DOCUMENT Strategy Fall 2020 by MadMen3

Who Can Help Banks & Financial Institutions with Their CX? PAGE 28

DOCUMENTmedia.com | Fall.20

HAS COVID HIGHLIGHTED THE CASE FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION? THE STATE OF AFFAIRS IN RPA By Connie Moore

WHERE IS YOUR CONTENT HIDING? By Bob Larrivee

TAKE CONTROL OF CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT IN 2021 By Scott Draeger

TABLE OF CONTENTS volume 27 issue 3 | Fall.20 | DOCUMENTmedia.com

FEATURES 10

The State of Affairs in RPA The long overdue RPA market consolidation takes off By Connie Moore

Where Is Your Content Hiding?

Don’t forget to search copiers, printers and other locations you may not be aware of or may unintentionally overlook

By Bob Larrivee

Has COVID Highlighted the Case for Digital Transformation? If organizations are to remain competitive, they must rapidly align their business operations to the current business landscape

By Carl Hillier

Understanding the New Digital Reality

Cloud-managed omnichannel experience platforms are essential for post-COVID recovery By Will Morgan

What’s Driving the Process Automation Movement? Banking and financial institutions are looking to automate compliance and auditing for their lending practices. But why the urgency?

By Dan Lucarini

Could 2021 Be Worse Than 2020? Get up, learn how to avoid being knocked down again, and do what you need to do to take control

By Scott Draeger

Why Migrate and Close Your Shared Network Folders/Files? For drives established 20 years ago, there may be files that are 20 years old By Bud Porter-Roth

5 CX Solutions for Banks and Financial Institutions

DEPARTMENTS 06 07 4

Letter from the Advisory Board Advisory Board

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08 09 30

What’s New Contributors Think About It

LETTER FROM THE ADVISORY BOARD

Automating Banking and Financial Institutions: A Holistic View Process automation in the Banking and Financial sector is not new, as they tend to be on the leading edge for most technology innovations to become more efficient, increase processing times and improve the overall customer experience. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the latest example of this as you will see in several articles in this issue of the magazine. RPA automates the activities typically conducted by humans, such as loan application processing, data entry and customer communications. Results have seen significant reductions in time to process, reduction in total hours of manual labor and even expand use of RPA to additional business areas and processes. This leads me to my reference to taking a “holistic view” of the organization and business. For example, Human Resources (HR) is a business unit known for heavy manual processes, even when a Human Resource Information System (HRIS) is in place. When you look at most HR departments, there are applications to process, candidate review processes, payroll and benefits, performance reviews and even health insurance and retirement planning. The key here is to open the possibilities for automations by taking a step back and looking at the organization in its entirety. In my view, the best place to start is by mapping the current processes to validate operational reality, bring process improvement opportunities to light and identifying where and how technology can be implemented to automate those improved processes.

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This approach will also highlight areas where currently owned and implemented technology can be better utilized to maximize value and increase Return of Investment (ROI). Many organizations tend to buy with the future in mind and have unused functionality fall by the wayside. This is often an eyeopener for leadership, business unit managers and the user community. In some cases, the reason is that the current way of working is good, but the question should be is it optimized to its fullest? The articles in this magazine will provide you with great insight on several areas for consideration and may cause you to walk away with questions you never thought of in the past. This is a good thing. Another great resource for you is coming up on November 9th and 10th and that is DSF ’20 Live!— our new virtual event. To register for free, simply go to DOCUMENTstrategyForum. com and complete the registration form. Automating Banking and Financial processes delivers significant benefit and value, but when you take a holistic view of the organization, there are so many more opportunities to optimize and automate business processes across the enterprise. Remember, there is more to the business than just one department. There is room for improvement in every department and automation should be part of it.

Until next time.

BOB LARRIVEE

president Chad Griepentrog publisher Ken Waddell managing editor Erin Eagan [ erin@rbpub.com ] contributing editor Amanda Armendariz contributors Scott Draeger Carl Hillier Bob Larrivee Dan Lucarini Connie Moore Will Morgan Kaspar Roos Bud Porter-Roth advertising Ken Waddell [ ken.w@rbpub.com ] 608.235.2212 audience development manager Rachel Chapman [ rachel@rbpub.com ] creative director Kelli Cooke

PO BOX 259098 Madison WI 53725-9098 p: 608-241-8777 f: 608-241-8666 email: customerservice@rbpub.com DOCUMENT Strategy Media (ISSN 1081-4078) is published on a daily basis via its online portal and produces special print editions by Madmen3, PO BOX 259098, Madison, WI 53725-9098. All material in this magazine is copyrighted ©2020 by Madmen3 All rights reserved. Nothing may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher. Any correspondence sent to DOCUMENT Strategy Media, Madmen3, or its staff becomes the property of Madmen3. The articles in this magazine represent the views of the authors and not those of Madmen3 or DOCUMENT Strategy Media. Madmen3 and/or DOCUMENT Strategy Media expressly disclaim any liability for the products or services sold or otherwise endorsed by advertisers or authors included in this magazine. SUBSCRIPTIONS: DOCUMENT Strategy Media is the essential publication for executives, directors, and managers involved in the core areas of Communications, Enterprise Content Management, and Information Management strategies. Free to qualified recipients; subscribe at documentmedia.com/subscribe. REPRINTS: For high-quality reprints, please contact our exclusive reprint provider, ReprintPros, 949-702-5390, www.ReprintPros.com.

