Standard Life Fund Guides

The Problem

Standard Life published a range of fund guides which include scheme level variations as well as standard fund guides for retail customers. The fund guides are provided to customers to help then make informed decisions. The guide contains a combination of static and dynamic content which is collated manually to generate the end product. Data is collated from a number of data sources.

Standard Life were looking to deliver a solution that streamlined and automated the production of these fund guides. The solution would allow a number of different users to upload a range of data files. Different users would then dictate base information and select a template from a range. The system would apply the data and any business rules to the chosen template and produce (as automated as possible) the required output. The system would also provide an audit trail, management information and output ‘data’ files as necessary.

They were looking for the service provision to be browser based via web interface.

The Solution

Standard Life put their requirements out to tender and Interlagos was selected. Our proposals were based on using the APS system to create the fund guide.

Standard Life drew up a detailed specification outlining page by page the design of the fund guide. The requirements were to have dynamic text, pages being created from a set of rules based upon the type of fund guide to be produced. Client specific information such as company name, scheme name and IFA name would be inserted throughout the document and fund tables and lifestyle tables would be inserted again scheme and market dependant. Pictures and diagrams in the document could also be changed to reflect client branding. All this variable information would be supplied in a large spreadsheet.

Once the spreadsheet data had been uploaded each page could be manually overridden with non-standard text to cater for non-standard fund guides. Documents published varied in length from 30 pages through to 60 pages. A complete audit trail is maintained by the system showing the date of every stage of the document creation and the user who completed that stage.

The system has been live since January 2014 and currently has over 300 documents maintained on the system.