About RateSetter
RateSetter is an innovative new web-based consumer exchange that enables people to contract directly with one another to lend to and borrow from each other. RateSetter was set up to offer people an alternative to the regular banking system for their savings and borrowing needs. To become successful, RateSetter’s key challenge was to gain the trust of a material number of consumers. That trust can be created by longevity and good reputation but in the early days, it depends on providing a seamless service of the same quality and substance that a bank provides.
Problem
Given the nature of our business, the contracts which underpin each consumer transaction are absolutely crucial; these contracts need to be generated in a web environment but to look like a bespoke contract that has been generated by Microsoft Word rather than an HTML document. This is a function that needs to be automated and highly scalable. This was a business-critical requirement because every transaction that goes through the RateSetter exchange requires its own personalized contract so it affects every customer experience.
Solution
We considered a number of options; from a styled HTML page rendered on demand, Microsoft Automation, and even direct PDF editing. All were ruled out because of complexity and/or an incomplete feature set for our needs. Ideally, we required the simplicity of a Word document but create these documents entirely in server-side code. So for this, we looked for a 3rd party tool and Aspose was top of the list.
Image 1:- www.RateSetter.com home page
Image 2:- A web page section where ‘John’ can view or download his contract document(s).
Image 3:- PDF preview of sample contract page
Experience
We had used Aspose products before and found them very easy to integrate into our .NET code. We immediately downloaded the latest version of Aspose Words for .NET and within an hour, had generated our first test document. The degree of control we had over the structure and content of documents made development a breeze and soon we had our final document layout completed. In addition, we also wanted to be able to allow the customer to open and download copies of these documents through the website, so the decision was taken to move the files into binary data for storage in our database - again Aspose made this easy; just a few lines of code changed and our document was now being pushed directly from point of generation into our database, without ever touching the file system.
Summary
The cost of Aspose Words for .NET was repaid almost immediately by the time saved in developing our document solution. It is easy to get started and Aspose.Words for .NET makes the creation and editing of Word documents simple. Our contract documents now look polished and professional and are delivered to the customer in seconds - exactly what we wanted.
I can thoroughly recommend Aspose Words for .NET and on any future projects, I am sure to use Aspose products again.