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Serving All Partner Organizations with a Single Set of Templates
Environmental Authority IJsselland, a regional environmental authority in the Netherlands, works with ten local municipalities and the regional Safety Authority in a shared information environment. The authority is responsible for managing the information system on behalf of the participating organizations. To work as efficiently as possible, the authority set out to find a solution that would allow it to serve all partner organizations using a single set of templates.
Joop Muller, the Information Management Advisor at Environmental Authority IJsselland: “In 2016, we conducted a tender for software to support permitting and regulatory inspections. As part of that tender we were also looking for document creation functionality. The software vendor we had in mind offered this functionality through the use of macros, but that would have resulted in complex management. We work with eleven partners and wanted to use a single set of templates for all of them, which would not be possible with macros. We also did not want to end up in a situation where we would have a separate set of templates per partner. Many of our municipalities were already familiar with SmartDocuments, and the SmartDocuments software aligned with our requirements. At that point, the choice was fairly simple.”
Smart Use of Software
Rolf van der Kuijl and Melanie Bosvelt are Application Managers for SmartDocuments at Environmental Authority IJsselland. Rolf: “We were aware of the software’s capabilities and were already familiar with it, which made the transition easier. As Application Managers, we aim to work as efficiently as possible and support as many of our partners as we can.” Melanie: “We build templates that are as standard as possible, but within those templates we work with interchangeable headers, footers, and other building blocks so they can be personalized per partner. As template builders, we focus on keeping the effort required to complete a letter as low as possible for the end user. This means, for example, asking as few input questions as possible and ensuring that users only need to enter information once. The integration between SmartDocuments and the software supporting permitting and inspection (PowerBrowser from Genetics) makes this possible.” Joop: “That is also why we deliberately use these applications as SaaS solutions. Installing software locally is impractical when you serve eleven organizations. With SaaS, we can resolve issues more efficiently because the software environment is the same for everyone.”
“We are committed to using the software as intelligently as possible,” Melanie explains. “In that process, we learned a great deal from one of the SmartDocuments consultants who supported us. That support has been extremely valuable in creating partner-specific texts. He taught us many techniques, and we bundled all of those tips and tricks into a kind of handbook.” Rolf: “That is very useful: we can look up how we built something, and if we run into an issue, we can find how to resolve it. And if that doesn’t work, we can always turn to the SmartDocuments support team with our questions.”
Standard and Uniform
“We are only responsible for creating the template,” Rolf continues. “The content of each letter comes from our editorial board. It is a fun challenge to translate their requirements into a functional template within the SmartDocuments software. The template is the end result, so we do not need to get involved in discussions about the content itself. We do, however, define the technical boundaries. Together with the editorial board, we are tasked with making texts standard and uniform, with as little customization as possible.” Joop explains how the editorial board came into being: “There needed to be a single set of letters for our texts, which is why the board was established. In effect, this is where the rules of the game and the framework for collaboration in creating letters were defined. As part of this structure, each template has a designated owner.” “It works very well that the process is structured this way; it makes us jointly responsible,” Melanie says.
“People are sometimes almost surprised by how easy and user-friendly it is.”
Environment and Planning Act & Accessibility
“We have also made practical agreements within our organization about, for example, the formatting of our letters and writing style; that too is part of the rules of the game,” Rolf explains. “In terms of writing style, the editorial board has recently gone through a transition focused on accessibility. In addition to being busy with the preparations for the upcoming Dutch Environment and Planning Act, the editorial board has worked to apply plain writing principles to all letters. These letters were submitted to the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG), which then shared them nationwide as a sample set of Environment and Planning Act letter templates.”
Melanie: “That is a win-win situation: the association supported us and, in return, now has a completed set of strong standard letters. With regard to the Environment and Planning Act, we also see a challenge for our application management work; we can continue to use the template and the revised content, but the dataset is changing. SmartDocuments and Genetics are supporting us to ensure this transition runs as smoothly as possible.”
User-Friendly and Straightforward
“We have 700 SmartDocuments licenses within our organization,” Joop says. “We rolled out the software in phases, and usage is still increasing every day.” Rolf: “We asked managers to encourage the use of our standard systems.” Melanie adds: “With SmartDocuments, we now have insight into how often a specific template is used. If someone chooses to continue creating their own letters manually, they are taking on a lot of unnecessary work. It is also prone to errors; a copy-and-paste mistake can easily happen.”
“Overall, we hear a lot of positive feedback about the use of SmartDocuments,” she continues. “People are sometimes almost surprised by how easy and user-friendly it is. ‘This is really great,’ we hear. Our partners are very positive about it and notice that they are making progress with SmartDocuments. We always appreciate hearing that.”
Learning from Each Other
“We continue to make an effort within our organization to contribute to the development of document templates and to keep the threshold low for users to work with the standard letters. We want to be accessible and available to the editorial board, because we have to do this together,” Rolf concludes. “In addition, we are also in contact with other environmental authorities that have recently transitioned to PowerBrowser from Genetics in combination with SmartDocuments. We value the opportunity to exchange experiences about how things are going, how we solve certain issues, and what is possible. We enjoy investing time in that. The same applies to other types of SmartDocuments customers whom we meet, for example, at SmartDocuments’ customer days. We can support each other well and learn a great deal from one another.”
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