Blogs - SmartDocuments

The Hidden ROI of Document Automation

The return on investment (ROI) of document automation is often evaluated through the lens of efficiency: faster processes, less manual work, and lower operational costs.

Automate Your Documents Using XML and JSON

Intelligent document creation requires more than just a robust base template. The success of document automation depends on how smoothly systems and data interact with each other. XML and JSON play a key role in this and are an essential part of intelligent document creation within SmartDocuments.

Why European Government Agencies Have Embraced Intelligent Document Templates for Decades

Europe has been at the forefront of digital government initiatives focused on improving accessibility, transparency, and citizen engagement for decades. For more than thirty years, government agencies across Europe have been adopting smart document templates. These advanced tools have become essential in helping public sector organizations manage the complexities of modern government operations by improving efficiency, consistency, compliance, and citizen service.

From Chaos to Clarity: How Smart Templates Simplify Your Document Creation Process

Every organization runs on documents; they capture decisions, define agreements, and keep business moving. They are the backbone of communication, contracts, and collaboration. Yet, for many teams, creating those documents can feel far from simple. Drafts and versions are scattered across folders and computers, formatting takes hours, and small inconsistencies slowly creep into official materials. What should be a straightforward task often turns into a cycle of confusion and inefficiency.

Beyond Efficiency: How Document Automation Improves the Employee Experience

When organizations discuss document templates and automation, the focus often lands on efficiency, standardization, and compliance. Beyond these tangible benefits, automation can quietly transform the employee experience, reducing stress, supporting growth, and fostering a more positive workplace.

Smart Document Assembly for the Public Sector: Simplifying Compliance and Boosting Efficiency

Government organizations face growing challenges to deliver accurate, compliant and timely documents – while often limited by increasing complexity. Manual processes slow things down, introduce errors and lead to inconsistent communication. Fortunately, there’s a better way. Read on to discover how document automation can transform the way your agency works.

How the European Accessibility Act Affects Your Document Output

As of June 28, 2025, companies in the European Union are required to make their digital services accessible to all. The European Accessibility Act (EAA) therefore calls for a fundamental change in the way digital documents are created. The traditional way of document creation simply falls short. Let’s move to a future-proof approach!

The Power of Document Automation: Cohesion Across Borders for Large Corporations

In today’s fast-paced business environment, large corporations are constantly seeking ways to improve operational efficiency and streamline their processes. One area that has seen significant advancements is document creation, where document automation and document templates are playing a pivotal role. Tools for document creation not only reduce the time spent on manual tasks but also ensure consistency, accuracy, and compliance across the documents in the organization. Here’s why so many large companies turn to document automation and templates and how they benefit from using solutions that can be applied across multiple departments.

Effective HR Document Creation for the Healthcare Sector

People are at the heart of healthcare. It’s not only about the patients, but also about the professionals in healthcare; they make a difference every day. Well-organized HR documents are therefore essential. But, the administrative burden in healthcare is already high. How do you manage and create all the documents related to your personnel matters as smartly as possible?

Optimize Document Creation for Efficiency and Consistency in Healthcare

Healthcare is all about accuracy. Add to this that every minute counts: Every minute a healthcare provider spends on administrative tasks is a minute less spent with the patient. Yet, that paperwork, which includes documents and forms, is a vital part of the healthcare sector. How can these document processes be streamlined without sacrificing quality or compliance?

5 Reasons Why District Attorney’s Offices Embrace Document Automation and Templates

In the dynamic world of legal proceedings, District Attorney’s offices stand at the forefront of maintaining law and order. Behind the scenes, they rely on innovative tools like document automation and template management software to streamline their document output operations and ensure justice is served efficiently. Let’s delve into five compelling reasons why District Attorney offices love working with document automation and templates.

The Shift to Document Automation and Smart Template Solutions in California EMS Agencies

California local EMS agencies (LEMSAs) are increasingly turning to document automation and template management solutions for creating their EMS documents, including complex investigation reports and all necessary documents for EMT Training Programs. This transformation reflects a broader trend towards digital transformation in healthcare. The shift is driven by the need for greater efficiency, accuracy, and compliance. In this blog, we explore the key reasons behind this transition and its impact on EMS Agencies in California.

Our Expert Tips for Creating Digitally Accessible Documents

In the transformation to digitally accessible documents, several elements in your document come into play. You’ll need to make specific adjustments to ensure the modified document meets the guidelines for accessibility. Which document elements are known to require conversion for digital accessibility? We’re here to share our insights and help you navigate this process!

