The customer: Volvo Financial Services
Volvo Financial Services (VFS) is one of the eight business units comprizing the AB Volvo Group. The remaining units are Volvo Trucks, Renault Trucks, Mack Trucks, Volvo Bus and Coach, Volvo Construction Equipment, Volvo Penta and Volvo Aero. Volvo Financial Services is a 100 percent owned subsidiary of AB Volvo. With approximately 40 employees in The Netherlands VFS focuses on financial services for the truck, bus and construction equipment divisions within the Volvo Group.
The decision: ten years of satisfaction with ITP-Document Platform
Transportation sector, financing is highly specialized. Through their extensive domain knowledge and direct customer involvement, Volvo Financial Services Account Managers help their clients to achieve an optimal financing programme aimed at maximizing company value. To comply with strict financial legislation regulatory demands it is crucial that key documents such as policies and contracts are produced with complete accuracy. This was the driver which lead to VFS adopting Aia Software’s ITP Document Platform, ten years ago.
The ITP Document Platform enables VFS employees to automatically produce complex documents in the required company style. VFS uses an IBM iSeries application from which users generate ITP documents via print menu listing the templates for the available documents. Users then submit requests to invoke specific templates at which point users enter key data such as customer name, contract type etc. Using these parameters, ITP retrieves the required document data from the iSeries system and generates and prints a Word document completely automatically as a background task, ITP documents automatically conform to the VFS company style. An important benefit provided by ITP is that all documents are composed in a consistent manner and that all of the necessary components and content are automatically included. This ensures that VFS achieves high quality standards and a professional image through its ITP generated documents.
The Solution: Automated document production with User tailoring
In the past, VFS Business Users were unable to directly maintain their own document content. Requests for change had to be submitted to the IT department. However VFS Business users had a strong need to modify document content to more effictively support their core business processes. To achieve this requirement VFS deployed Aia Software’s ITP/MDK Repository product.
The existing VFS ITP Solution extended with the ITP/MDK Repository enables VFS not only to automatically compose financial documents, but also to enable business users to adapt document content without the involvement of the IT department. ITP/MDK Repository functionality enables standard blocks of text to be specifically adapted to the needs of specific clients in order to create personalized documents. Changes to existing text blocks can only be made by authorized users, thus enabling VFS to prevent unauthorized changes the most significant benefit is that VFS business users, if appropriately authorized, can maintain their own document content. Management and maintenance of document templates now also take place within the ITP/MDK Repository. Again, authorized VFS users can edit templates and save new versions within the Repository database; previous versions being saved so that changes in templates can be reversed, if required or two versions compared to see the differences.
The core of the business: What is the impact of ITP on Volvo Financial Services business operation?
Erik Brent, IT Manager with Volvo Financial Services, says: “We are very happy with the functionality of the ITP Document Platform. It’s with good reason that VFS has been working with ITP for ten years now. The functional enhancement provided by the new ITP/MDK Repository has however, given us some new benefits. The Repository now also makes version management and controlling templates within VSF very user-friendly and efficient. Where in the past we used to process version management of Word documents and text blocks by hand, with the risk of mistakes and duplications, we now do this automatically through the Repository. And where we used to need the IT department to be involved for editing the content of documents, now business users can do this themselves. With the ITP/MDK Repository functionality, authorized users can adapt standard text blocks themselves as well as editing and developing document templates. Moreover new ITP functionality enables us to automatically convert documents to PDF. This allows VFS to meet the growing demand among our clients to receive documents via e-mail. At VFS emailing Word documents wasn’t an option because there was no way to prevent subsequent changes. PDF documents are a secure format and therefore suitable to send via e-mail. Automatically sending PDF documents to VFS employees who work at home or who are on the road, is a powerful option to allow them to view and access documents while travelling. In summary, for VFS the addition of the MDK Repository functionality to the ITP system is a very good choice, enabling us to save even more time and work even more efficiently.”