MEET THE DOCUMENT STRATEGY ADVISORY BOARD Pat McGrew Pat McGrew helps companies perform better in the print hardware, software and printing services industries. Her experience spans all customer communication channels and segments including transaction print, data-driven and static marketing, packaging and label print, textiles, and production commercial print using offset, inkjet, and toner. An experienced professional speaker and coauthor of 8 industry books, editor of “A Guide to the Electronic Document Body of Knowledge,” and regular writer in the industry trade press, Pat won the 2014 #GirlsWhoPrint Girlie Award for dedication to education and communication in the industry, and the 2016 Brian Platte Lifetime Achievement Award from Xplor International. She is certified as a Master Electronic Document Professional by Xplor International, with lifetime status, and as a Color Management Professional by IDEAlliance.

Bob Larrivee

Paul Abdool

Inducted into the AIIM Company of Fellows in 2019, Bob Larrivee is a recognized expert in the application of advanced technologies and process improvement to solve business problems and enhance business operations. In his career, Bob is a contributing writer for DOCUMENT Strategy, has led many projects and authored hundreds of eBooks, industry reports, blogs, articles, and infographics. In addition, he has served as host and guest subject matter expert on a wide variety of webinars, podcasts, virtual event, and lectured at in-person universities, seminars and conferences around the globe.

Paul Abdool is currently doing Fractional Business Development for multiple firms in the Customer Communications Management arena. He uses his 20+ years of regulatory communications industry experience to help customers develop and optimize their customer communication strategies with process automation, workflow solutions and professional services. Recently, he was the Vice President of Sales for Doxim Inc. and Vice President of Enterprise Solutions for Solimar Systems, Inc.. Prior to that, he served as Director of Production Workflow Automation at Ricoh. His experience includes positions with IKON, KUBRA, Pitney Bowes and National Paper Goods.

Connie Moore Connie Moore is VP and Principal Analyst with Deep Analysis, focusing on digital process automation, RPA and digital experience platforms. Prior to that, Connie was Senior VP of Research at Digital Clarity Group, where she managed the research team’s coverage of customer experience technologies. Before joining DCG, Connie was VP and Research Director at Forrester Research, where she managed Forrester’s business process and content/collaboration research teams. Connie is recognized and respected throughout the world for her forward-looking and groundbreaking research in BPM, information management and digital experience. In recognition of her many contributions, Connie received the Marvin Manheim Award from the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) for thought leadership in business process management, case management and workflow. She is also a former director of AIIM International.

DOCUMENTmedia.com fall.2020

What’s New Catch up on all the news, opinions, and featured articles that caught our eye on documentmedia.com.

The Way Forward for Effective Management

The first half of 2020 has been a wakeup call for many companies, requiring them to adapt to new business conditions at a moment’s notice. While the outdated, manual way of processing documents has always been inefficient and often inaccurate, slowing down key business processes — such as claims processing or mortgage and loan applications — it is fast becoming obsolete in light of the pandemic. https://documentmedia.com/ article-3024-The-Way-Forward-for-Effective-Document-Management.html

Is the Public Cloud Secure?

Closing the Gaps

Security hackers have become more sophisticated, making it critical to continually ensure security policies are up-todate and effective. As a result, it comes as no surprise that enterprises and print service providers alike are investing in technology and other solutions to address security concerns and close any security gaps. https://documentmedia. com/article-3022-Closing-theGaps.html

With the onset of the digital economy, businesses across industries are revamping their IT strategies, aiming for improved flexibility, scalability, and costefficiency. In the light of these requirements, migration to the public cloud, well-regarded for high service availability and low infrastructure maintenance costs, is currently high on many IT decision-makers’ to-do lists. https://documentmedia. com/article-3036-Is-the-Public-Cloud-Secure.html

Change Management for the Millennial State of the Digital Process Automation Market

There is very little innovation in the world of content management, nor has there been for decades. That may sound harsh, but I started my career as an industry analyst in the late 90s dot-com era writing and researching book-length reports on the industry — if you were to read those same books today you would see what I mean. https://documentmedia.com/ article-3033-State-of-the-Digital-Process-Automation-Market. html

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Looking for unconventional ways to motivate your employees to adopt a new system or create a livelier workplace? Discover what gamification is and how it can be applied to user adoption and employee motivation. https://documentmedia.com/article-3026-Change-Management-for-the-Millennial.html