Anonymizing digitally accessible documents with SmartDocuments

When honoring a request for information, you remove any information traceable to individuals from a document. With our Anonymize functionality, you have the option to anonymize both specific fields and all variables in a document. What do we mean by ‘all variables’? And how do we ensure that the end result remains a digitally accessible document? You can read about that in this blog.

How to prepare a SmartDocuments document for an information request

When, as a government agency, you disclose a document in response to a request for information (or FOIA request), you protect the sensitive information in that document. With documents created using SmartDocuments, you may also need to remove certain data. How do you make these documents free of confidential data without having to read through them and manually remove this data? We have developed a solution within SmartDocuments for this purpose!

Getting Started with Digitally Accessible Documents

When you are getting started with digital accessibility, sooner or later you are also going to be dealing with all of your organization’s digital documents. You want to ensure that the information you provide through documents is perceivable to every recipient. How do you tackle this transformation as an organization?

Quickly and Accurately Generate Large Numbers of Documents with our High Volume Module

SmartDocuments’ document creation tool makes it easy to generate beautiful, personalized documents – fully automated and all. What about when it’s not ten or a hundred documents, but more than ten thousand?

How the Right Template Ensures You Create Digitally Accessible Documents

If you work in a medium or large organization and deal with sending out letters or supplying documents to stakeholders, you may be familiar with Digital Accessibility. How do you ensure that all information you share with your target audience is available to everyone? How do you make digital documents accessible in an efficient way? We at SmartDocuments have the solution.

Administrative Assistants: Create Documents Quickly and Flawlessly with SmartDocuments

When working in administration, you are engaged in precise but time-consuming work: creating documents. A mistake is easily made and reusing previous versions of a document more often works to your disadvantage than to your advantage. How can you create error-free documents and manage them easily? We have the solution for just that!

Automated Document Creation: the Key to the Perfect Quotation

We don’t need to tell you: quotations can make or break a sales deal. And you know a good quotation is more than just an attractive price. Curious how you can use document automation without compromising the quality of your quotation? We’ve got just the thing!

How to Use Smart Templates to Make a Personalized Employment Contract

Are you responsible for HR in a medium-sized to large organization? If so, you probably spend a chunk of your time drawing up and managing employment contracts and other agreements. How do you minimize the paperwork so you can focus on the human side of your noble profession? Grab some popcorn – we’ve whipped up something good.

How to Infuse Every Document in Your Organization with Your Identity

Imagine this: all of your organization’s outgoing documents in the correct corporate identity. Sound like a utopia? If so, read on. Utopia is within your grasp.

From Word Template to Interactive Document: Document Creation Simplified

Efficient document creation: you can make it happen with smart templates, provided with the right standard elements and well-thought-out variable parts! Let’s take a tour through the wonderful world of smart templates and automated document creation – from building a new template, to drafting your document.

Document Output in DOCX, ODT, XML, PDF or HTML

You’ve gone through the document wizard of SmartDocuments, had a good look over the preview, and voilà: your document is ready. Now you just need to decide the form of your personalized document. A printout in your hand, a digital doc by email, or an XML file? You’ve got loads of options! (And we only named three.)

Document Creation Including the Mail Merge Function

Creating multiple letters at once, but with a personal touch. That’s possible thanks to mail merge, a popular technology widely used in business. What is the appeal of this technology, and what options are available in the document creation software of SmartDocuments?

Working with Template Styles: the Foundation of a Professional Brand Image

Optimal uniformity in all your organization’s internal and external communications. With the right software, it’s easier than you think. If you set up your document templates right, you’re already ahead of the game, but a proper template style (in the right corporate identity) perfects your documents.

Word Functionalities in Our Template Builder

Working with SmartDocuments when you were so used to good old Microsoft Word. As a die-hard MS Word fan, it’s hard to imagine a better software environment. Surprise! Nothing will change in the slightest when you switch to SmartDocuments. Well, not nothing… Naturally you get a nice dose of automation! But you can simply keep using all those old and trusted MS Word functions to build templates in SmartDocuments.

Managing Rights in SmartDocuments

Thanks to interactive templates, the entire organization can create documents on their own. That’s a wonderful thing! But you, as the organization, do in fact keep control over these templates. How? With proper user rights management.

Testing Your Interactive Document Template

You’ve got dinner guests, and you decide to take a stab at that complicated recipe from that celebrity chef. Of course you taste the result thoroughly before you serve it to your guests. That’s just common sense! You always test something the first time you try it out. Right? This same goes for an interactive document template. However steadfast your faith in the genius of your smart template: put it to the test!

