Digital White Papers

DOCUMENT FACTORIES: BUILDING DOCUMENT AUTOMATION TOOLS to other responsibilities. Because these groups have different backgrounds, explanations can take longer. These issues can be problematic, particularly when the underlying forms need more substantive work. Having the subject-matter expert take on the development role may avoid breakdowns and other delays in the communication process that might otherwise exist between a legal expert and a separate technical expert. However, this would require the legal expert to attend training and dedicate time to automating the forms, which may not be cost effective for the firm. Focusing the relevant expertise into a single source may avoid some bottlenecks but exacerbate others. This approach may not work where document automation tools span different subject areas such that you would need to train several different legal experts on document automation technology. The right approach will depend on the nature and extent of personnel resources at your disposal, the institutional commitment to document automation and the baseline quality of the forms (developers working with high-quality, annotated forms may have fewer questions). In all events, when building a team for document automation initiatives, exercise care to select people with coordination and communication issues in mind. ARCHITECT TOOLS TO IMPROVE LEVERAGE AND EFFICIENCY The most significant efficiency gains can be achieved when the automation tools are designed such that answers to questions will have multiple effects in the documents. The ability to create this leverage will depend in large part on the structure of the underlying form. Sometimes, it might be possible to subsume a group of related questions into a single, more general question (exercise care, however, to ensure an end user comprehends the multiple outcomes that may derive from his or her answers to those general questions). Another way to build leverage is to have a single questionnaire that controls multiple, related documents. This may avoid duplication of more generic questions that may otherwise be repeated for different documents. There are also instances where the underlying form can be modified to simplify automation, although subject-matter experts should be consulted. FOCUS ON END-USER EXPERIENCE One of the key issues with document automation is getting people to use the tools, and ease of use is critical to promoting adoption, particularly since many people may not be familiar with document automation tools. Your goal should be to make the interface sufficiently easy to use and intuitive so

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