The Time to Plan for 2021 Is Today

One of my favorite quotes from Benjamin Franklin is, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” While 2021 seems far away, let me just say it is not too early to start the planning when it comes to budgeting. https://documentmedia.com/article-3027-TheTime-to-Plan-for-2021-Is-Today.html

The New Normal for Information Security

The COVID-19 crisis has thrown the global economy into a tailspin of changes. While there have been massive changes in many industries — for better or worse — technologies that enable digital transformation in general, and remote work and learning in particular, have seen an exceptional peak. https://documentmedia.com/article-3030-The-New-Normal-for-Information-Security.html

CONTRIBUTORS Bud Porter-Roth Bud Porter-Roth has over 20 years of experience as an ECM consultant, with a focus on electronic document management, records management and paper document projects. Areas of specific expertise include project definition, business process definition, requirements analysis, opportunity cost/benefit analysis, RFP development and vendor selection and project implementation.

Kaspar Roos Carl Hillier Carl Hillier is the Senior Research Director at Deep Analysis. He has over 25 years in the Enterprise Software industry, holding technical and marketing positions at FileNet (now IBM), Fujitsu, Kofax, and ABBYY. Carl has an extensive background in ECM, Information Capture, BPM, AI, and Cloud Computing, presenting at conferences worldwide. His expertise has helped organizations such as Boeing, GE, UBS, and Met Life wrestle with the challenges of incorporating technology to improve their business operationsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; effectiveness.

Kaspar Roos is the founder and CEO of Aspire Customer Communications Services, Before starting Aspire, he ran InfoTrendsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; global production workflow and customer communications advisory service. At his tenure at InfoTrends, he helped leading technology vendors and service providers understand the shifts in the customer communications and workflow markets by providing market research, insights and strategic consulting services.

DOCUMENTmedia.com fall.2020

By Connie Moore

THE STATE OF AFFAIRS IN RPA The long overdue RPA market consolidation takes off For far too long, the market valuations for RPA vendors have been so lofty — so out of this world — that the natural progression of RPA being consolidated into digital process automation (DPA) platforms through mergers and acquisitions has been completely stymied. High valuations have been a significant roadblock for the many process automation and content management vendors seeking to integrate RPA into their evolving intelligent business automation platforms. Ideally, these two technology solutions

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for tasks and processes belong together in a more elegant, integrated way than the crazy quilt of overlapping RPA/DPA vendor partnerships that were quickly stitched together to get around stratospheric market caps. Here’s why figuring out this muddled state of affairs is so important to RPA buyers: RPA excels at task automation, while digital process automation, also known as simply process automation, manages the more complex, structured and

dynamic processes. In other words, process automation tackles the big picture, such as accounts payable, order processing, and customer support, or even endto-end processes such as order-to-cash and procure-to-pay. With this rich process environment, where do tasks fit? Tasks are always completed within the context of business processes — whether those processes are automated, semi-automated, or manual. From a business solutions perspective, RPA and process automation systems belong together to fully address the business process. (see Figure 1.) The RPA/DPA world is now righting itself. There’s a clear trend, as these three important process automation and/or content management vendors made RPA acquisitions in the past eight months, while showing how it can be done without breaking the bank:  Appian acquired Jidoka, a small RPA vendor based in Spain

Figure 1

 IBM acquired WDG, a small Brazilian RPA vendor  Hyland just acquired Another Monday, a small RPA vendor headquartered in Germany These vendors went through extensive build/buy/partner decisioning and decided to partner in the short term while vetting potential acquisition candidates. Ultimately, they found that buying and integrating RPA products was a faster onramp than building integrated RPA into their process, analytics and content product roadmaps. Because the three acquisition targets were small, undervalued companies working under the radar, the business cases for these acquisitions were compelling. The companies making RPA acquisitions in 2020 join five other process/ content/applications companies that have already acquired RPA products and integrated them into their platforms:

Kofax, Microsoft, Nintex, Pegasystems and SAP. Process automation and content management vendors ignore RPA at their peril because SAP’s and Microsoft’s RPA acquisitions alone underscore the market potential for RPA as seen through the eyes of tech giants. As a result, it’s interesting trying to predict which vendors will decide to buy other small RPA companies — or, to their detriment, take a pass on this market altogether. For example, if and when will Salesforce or OpenText make their moves? Will some of the smaller process automation vendors ink a deal, similar to how Nintex expanded its portfolio through smart acquisitions. Buyers could come from many diverse markets, such as application software, low-code tools, content management, customer communications management and collaboration, to name a few. There’s one other big change to watch. The valuations for current RPA market leaders are likely to tumble because it will be hard for three leading vendors — Automation Anywhere ($6.8 billion valuation as of July 13, 2020), Blue Prism (£1.28 billion market cap as of Aug 20, 2020) and UiPath ($10.2 billion valuation as of July 13, 2020) — to maintain

their incredible market caps. This doesn’t mean they will have done anything wrong. It’s just an economic reality that what goes up really will eventually go down. To counteract this situation, expect these companies to go through their own build/ buy/partner strategies and ultimately make additional acquisitions in AI, process mining and digital process automation. They have considerable financial and marketing clout. Don’t count them out for a second as they forge new paths to support their growth strategies. O

