Everyone in business has heard of the KISS method when faced with an issue. The problem is most don’t know how to actually Keep It Simple.
Quadient Professional Services Manager, George Wolbert, presented an excellent session on Simplifying Complex Documents at the 2019 Quadient Inspire annual conference in San Antonio, Texas.
“Change is hardest at the beginning, messiest in the middle, and best in the end.”
- Bestselling author Robin Sharma
Quadient provides an incredibly powerful set of tools, but when put in the wrong hands, complexity can creep in and take over. No one would let someone operate heavy machinery without proper instruction and guidance, but when it comes to technology people sometimes jump right in, only to find real problems later down the road.
Initially document applications were simple and repetitive. Project teams then found things that look the same such as address blocks, paragraphs, headers, and footers and assembled templates that simplified the production process. As documents became increasingly complex, a single template became a myriad of overlapping business rules.
To win the fight over complexity creeping in to your applications, project teams need to look at both Rationalization and Categorization.
Rationalization
Elimination of redundancy by organizing documents logically into a coherent system to make it as efficient as possible. This is a reorganization of documents and templates in order to increase your operating efficiency.
Categorization
The action or process of placing into classes or groups through which objects are recognized, differentiated, classified, and understood.
For Quadient Inspire customers, true lifetime value and cost reductions come from the reduced maintenance and speed of changes after integration. Complex documents that contain many business rules can be streamlined to contain much less code and reuse approve content. Building the master template using a combination of rationalization and categorization allows you to bring in new approved content without changing the master template. And keeping the process clean, efficient, while reducing maintenance cost.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
- Leonardo da Vinci
To simplify your project, objects need to be put in containers. Then categorization needs to occur for each of the blocks. This eliminates the requirement for layers of business rules. You are simplifying complex documents and templates by breaking them into manageable pieces.
The key is understanding your business goals and objectives - both reducing maintenance and improving speed to market.
Allen brings more than 25 years of diverse experience in Marketing and Vendor Management to Macrosoft Inc. As the Managing Director of our Customer Communications Management (CCM) practice, Allen leads the Onshore and Off-shore CCM development teams. Additionally, Allen oversees pre-sales activities and is responsible for managing the relationship with our CCM software provider Quadient.