included in the survey said that it would be important for these tools to be available in the cloud. Should this type of solution be cloud-based? Absolutely (40 %) It would be advantageous (32 %) Not necessarily (28 %) It would be necessary (39 %) It would be helpful (35 %) We don t need one (26 %) 39 % 26 % 40 % 28 % 35 % 32 % Actuate Page 5

BIRT PowerDocs: Documents with Complex Requirements Made Easy With BIRT PowerDocs, Actuate has developed a solution that enables Salesforce users to conveniently generate complex documents in real time from the Salesforce Cloud. This not only makes the document creation process for email, print, social media, and other popular communication channels significantly faster, but also improves the level of personalization available to users. The impact of this should not be underestimated, as virtually every business process started from Salesforce involves documents in one form or another. After all, every single company that prepares quotations and invoices and processes customer service requests through their CRM system needs to use documents. However, this has been proven to be a problem when complex documents (e.g., quotations) need to be generated from Salesforce, as the necessary processes are rarely supported. In fact, even trying to integrate processes into Microsoft Offce or other business applications frequently turns out to be a veritable nightmare. Neither the standard tools that come with the CRM system, nor the solutions available on the Salesforce AppExchange, have been able to address these challenges successfully. This means that there s a very specific and clearly identifiable unmet need to reduce the inordinate amount of time spent every time a document is created from Salesforce. Even after this time is invested, there is a compromise in quality. In order to close this gap, PowerDocs uses all the data found in the Salesforce CRM application to generate documents for sales and service teams, departments, and organizations. PowerDocs supports user interactions; it is optimized for mobile devices; and can be seamlessly integrated into Microsoft Offce. This, together with the fact that PowerDocs supports all necessary processes and provides Salesforce users with a high level of automation, means that the tool makes processing documents much, much faster. In addition, PowerDocs can be easily integrated into a variety of systems because it uses predefined interfaces. There s no need to program an interface for Salesforce or any other supported business system. THE BIRT POWERDOCS APP IS AVAILABLE FOR: SALESFORCE: APPEXCHANGE.SALESFORCE.COM ORACLE FUSION: CLOUD.ORACLE.COM

Actuate Guidelines WITH POWERDOCS YOU ARE GOING STRAIGHT UP! Actuate Page 7

DOING THE RIGHT THINGS IN THE RIGHT WAY TO GET THE RIGHT RESULTS!

Actuate Guidelines The Advantages of BIRT PowerDocs When it comes to generating complex documents, most solutions are simply unable to meet the real-life needs of most businesses. It is important for decision makers at these businesses to ask: What criteria should we use to determine if a cloud service is the best solution for our document creation challenges? Within this context, there are eight main considerations: 1. The Ability to Open Documents in Offce: It is incredibly important for a cloud-based document creation solution to be integrated with Microsoft Offce because Word is the de facto standard word processor and, as such, is one of the most widespread applications in business environments. MS Word integration not only eliminates the need to learn the ropes all over again, but also ensures a level of intuitiveness (even in cloud environments) that, together with Word s powerful feature set, is sure to significantly boost productivity. 2. Fast Implementation: It is also important for this type of solution to be quickly integrated into the user s business models. In fact, one of the main selling points of cloud services is that they can be implemented with little effort. This is why PowerDocs comes with business layer technology that makes it possible to link customer data models in record time. While conventional solution integration projects often take weeks, if not months, to complete, the Actuate platform can usually be integrated in a mere two days. 3. Supporting All Process Requirements, e.g., Quotation Management: Cloud solutions must not only offer a collection of features, they must provide functionality with process logic that will save time and effort. This applies, for instance, to business quotation management needs. BIRT PowerDocs features a special Interview Mode that can be used to prepare quotations. It starts by asking for the necessary data through a graphic interface, allowing the user to make decisions that will determine the document s final content. In addition, the decisions a user makes may be used to dynamically ask for further input. systems from Salesforce. In addition, it enables users to use bulk document processing from SFDC and to have dynamic processes start based on the data in documents. 5. State-of-the-Art Development: Another important criterion is the age of a cloud-based document creation solution. Such solutions have been offered for integration into Salesforce for a while now, but these solutions the older ones in particular are not always kept up-to-date with the latest Salesforce standards. In contrast, PowerDocs includes the very latest developments, as evidenced by the fact that it incorporates the newest security features in Force.com Canvas. 6. Independence from In-House IT Infrastructure: As cloud users would expect, companies do not need their own in-house IT infrastructure to run BIRT PowerDocs because the cloud-hosted platform is fully operated by Actuate. Moreover, managing the corresponding content and processes does not require any technical resources, as this can be done 100% by the corresponding user department. 7. Mobile Device Support: Based completely on HTML, the PowerDocs Web Editor runs on every mobile device - without any constraints. Operating systems like ios and Android are supported. All interfaces are optimized for touch control, so PowerDocs can also be used on mobile devices with a reduced display size. 8. Supported Languages: BIRT PowerDocs supports 16 different languages by default, enabling companies to use the software worldwide and allowing their employees to create documents directly in their native language. 4. Multi-Channel Post-Processing: BIRT PowerDocs offers an additional unique functionality with the ability to post-process quotations in multiple communication channels. In fact, it is the only tool on the market that enables users to save documents in FTP or DMS Actuate Page 9

