The Perils of MS Word

Our Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Justin Lipton has begun blogging over at CIO.com. From time to time we’ll share Justin’s posts in this blog as well. Here’s his most recent:

A mistake in a Word document has caused considerable damage and embarrassment to a publicly listed company in New Zealand. I recently read this post about an unfortunate comment that was left in a company’s annual financial statement. It reminded me how careful we need to be when using generic tools such as Word to produce documents. Here are some tips for how to avoid this kind of embarrassment:

Read it before you send it – OK this is really obvious but if you’ve created a document using cut and paste there’s a very good chance it will contain something you don’t want it to. That includes notes and comments too. After you’ve read it, read it again and if it’s important give it to someone else to read and review.

Word metadata – Metadata is often neglected but it can contain the original author, path, company etc. If you’ve ever based one document on another or used a template that wasn’t created by you this can really bite – particularly if the metadata identifies another client or worse still a competitor. Many companies even have Word macros to strip the metadata out of Word docs when they are opened.

Track changes – "just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there." Tracking changes is great – it allows you to see how a document evolves: who made changes, what changes and when. Do you really want non-trusted people to see this too? Before sending a document always ensure that track changes is turned off and that all changes have been accepted.

Fast saves – you may not realize this but later versions of Word have a history feature. With this enabled you can see different versions of your document as you were editing it. OK for you – not so great for the non-trusted recipient who ends up seeing something potentially embarrassing to both you and your company.

And finally, don’t use Word output unless you have to. Use Word for writing and editing ad hoc documents but PDF is superior as a final format. Sometimes this may be impractical, but use PDFs whenever you can. For common documents utilize document assembly tools to make your life that much easier and safer.

What tips can you share to help others avoid such perils? Please share in the comments.

Contract Automation Impacts the Sales Cycle

As technology and the economy have created more and more pressure to close deals faster with less cost, innovative sales executives are looking for ways to accelerate their sales cycle without increasing headcount and costs.

Contract automation not only saves time in contract creation but can also eliminate the need to wait for a busy legal department to create and review contracts. Inefficient, manual processes waste time and money throughout the enterprise.

Dow Jones and DLA Piper have both experienced firsthand success with document automation and they are sharing their know-how.

Join us for a webinar on Thursday, September 24 at 1:00 pm (EDT) to learn how:

• Dow Jones has reduced the time it takes their salespeople to get a first draft contract to their customer down from several days to one half-hour, regardless of where they are located, or whether the lawyer normally assigned to them is otherwise engaged.
  
• DLA Piper has helped their clients to streamline contracting processes and reduce the time and expense that is required for these types of activities.
  
• To empower sales staff to create their own compliant contracts in minutes and leverage Salesforce.com.
  

Register here to attend the Webinar.

Not available on the 24th? Register here to receive the recording.

Document Assembly for Insurance Policy Generation

Although document assembly has its origins in the world of law firms and legal contracts, it has more recently been pressed into service as a document automation platform in the document-intensive insurance world. After all, an insurance or reinsurance policy is indeed a contract.

The need for contract certainty along with increased scrutiny from the regulators, and growing pressure for cost savings, makes document assembly an ideal insurance industry solution.

Exari has helped many insurance brokers, underwriters and carriers to automate their documents, most recently, Munich Re. Munich Re’s UK Life Branch has automated their Treaty Contracts. The company believes the efficiencies achieved through this document automation project will help them lower costs and offer even better customer service.

Contact us to learn how we can help you with your insurance document automation needs.