CONNIE MOORE is the Vice President and Principal Analyst at Deep Analysis, a research advisory firm focused on emerging technologies. Connie is a widely recognized and respected analyst throughout the world for her groundbreaking research in business process management and information management. Her research encompasses business transformation, process management, customer experience management, information management, and organizational change management. Previously, she led the business process and content/collaboration research teams at Forrester for over 20 years. She also received the highly coveted Marvin L. Manheim Award from the Workflow and Reengineering Association (WARIA). DOCUMENTmedia.com fall.2020

WHERE IS YOUR

CONTENT HIDING? DON’T FORGET TO SEARCH COPIERS, PRINTERS AND OTHER LOCATIONS YOU MAY NOT BE AWARE OF OR MAY UNINTENTIONALLY OVERLOOK

BY BOB LARRIVEE

magine you are being audited or are under a discovery order to present all materials pertaining to a lawsuit. You have well-planned, maintained, and monitored Information Governance (IG) policies and practices, including those related to litigation hold and presentment. You confidently search across the enterprise, locating what you believe is every shred of information requested. There is no place in your information

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ecosystem where information resides, and you are unaware of its existence. Or is there? The question I would now ask is, did you search the hard drives located in your copy machines and potentially, some of your printers? That’s right, there is a hard drive in most of today’s copy machines and some high-end printers, where information is held and stored. Not only can they can store copies of documents, they also have usage logs that hackers can get to, as can anyone servicing the

devices. The question you have to ask now is this: “Are my copiers equipped with hard drives and use logs capabilities, and if so, how do I manage these in a way that my organization is not placed at risk and will maintain compliance requirements?” You must consider and include these devices in your IG program, assigning responsibility to periodically delete information stored on their drives. You must consider the possibility that they will be included in any audit or

litigation proceedings and as such, there should be documented policies and practices on proper disposition of the information they hold. Another consideration is what to do when copiers and printers are taken out of service? Disposal of the peripheral device does not mean the hard drive and information contained on those drives will be disposed of properly. As part of the disposal procedure, you may want to remove the hard drives and destroy them independently. The same would be true of PCs, and any other devices containing a hard drive. In My View Look at the specification sheet for your devices and locate the reference about hard drives in those devices. If you do not find one, there is a chance the device does not have a hard drive. You can also ask your service technician if the device contains a hard drive and where it is located. You will want

to learn the processes to erase information stored on those hard drives and how to access information in times of litigation and audit. This includes not only the documents stored there, but also the use logs and how to extract the information either in digital or print form. When it comes time to change out a copier or printer with a hard drive, you will want to erase, remove and/ or destroy the hard drive before turning it over to the supplier. This may require assistance from the service tech, but you will want to ensure that all information â&#x20AC;&#x201D; as some may be sensitive or confidential â&#x20AC;&#x201D; is not vulnerable to being accessed by unauthorized persons. Where is information hiding in your organization? Copiers, printers and my guess is many other locations you may not be aware of, or if you are aware, may unintentionally overlook. Printers, copiers and even Smartphones are

all devices that hold information and should be included in your IG program. Take time to research what you have in-house, in use by your remote workforce and portable devices that are being used by your employees. Find the hidden information before it finds you as a RISK factor. O

Inducted into the AIIM Company of Fellows in 2019, BOB LARRIVEE is a recognized expert in the application of advanced technologies and process improvement to solve business problems and enhance business operations. In his career, Bob is on the Advisory Board for DOCUMENT Strategy, has led many projects and authored hundreds of eBooks, industry reports, blogs, article, and infographics. In addition, he has served as host and guest subject matter expert on a wide variety of webinars, podcasts, virtual event, and lectured at in-person universities, seminars and conferences around the globe.

DOCUMENTmedia.com fall.2020

HAS COVID

HIGHLIGHTE By Carl Hillier

THE CASE FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION? If organizations are to remain competitive, they must rapidly align their business operations to the current business landscape

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D W

hen I first entered the commercial IT world in the early ‘90s, document scanning was still a relatively new thing. Scanning was slow, and the scanners were big, heavy and expensive. Once you had the document stored, you could then view it on a monitor, assuming you had a monitor large enough and with sufficient resolutiaon. I remember lugging a Cornerstone 21” high-resolution monitor around in the back of my car to and from customer demos. When I say lugging, I really mean it; the thing weighed nearly 70lbs! (It was a good thing I was fresh out of the military as I needed to be in pretty good shape just to make it to the meeting on time.) Once scanners, computing power and monitors improved (and had become lighter!), the applications of this

technology multiplied. It seemed apparent that enabling the sending of physical documents electronically via email would have substantial potential benefits. The “Digital Mailroom” As with the initial attempts at process automation, there was a tendency to create a digital facsimile of a traditional mailroom’s operation rather than explore how this technology could transform business operations, as is the case with digital transformation. The thing to remember here is that the traditional mailroom was intended to process envelopes, packages, etc.., but not their contents; their job is to get the contents to their intended recipients rapidly, accurately and cost-effectively. Consequently, the combination of email and document capture was an obvious mechanism to accelerate physical mail processing and enable it to

