The Challenge

Beck, Robinson and Company is a Vancouver based law firm providing services in the Lower Mainland for the past 25 years. The firm’s practice includes assisting clients in real estate and mortgage transactions for both residential and commercial clients. Propel Solutions was brought on board to help improve the functionality of their existing Document Merge Application (RTF) to support increased business functionality to meet their customer, staff and business needs. The engagement involved custom development of an application that would streamline the current document merge process.

The Objectives

  • Requirements Gathering: A series of requirements gathering sessions were conducted by Propel Solutions to identify key functionality and data, and ensure integration of the application with other internal systems and processes.
  • Application Development: Propel developers’ custom built a Document Merge Application to meet the agreed functionality and requirements determined in the Requirements Gathering phase. The custom system would allow for documents to be merged from all versions of Microsoft Word, entry of data into a database, and ability to customize documents with clauses and paragraphs.
  • System Testing: Propel developed test scripts and internally conducted system testing to ensure the current processes used by Beck, Robinson and Company were operational in the new system. Working with the firm’s staff, Propel conducted User Acceptance Testing (UAT) to confirm users could navigate and utilize the system. Any issues uncovered during this process were forwarded to the developer for resolution.
  • Develop Procedures and Training: In order to support users with the transition, Propel created and documented procedures for using the custom application, which were then used in training materials. The documentation was linked to the application through a help button located in the application.

The Results

The customized Document Merge Application has enabled Beck, Robinson and Company to streamline their processes when auto-generating legal documents for clients. The existing functionality has been improved with the ability to easily store, search and retrieve customer information for use in document creation at a later time. Additionally, the team can add and remove document clauses without the creation of a new template.