Windward Hub - Document Automation Solution

Windward has made our Document Automation so Nice & Easy

What's Best?

All of our reoccurring documents now pop out in seconds. With Microsoft Word (it does Excel & PowerPoint too) as the template designer we can create documents with exactly the formatting & layout we want. And with all of our business logic directly in the template, the full automation is right there. Windward (actually Office) makes it so simple to change layouts, effects, colors and more.

And the smart document logic puts our business logic right in the template. This functionality allows us to incorporate data based on our business rules placed directly into the template.

Because templates are created in Office, our users already know how to use the system. Because of this most template design work is now done by the business users. This also means when someone needs a new template, they can build it immediately – no more waiting on dev.

I also love that there’s no longer any code. It's not low code, it's no code.

What do I dislike?

No complaints. Windward is a well designed product.

What benefits have we realized?

Instead of having IT involved generating documents, each user can create his/her own templates as needed. Individual teams can create the templates for their group. This is a big savings, not just in lower cost but also quicker turn-around.

This has saved time and resources for us on a gigantic scale, as we had issues with document automation. We now no longer have to do it manually nor pull in developers.

And the #1 benefit is we now get the documents we want – exactly as we want them.

Recommendations to others considering Windward Studios

It took me about an hour learning it to truly understand the approach Windward takes. It’s superior to anything else out there, but better means different. I was first trying to use it the way I used previous document automation systems, and that was awkward.

Once I put aside the old way of designing templates and thought of it as more of a Word document that I was tagging, then everything became fast & easy. You’ll know you’re at that point when you can’t imagine reverting back to another program.

Also, don’t assume that it’s so easy you can turn template design over to business users and you can walk away. You will need to train your users, mostly on understanding their data structure, but also some on the concepts in Windward. And you need to remain a resource for when they need to do something complex.