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reach its intended destination faster than its analog predecessor. The problem was and still is, that while a digital mailroom enabled mail to arrive more quickly, it does little to accelerate the processing of the documents once they have reached their destinations. As digital transformation has matured, it has shifted away from pure technology offerings and more business operations-orientated solutions. More and more customers are looking for solutions to address their challenges rather than buying a process automation platform to build custom applications. Initial digital mailrooms were more akin to digital plumbing designed to get mail to recipients faster and more economically; this capability is increasingly part of more comprehensive business solutions. COVID-Driven Digital Transformation Now COVID has changed all that. The need to have employees work from home has left many organizations scrambling to realign to this new normal. While the proliferation of web/cloud-based applications and virtual private networks have made it possible for employees to turn up for work in a logical sense with the same access to critical business applications, this is still not the same as being physically present. This lack of physical proximity to the workplace causes a problem when dealing with physical mail. How does an organization that still relies on employees processing physical mail realign quickly to make mail accessible to those who need to receive it? The main challenge, at least initially, is time. Organizations need a solution and need it fast. Without the ability to receive, process and respond to physical mail, their business operations grind to a halt. Several technologies can help achieve this. Digital Mailrooms One quick solution is to institute a digital mailroom. Implementing a digital mailroom in a short space of time has its challenges. Digital mailrooms can require a significant initial capital investment (for the dedicated scanning

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hardware) and training for the internal resources that would operate it. A variation of this approach would be to outsource the mailroom to a digital mailroom outsourcing provider, resulting in a more operational expenditure (OpEx) based model rather than significant capital expenditure (CapEx). This approach would allow for the routing of inbound mail to the intended recipient via email. While email attachments eliminate the need for employees to have physical custody of the documents, it can result in some additional challenges. Business mail is often not sent to a named individual, but a department made up of many employees, so who receives the email? A mechanism is required to ensure that work is effectively distributed to the correct employees while at the same time avoiding workers from duplicating the actions of each other. Furthermore, email systems do not offer the most accessible auditing and reporting information. We have all experienced the challenges of an email being overlooked or ending up in a spam folder. Business Process Management (BPM) BPM addresses many of the challenges associated with using email as a work distribution mechanism. Most BPM systems offer relatively easy configuration to receive digital documents and send them through a digital representation of the pre-existing mail routing process. While this can be achieved relatively quickly, there can be more significant longer-term benefits to be gained by fully exploiting the more extensive capabilities of the BPM platform to deliver real digital transformation. Fax Servers Good old fax technology can certainly help out. Those companies that have already invested in them, fax servers provide a quick and inexpensive solution that readily addresses converting documents into a digital form. Expanding the use of a fax server and using the fax numbers as a substitute for a physical address may ease the volume of physical mail to be processed. However, the increase in fax traffic would

likely result in the need to increase the fax server configuration size. Cognitive Information Capture With an increase in the volume of digital documents flowing into the organization, this provides an opportunity to take advantage of this fact by utilizing cognitive information capture. This technology can process digitized documents and automatically extract structured, actionable business information from documents and pass it directly into line of business (LOB) applications. This structured data can automate the routing and the execution of repetitive tasks, allowing employees to focus on those documents that require exception processing. Robotic Process Automation The execution of the aforementioned repetitive tasks is what RPA is all about. When combined structured data derived from cognitive information capture, the result is a high level of automation and more effective utilization of employee resources, regardless of their location. COVID and the resulting increase in the remote workforce are compelling organizations to rethink their physical mail dependence. If organizations are to remain competitive, they must rapidly align their business operations to the current business landscape. There are a variety of available technologies to help achieve this objective. While this alignment needs to happen quickly, it is also essential to recognize that shifting to a more remote workforce is not necessarily a temporary phenomenon but should also be included as part of any longer-term strategy. O

CARL HILLIER is the Senior Research Director at Deep Analysis. He has over 25 years in the Enterprise Software industry, holding technical and marketing positions at FileNet (now IBM), Fujitsu, Kofax and ABBYY. Carl has an extensive background in ECM, Information Capture, BPM, AI, and Cloud Computing, presenting at conferences worldwide. His expertise has helped organizations such as Boeing, GE, UBS, and Met Life wrestle with the challenges of incorporating technology to improve their business operationsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; effectiveness.