Always Keep a Backup of Your Document Template Thanks to SmartDocuments Version Management

Template building: a job for anyone who loves a challenge. One does not “simply” make, refresh and edit templates. As a template manager, you know that better than anyone. So you want to be able to test your templates. And what if no one likes a change to an existing template? You’ll want to reinstate the old version ASAP. With SmartDocuments version management, you can.

Working with Building Blocks in SmartDocuments

New year, fresh corporate identity! A tweak to the shade of the corporate colors, a hip font, and a logo that’s “a bit more with the times”. Outstanding. And who’s going to apply these changes to the hundreds of document templates in the organization? The template builder. Who’s already getting queasy just thinking about it. (Oh, are you the template builder? Great. You’ll need this.)

The Power of Single Sign-On: One Login, Total Access

Many organizations work with a variety of (external) systems simultaneously. You log in to system A, while you look for the data you need in system B. Then you’re supposed to use system C to send it all to the right person. Sounds efficient, doesn’t it? And to top it all off, there is a different login for each system. But you’ve got time, right?

Digital Signing Made Easy with the Right Document Creation Software

With today’s smart software solutions, you can draft a business letter, contract, or mail-out in no time, fully personalized and with your corporate design. All that’s left is to sign your digital document. But how do you do that?

Completely In Control with SmartDocuments’ Search Function

Do you always seem to be missing one of your socks in the morning? And next, you spend ages looking for your car keys? Wouldn’t it be great to be done searching once you get to the office? We have just the thing for you! Ever heard of our Search Module?

Keep All Your User Registrations Up to Date with the Right Link to the (Azure) Active Directory

Be it new hires or departing employees, processing these changes can pose a time-consuming challenge for larger organisations. Contracts have to be drawn up and a wide variety of administrative processes have to be initiated, and additionally, all of these employees have to be registered and deregistered in the organisation’s systems.

From Creating Documents to Processing Them in an External Web App

You have created your document via SmartDocuments. Once completed, this document is, in many cases, saved and archived in the organization’s own system. It is also possible that this is just one step in the document creation process and the document still has a journey to make in an application other than SmartDocuments. In such cases, how do you link SmartDocuments to an external application?

Send Emails Directly From Your Document Creation Tool

Document templates. They give your outgoing correspondence an appealing and uniform look. You can quickly conjure up sharp-looking business documents with your corporate identity. Wouldn’t it be great if you could do the same with your outgoing emails?

Concept Storage: Saving Your Work as You Go

Working with templates. It saves you time, money, and frustration. You keep outgoing communication uniform and make considerably fewer mistakes. An adjustment in a template is done in no time and immediately available to the rightful claimants. The end user only has to choose the right template for their document, answer the questions in the question-and-answer dialogue, and they’re done! A perfect document in ‘no time.’ Leaves little to be desired, right?

Find Your Documents Anywhere, Anytime

Finally! It’s 5:36 p.m. on Friday evening, and you’ve just finished your last document of the week. Time to shut down the laptop. It was another productive week with an impressive volume of documents sent off, off and away. Always a great feeling!

What is Document Automation?

Digitizing documents. Most organizations have started or completed this journey. The time of archive drawers full of contracts is over. Today, everything is neatly stored on internal servers, in fancy yellow folders. But it can be done even more efficiently. How can it be done? By automating your documents. But what does that actually mean?

What is Document Creation?

The creation of documents. It’s almost an assembly line of work within organizations. One would therefore think that a wonderful software package would be used to generate all these documents as standard. But no, many companies still adapt each individual element in their documents manually. Error-prone? Yes, it is. Can this be done differently? Absolutely.

What is Document Template Management?

Consistency is key when it comes to corporate identity and branding. However, unfortunately, it’s not the norm. Consistent corporate identity implementation can be more difficult than you might imagine. People generally start from scratch instead of working with structured templates.

Co-Authoring in Document Creation

Working on one document with multiple people seems efficient but regularly generates frustration. For example, John from Marketing has already put the conclusion in the document, while Jenny from Sales was supposed to look at the content first. It’s nice to hear that Jack is working so far ahead… but hopefully, he also likes doing things twice over!

How a Powerful Question Structure Ensures Logical Document Templates

Number one in the category of “stumbling blocks during template building”: variables. It’s like an escape room. If you miss something at the start, you’ll never get out. But practice makes perfect! A good set of basic question types also helps.

Document Creation for Facility Management

Healthcare, government, education, and large corporations: four very different sectors but with common needs. One such need is facility management. After all, without properly functioning facilities, every task takes longer than necessary.