And While We re on the Subject: App for Oracle Fusion Users BIRT PowerDocs also provides Fusion users with important advantages, not the least of which is the ability to conveniently generate documents after the few minutes it takes to install and run the app. PowerDocs can also be optimized for mobile devices; it can be seamlessly integrated into Microsoft Offce; and it can be used to collect electronic signatures. In fact, BIRT PowerDocs was showcased as one of the first apps on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace at Oracle OpenWorld 2013. Users of cloud-based applications such as Oracle Fusion usually require a solution that can be used to create documents such as quotations, invoices, and service documents directly from the cloud. However, the Oracle Sales and Marketing Clouds only support a few of these processes with their standard functionality, so an app like BIRT PowerDocs is required to fill the vacuum. The app is custom-tailored to the specific needs of today s written communications and cloud applications, using the data and processes from Oracle Fusion to generate the type of interactive documents required by sales and customer service departments. In short, the PowerDocs app enables users to generate any document from Oracle Fusion with only a few clicks. Behind this impressive speed are several important technical factors. First, the app supports all necessary processes and provides a high degree of automation. Second, PowerDocs has unlimited functionality when it comes to generating and distributing documents, that can be sent via any channel and distributed on any device. In addition, BIRT PowerDocs supports both interactive and bulk documents. BIRT PowerDocs was listed as one of the first applications in the new Oracle Cloud Marketplace shop. This gives you a good idea of the enormous potential behind our app in terms of generating documents directly from the Oracle Cloud. - Dr. Sven Körner, Technology Evangelist To provide those interested in the interaction between BIRT PowerDocs and Oracle Fusion with more juicy details, we have prepared a short video. As for BIRT PowerDocs itself, it is based on the Actuate Document Generation developed by Actuate, an Oracle PartnerNetwork Gold Partner. The app stands out as a one-of-a-kind offering not only because it conveniently combines all customer information from all business applications (such as CRM and ERP systems), but also because it is able to use any communication channel, opening up entirely new horizons in the world of written customer communications.

Actuate Guidelines Connect Your CRM System to Google Drive Do you use Google Apps for Business or rely on Google Drive to quickly store your documents in the cloud? If so, you should know that there are no better tools for generating hyper personalized documents with your CRM system and storing them in Google Drive than Actuate Customer Correspondence and BIRT PowerDocs. These tools enable users to quickly and easily integrate Google Drive into the industry s leading CRM and ERP systems right out of the box. Not only that, but they also make it possible to take full advantage of all the collaborative work options provided by Google Apps for Business by fully integrating them into your document creation and CRM processes. Google Drive Integration: The Advantages at a Glance Using Actuate Document Generation or BIRT PowerDocs is the perfect way to tap into powerful features that will change your perception of what is possible when it comes to storing, archiving, and collaborating on documents. You can rest assured this power will be at your fingertips regardless of whether your systems are running in the cloud or on premise. Easy Access Store your documents in Google Drive so that you can access them anytime, anywhere. Link documents in your CRM system so that you can get the context for your CRM data, enabling you and your co-workers to work on a document at the same time. All Formats Supported Save your documents in any format, including.pdf,.docx, and.xslx. Google will take care of the rest. You can also convert your documents to Google Docs format. Unlimited Storage Space in the Cloud Get rid of your CRM system s storage space limitations and take advantage of clear and easy-to-understand features that show exactly how much storage space you are using. More importantly, pay only for the storage space you need. Contact Actuate to learn more about Google Drive integration. Actuate Page 11

Global Contacts Actuate Corporation Corporate Headquarters 951 Mariners Island Blvd San Mateo, CA 94404 USA Phone: +1-888-422-8828 info@actuate.com www.actuate.com Actuate UK Ltd. 1st Floor Pickford House 46 Bow Lane London, EC4M 9DL United Kingdom Phone:+44 (0) 207 246 4700 ukinfo@actuate.com www.actuate.com/uk/ Actuate Australia Pty Ltd. Level 10, Suite 7, 100 Walker Street North Sydney NSW 2060 Australia Phone: +61 (2) 9900 6300 apac_marketing@actuate.com Content Services Group Actuate Canada 95 Mural St. Suite 201 Toronto, Ontario L4B 3G2 Canada Phone: +1-888-242-0692 ccminfo@actuate.com ccm.actuate.com Actuate Germany legodo ag: An Actuate Company Durlacher Allee 109 76137 Karlsruhe Germany Phone: +49 (0) 721 66 592-0 correspondence@actuate.com ccm.actuate.com Actuate Asia Pacific 8 Temasek Boulevard #35-01, Suntec Tower Three 038988 Singapore Phone:+65 6887 3777 apac_marketing@actuate.com www.actuate.com/ap About Actuate Actuate provides software to more than 3.5 million BIRT developers and OEMs who build scalable, secure solutions that save time and improve brand experience by delivering personalized analytics and insights to over 200 million of their customers, partners and employees. Actuate founded and supports BIRT the open source IDE and develops BIRT ihub the world-class visualization and deployment platform to significantly improve productivity of developers working on customer facing applications. Actuate s BIRT Analytics delivers self-service predictive analytics to enhance customer engagement using Big Data. The Actuate Customer Communications Suite empowers organizations to easily transform, process, personalize, archive and deliver high volume content and individualized correspondence. The Actuate Customer Communication Suite empowers organizations to easily transform, process, personalize, archive and deliver high volume content and individualized correspondence. Actuate is headquartered in Silicon Valley with more than 5,000 enterprise customers in financial services, technology and government.