By Will Morgan

UNDERSTANDING THE NEW DIGITAL REALITY

o understand how the CCM market has been affected by COVID-19, Aspire recently conducted a multi-client survey of 2,000 North American consumers and 300 US enterprises. The extensive report on the findings entitled, “Understanding the New Digital Reality” explains that in response to economic and cultural uncertainty, enterprises are prioritizing customer retention and working to leverage superior digital messaging as a way of improving communications experience. This strategic shift from acquisition to retention is reflected in the budget polarization between marketing and communication spending. As we adjust to the post-COVID world, Aspire expects the following trends to shape the CCM market’s development over the next five years.  First, COVID-19 will accelerate the market’s transformation from customer communications management (CCM) to customer experience management (CXM) which will bring with it an indelible shift from traditional outbound messaging triggered by

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regulatory requirements, toward customer-centric, two-way interactions based on consumer’s needs and calibrated to their preference and convenience. Our newest survey found that this kind of two-way interaction is particularly important to younger consumers who will wield increasing buying power in the years to come.  On a practical level, the realities of doing business during COVID have accelerated the transformation from on-premise CCM installations to cloud-based distribution. In our 2020 research, enterprises cited enabling employees to manage customer communications remotely as the top organizational change they’ve made in response to the pandemic. When working to abide by social distancing guidelines, businesses have found it much easier to have their CCM installations in the cloud rather than on-premise.  Next, a growing number of businesses will transfer control and ownership of communications from IT to CXM professionals. The pandemic’s severity and widespread impact

Cloud-managed omnichannel experience platforms are essential for post-COVID recovery

have led many organizations to carefully consider their messaging and customer support. A good number of our respondents reported that they’ve created a cross-functional COVID response team to help them align messaging and provide a consistent voice across their entire organization. It’s not hard to imagine that these response teams could quickly evolve into proper shared services or centers of excellence with centralized control of customer communications in their hands, especially if they were to have a third-party partner help them expand with additional services in journey mapping and content optimization. The Need to Reevaluate Omnichannel Communications Today, American enterprises put a much stronger emphasis on digital transformation, omnichannel communications and customer experience than they did prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. Going forward, we predict that this shift to digital communications will bring with it a modernization of infrastructure,

products outright toward adopting managed services that will allow them to work with their partner on business outcomes, ensuring maximum agility, while an OPEX model allows them to pay for only what they use. Aspire’s latest research study, “Understanding the New Digital Reality” offers both extensive insight into the emerging market and practical recommendations for how venders, service providers and enterprises can offer the best possible communications experience across all channels. For information on how you can gain access to the survey findings and analysis, please contact Will Morgan (will.morgan@aspireccs.com) or Lisa Corbridge (lisa.corbridge@aspireccs.com). O

cloud-enabled services, AI-based automation and a continued aggressive push to paperless and bi-directional conversational interactions. Reducing cost while improving customer experience and increasing retention are the most important drivers visible in the market today. Moving into 2021 and beyond, the market’s migration from print to digital will continue to accelerate even beyond

its unprecedented pace. This acceleration will also lead to IT modernization as enterprises realize that their current infrastructure will simply not support the new normal. In fact, our survey found that nearly half of all American enterprises plan to review their outsourcing model in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. We expect a shift from enterprises buying CCM software

WILL MORGAN is an experienced industry analyst with expertise in the Customer Communications Services market. As Aspire’s Senior Research Analyst, he works alongside the wider team to provide advice, insight and vital intelligence to the company’s expanding customer base on both sides of the Atlantic. Before joining Aspire, Will worked with Keypoint Intelligence-InfoTrends’ Customer Communications and Business Development Advisory Services.

he cost of compliance has skyrocketed in recent years. According to Forbes, banking regulatory costs will rise from 4% to 10% of banking revenue by 2021. The Forbes article went on to say, “… like Moore’s law in the field of computing, there is a ‘Regulatory Law’ that the operational burden of controlling regulations will double every few years.” Bain & Co estimated that governance, risk and compliance (GRC) costs account for 15% to 20% of the total “run the bank” cost base. Other research cited in the article indicates that lenders annually spend over $100 billion on regulatory compliance and this cost continues to rise. Compliance with Dodd Frank alone has cost the industry $36 billion to date. Banks have been reducing their operational cost base for several years now by deploying process automation solutions. But many of these efficiency gains have been more than offset by the increasing costs and resources required to meet fast-expanding regulatory requirements and to settle fines. To cope, financial firms must accelerate the move from the human-centric processing model using Microsoft Office tools and paper to an intelligent automation framework.

BY DAN LUCARINI

WHAT’S DRIVING THE PROCESS AUTOMATION MOVEMENT?

Banking and financial institutions are looking to automate compliance and auditing for their lending practices. But why the urgency? 20

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Technologies for Process Automation Intelligent process automation is all about the use of digital workers (or “bots”) that mimic human interactions with a computer. The bots can automate manual, repetitive and rule-based processes, freeing the staff to work on more complex tasks. This automation improves process speed and brings data to disparate systems across the enterprise. To deploy bots, companies purchase Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software. While banking RPA applications have been beneficial to replace the simple process tasks, they alone cannot handle more complex workflows. Financial companies are eager to expand the use of RPA to automate more complex tasks that currently require humans to open and read documents.

