Usage Scenarios
See examples of how SWING Integrator can help in a wide range of HCL Notes-based solutions
Personalized serial letters
A systems-integration company has been regularly faxing or mailing hundreds of letters that should have been customized for every recipient. The company has been able to produce only partially personalized documents. It was a regular time consuming hassle.
With SWING Integrator, the HCL Lotus Notes CRM solution was easily enhanced with an advanced mail merge feature, so the personalized Word documents could be instantly emailed, or printed. In addition, the company can now include specific marketing messages or personalized notices to each letter, based on user-defined rules and customer data from Lotus Notes (e.g., @IF(AccountYears > 3, “SpecialGift”; “StandardNote”).
Sales proposal automation
A sales team has been looking for a solution to help them create more proposals in less time. It needed to reduce manual repetitive tasks, and consequently improve proposal consistency and accuracy. Although the team have been using a CRM/SFA solution, the solution didn’t provide help in writing proposals.
The sales team resolved the issue by enhancing their CRM/SFA application with a new proposal automation feature, based on SWING Integrator. The solution used the Integrator’s Content Library to provide the team with a central storage for reusable content such as proposal sections, company information, product information with images and tables, legal clauses, and RFP questions and answers. This way, the sales team has built an efficient, easily accessed knowledge base of sales-ready messaging.
Proposal authors select from the Notes form specific elements they wish to include in a proposal, ensuring appropriate proposal content is applied to specific sales situation. Then, SWING Integrator assembles a formatted, accurate and professional sales proposal.
As a result, the sales team is now able to quickly, consistently and effectively respond to RFIs/RFPs, with automated proposal assembly and centralized Content Library. The resulting proposals are securely stored in the Lotus Notes database.
Invoicing customers by email
A services company uses a HCL Lotus Notes application for sales quotations and invoices. However, the company is looking to send quotations and invoices by email, directly from its application.
With SWING Integrator, a Notes developer just needs to add a “Send as PDF” (or similar) button to the form or view. Then, authorized users are allowed to design the invoice template in Word or Excel, and set up the data transfer from the Notes form to the corresponding Office template. And that’s all. Business users will be able to create and attach a PDF invoice to an email message with a single click.
See Also: Direct conversion of Lotus Notes documents to PDF for sharing, archiving, or web printing: SWING PDF Converter for Notes »
Sales data analysis
A sales manager requires up-to-date sales data in numerous views: sales by region, by distributor, by week, by product category. He prefers Excel rather than Notes views. With SWING Integrator, an application developer can take advantage of advanced features in Excel such as PivotTables, conditional styling, and drilldown to analyze sales data from Lotus Notes.
The developer will create initial report templates, and these templates will be effortlessly customized by users later on.
Automated contract authoring
A law company is looking for a way to make its legal document production process more efficient. It especially needs to enforce compliance to standard terms and conditions. Legal documents typically have mandatory sections, optional clauses, and conditional or alternative clauses.
Instead of the “copy-and-paste” method, which is slow and inaccurate, the company has built a Notes solution with the SWING Integrator’s document assembly capabilities. SWING Integrator composes the document from fixed and dynamic content, producing either a Word document, or directly a secure PDF document. Resulting contracts are stored in the Notes database.
Document library
A project team has needed a document database where project documents could be stored, as well as all correspondence related to the project. The key requirements included Microsoft Office support, and ability to centrally manage document templates specific to the project.
The task of developing a solution was assigned to a team member who was a casual developer. She took the standard Notes Document Library database. Then, she used the Integrator Setup Wizard to copy SWING Integrator’s design elements to the database. As some specific Notes forms were required, she designed and added those forms to the database. Finally, the existing Office templates were imported to the database, and linked to the particular Notes forms and fields, so the field transfer was established.
The whole integration process, including some visual design changes, took only a single day, and required no programming.
The project team now has a central storage place for all documents and templates, with full Domino security. They can create and edit documents in-place with the Notes client.
Letters to customers (Financial institution)
A financial institution wanted to produce business communications automatically from approved pieces of text, images, and data. Yet content had to be customized based on the subject and specific customer.
Its IT staff developed a Lotus Notes-based solution around SWING Integrator. Now, hundreds of standard texts in dozens of categories are available in the Notes database, ready to use in MS Word. For instance, if one of the bank’s staff writes a letter to a customer concerning an unauthorized overdraft, the application based on SWING Integrator would be able not only to offer customer data and amounts, but also wording of the letter can be automatically adjusted according to whether the overdraft is large or small.
Insurance policy production
An insurance company is using SWING Integrator for automating insurance policy production. The company equipped field agents with laptops and HCL Lotus Notes database with SWING Integrator. The database contains dynamic templates for all types of insurance policies. While interviewing the customer, the insurance agent fills out the Notes form on a laptop.
Once the form has been completed the agent clicks the Assemble button on the Notes form, and here’s where SWING Integrator comes in. The whole policy is assembled as a PDF document, with client information, appropriate clauses, terms and conditions. The paper forms are eliminated, the compliance and accuracy are enforced, and efficiency of the process is maximized.
More…
Most of these examples can be viewed in the SWING Integrator sample database. Other specific documents and usage scenarios can be accomplished simply by creating Office templates and template setup documents. For the advanced developer’s needs, a rich API function library is provided.
For assistance in planning, creating and configuring your specific templates, do not hesitate to contact us.