Service holding: Saving print costs by document templates

Request: In the service sector, the corporate group has a dozen divisions with more than 200 branch offices. The group plans a rollout of the template set developed for the head office in all divisions and branches.

Difficulties: At the time of the project start, the IT infrastructure of the group is inhomogeneous. For instance, there is no consistent installation point for Microsoft Office with a clear path structure. Each division has its own stationery with different layout; for each branch office small numbers of stationery are printed with the localized information.

Solution: Management has been convinced by the project team to support a new stationery layout consistent for all divisions. Only the logo itself is different, whereas position and measurements are standardized. Preprinted information is deleted from the stationery.

A global Word add-in contains the complete functionality for the administration of user profile data and company (branch) data. Single document templates such as letter and fax are attached on run-time to the add-in libraries, thus avoiding path issues. Users can select, on document creation, for which branch office they want to create the new document.

An online-help provides support for difficult tasks and shows automatically "What's new"-information in the case of template updates. - Installation is done by an InstallShield setup.

The document template set allows important cost savings on the stationery side, because larger numbers can be printed, and the regular deployment after changes in the branch office data is not longer necessary.

A presentation from this project - albeit in German only - you can find in the German publication section.