Compliance adds a much higher level of complexity because of lending or onboarding processes where document certification, KYC (Know Your Customer) and CDD (Customer Due Diligence) functions are critical to staying within the regulatory guardrails. For example, a PDF arrives via email and a human must open it, validate the document’s authenticity and data fitness, and then enter selected data into the underwriting system. While a lot of interest is focused on loan underwriting, there are a number of post-close processes where dozens of different documents in various formats and the data within must be verified and validated. At this point, RPA leaves the safe and happy shire of data predictability and reliability and enters the Mordor of computer vision and text analysis. For bots to achieve an acceptable level of automation requires specialized software with the ability to read documents like a human. Anyone with experience in document capture or document imaging knows how hard it can be to achieve, let alone maintain, an acceptable rate of automated extraction of data from diverse and unpredictably formatted documents. This specialized software is called Intelligent Document Processing (IDP). It is indispensable to the lender’s automation technology stack. IDP uses advanced computer vision and machine learning algorithms to perform document classification, identification, validation, data extraction and data verification. IDP ensures that the data is purified before the bot passes the data onto the next stage of a lending compliance process. IDP also provides higher reliability to reduce the false positive exceptions that require human intervention. This can be a game changer as there are many possible scenarios where humans are still integral to the process: fraud detection, exceptions handling, dispute management, alerts management and credit approvals. Compliance Use Cases in Lending There are two specific processes found in lending operations that can benefit from more automation.

Customer onboarding — Customer due diligence (CDD) and know your customer (KYC) are highly regulated functions. These processes are essential to help lenders assess the risk of new customers and to determine the products and relationship that the bank can develop with them. The most important step for KYC is identity and income verification, which requires the accurate validation of verification documents. In the USA, there is not one single, standard identity document. There are an infinite variety of documents submitted for income verification. Oftentimes, the customer submits a poor-quality image taken with a smartphone that is difficult for a computer to read.

Financial companies are eager to expand the use of RPA to automate more complex tasks that currently require humans to open and read documents.

By shifting from largely manual processes to automated processes, lenders are looking to automate CDD and KYC processes to get better control of the costs and to improve the quality of the due diligence. But because of the volume and diversity of unstructured data and documents involved, end-toend automation has been an aspiration until now. Mortgage remediation — There are several remediation scenarios that could benefit from automation. Here are a few examples.  Customer Complaint Handling  Post-Closing Loan Auditing  Loan File Certification

Preparing and validating the data contained in documents is an important first step in the remediation process. RPA with IDP can be used to automate these processes. As you can see, there is a lot of work to be done to apply process automation for lending compliance. RPA and IDP software tools are capable today of a fairly high degree of automation for complex workflows and definitely worth the investment to reap the reward. Where is the Puck Headed? Wayne Gretzky, the Canadian ice hockey legend, said the secret of his scoring prowess was he never skated to where the puck was, but to where it was going next. Let’s now lift our vision up from the processes of today and imagine where process automation is going next. One of IDP’s current challenges is the large dataset required to train the software how to read accurately. It can take a company weeks or months to collect enough documents to reach an acceptable exception rate level. If you are paying consultants by the hour, the training step can also become the most expensive phase. Leading-edge IDP software companies are continually applying data science and machine learning to dramatically reduce the time and number of documents for training. Another encouraging trend is the integration of RPA with best-of-breed IDP that complements and extends the basic OCR capabilities of some RPA software. Companies such as UiPath, Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism have formed partnerships with the leading IDP companies, especially those that focus on document automation for specific processes. Expect these alliances to produce even more tightly integrated solutions in the near future. O

DAN LUCARINI is an AIIM Fellow and independent consultant to Parascript with over 25 years’ experience in capture and content management technologies. Learn more at www.linkedin.com/in/danlucarini.

DOCUMENTmedia.com fall.2020

COULD 2021 BE WORSE THAN 2020? Get up, learn how to avoid being knocked down again, and do what you need to do to take control | By Scott Draeger

t’s tough for someone from Chicagoland to quote Vince Lombardi even once in an article, but it appears to be necessary to quote him twice as we prepare for 2021. While we hope 2021 will be better than 2020, let’s start by framing the first three quarters of 2020 with Mr.

