If you’re still running Documaker these days, you should take a moment to evaluate the landscape and determine if it’s the best solution for your organization moving forward.  Chances are your use of Documaker likely stems from some enterprise publishing automation requirements or a need to satisfy high-volume batch printing demands many years ago, but times have changed.  Customers enjoy a competitive landscape for their business, and industry leaders are increasingly winning by engaging the customer in a personalized experience that delivers information to their fingertips on any medium.  Legacy applications such as Oracle Documaker are fine for handling traditional documentation automation requirements, but simply weren’t built to address these dynamic and evolving business demands.  When evaluating how well Documaker meets your needs, ask yourself the following:

• Is Documaker in a position to keep my organization competitive NOW and into the FUTURE?
• Does Documaker allow my organization to deliver a personalized experience that engages our customers on a level greater than our competitors?
• Is Oracle providing a regular cadence of feature updates that align with my business needs and priorities?
• Is my organization overly reliant upon critical IT staff to create new content?  In other words, can the business directly drive content creation or does this process always require technical resources to be involved?
• Does Documaker feel outdated relative to other tools in the marketplace?
• Am I facing staffing challenges with Documaker resources, and is there a steep learning curve involved getting someone new up-to-speed?
• Does Documaker provide us with a clear and cost-effective pathway to the cloud and does Oracle have a roadmap for getting me there without a complete overhaul of our existing solution?
• Does my organization use another CCM/UX platform in other areas of the business, and could it handle what Documaker does for me today?

Reasons to stick with Documaker

For many reasons that some organizations still run Documerge, it can make perfect sense to stick with Oracle Documaker as well.  It’s a tried-and-true platform that is extremely stable and very capable at handling traditional document automation challenges such as high-volume batch and on-demand requirements.  Documaker was built to handle very complex document-assembly challenges, and it does so while being able to scale to meet throughput demands and print windows.  Oracle also does an admirable job of maintaining backward-compatibility with earlier versions, so version updates tend to be minimally disruptive as well.  In short, Documaker does certain things very well and if your organization’s demands are limited to such things, there’s no compelling reason to look elsewhere.

Reasons to move on from Documaker

On the other hand, if any of the questions above have you scratching your head, it’s time to consider a thorough review of the CCM/UX landscape sooner rather than later.  Customer experience is the name of the game these days, and smart organizations are succeeding by switching from legacy applications to new solutions such as Quadient Inspire.  For example, Quadient Inspire excels in critical areas where Documaker falls short:

• Mature and extensive thin-client authoring & collaboration for business users.
• Full customer journey mapping.
• Extensive ETL functionality for data (and support for multiple input sources).
• Bi-directional communication/engagement capabilities.
• Robust review/approval workflows for content.
• Regular cadence of product fixes & enhancements that address the evolving needs of the business.
• Strong and easy-to-configure automation/scaling capabilities (including containerization).
• Capable of handling traditional batch/on-demand requirements AND dynamic customer engagement needs.
• Solid community knowledge-base and comprehensive training materials that are kept current.
• Clear upgrade pathway to the cloud.

If you’re still running Documaker and need some advice, we’re here to help.  Our team is comprised of former Documaker professionals who have experience in a variety of top-tier CCM/UX solutions.  In fact, we’ve mapped a best-practices path between Documaker and Quadient to make any migration as seamless as possible.  We can help to ensure that you make smart and informed business decisions and take the risk out of your journey forward with document automation and customer engagement. Contact us today.