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Lombardi’s statement, “It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get back up.” Most of us got knocked around pretty hard in 2020. We got knocked down in many ways and from many directions. Internally, we faced challenges as our people, processes and technology were

all tested — often simultaneously. Our customers challenged us with an increased frequency of connection, greater attention to detail and demands for interaction across more channels. If that wasn’t enough, federal, state and local regulations impacted the messages we sent and the way in which they were

delivered. That seems like five years’ worth of challenges and it’s understandable that we got knocked down. But I tend to be an optimist, so let’s look at how we will work on the “get back up” part. We have the most control over our internal responses because we control the people, processes and technology we use. In 2020, we learned many of the limitations of our systems. Internally, we took some knocks as we moved to work from home. In order to get back on our feet, we need to think about increasing the agility of our systems. As we plan for 2021, we want to consider building support for more flexible user interactions. Designers, writers, approvers and our customer experience teams need to be able to make large changes more quickly. As we plan for 2021, we want to avoid being stuck in a position where we need to make changes, but we cannot access key systems. In 2021, we need the ability to collaborate easier without assuming there will be a physical meeting room, which means we must incorporate digital collaboration into our communication design process. During the time our internal systems were hit pretty hard, customers’ demands increased. It was entirely reasonable for them to call us more. There was a constant stream of legislation that affected their loans, insurance, utilities, rent, taxes and other services. They expected to be kept informed in a period of flux and looked to us for support and answers. Add to that the reasonable stress these customers were experiencing (as was everyone else) in a year characterized by uncertainty. Customers wanted new channels from which they could do business, which made sense; many were working from home, which made it difficult to handle things like accounts payable and receivable. Then, they expected consistency across those channels. Our plans to go successfully forward in 2021 need to involve the ability to handle customer interactions that are

increasingly two-way exchanges playing out over several interactions. Looking at your call center data may give you a hint as to what could be replaced with robotic process automation (RPA) or chatbots that integrate to the customer communications management (CCM) system. Your future plans will certainly need channel fluidity as a central component to ensure the demand for consistent experience is met as they unfold. We have found implementing a journey mapping process is a great way to understand the complex interactions of messages, customers and channels over typical customer journeys.

and best practices changed daily. There’s not enough coffee in the world to keep this pace! As we plan for the future, we need to understand that regulations will continue to change at multiple levels simultaneously and we need to be ready for it. The conformance time will continue to reduce, so we need systems capable of a radical redesign, test, approval and deployment process that must be completed in less than 48 hours. This is more consistent with the pace of digital communicators, who are accustomed to have less time for smaller changes. Soon, this turnaround expectation will expand to include the same 48-hour turnaround time for important changes to regulated documents like loans, policies and other critical communications that typically have 30 days or longer to make changes. As you think about how you will approach 2021, here is Vince Lombardi’s second quote for you to ponder, “Hope is not a strategy. Fear is not an option.” The good news about 2020 is that it taught us a lot of lessons. As you prepare for 2021, you can choose to take this to heart and find ways to improve the way you engage with customers in an omnichannel world where business has become nothing but unpredictable. Or, you can hope this level of disruption doesn’t come your way in the future, but I don’t advise it. The best thing you and your team can do is to get back up, learn how to avoid being knocked down again, and do what you need to do to take control over 2021. O

As we plan for the future, we need to understand that regulations will continue to change at multiple levels simultaneously and we need to be ready for it. While we received challenges internally, as well as an increase in customer support needs, we also expended an incredible amount of effort complying with a dizzying array of legislation at every level. Auto and home loan documents were amended to include forbearance language. Loan applications for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) had to be implemented quickly while complying with rapidly changing standards. Communications for many industries varied by state, which were on different schedules as they experienced different situations. The airline, hotel, rental car, concert, events, cruise and other industries created cancellation and rescheduling policies that were revised multiple times as regulations

SCOTT DRAEGER, CCXP, M-EDP, is Vice President of Customer Transformation at Quadient. His broad experience includes helping clients improve customer communications in over 20 countries.

DOCUMENTmedia.com fall.2020

BY BUD PORTER-ROTH

WHY MIGRATE AND CLOSE YOUR SHARED NETWORK FOLDERS/FILES?

For drives established 20 years ago, there may be files that are 20 years old

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s companies begin to adopt document management systems and collaboration applications such as OpenText, Box, Dropbox and Office 365, companies may still retain their original on-premises server-based network file shares, sometimes referred to as the “Z” or “O” drive. These network file shares have been operational for many years and are typically still used as file storage areas in addition to the document management system. File shares have a strong history within a company and many users are reluctant to use new systems and may use the file share as their “working” area and upload only completed documents to the document management system. However, as companies begin to depend more on their new content management applications and depend less on the on-premises file servers, there is a growing need to decommission the on-premises servers. Decommissioning a network file share may seem like a straightforward project, but for many companies it is quite complex, time-consuming and resource intensive. Why? For an O drive configured for departmental usage, it may be divided into subfolders for department names such as, “Sales,” “Marketing,” “HR,” and each of these subfolders may be independently permissioned so that only sales people can access the sales content. It is also possible that the sales subfolder is divided into other subfolders, perhaps by RFPs/Proposals, account names, sales reps, etc., and these third-level subfolders may also be separately permissioned. It is not uncommon to have file shares that are 10 or more subfolders deep — and typically named by the user without a formal naming schema. The shared network folders are initially set up by IT, and IT may create a new security group or add or delete names to security groups, but generally speaking,

IT does not “monitor” or “control” the shared network files. There are typically at least two security groups established for each network drive: an admin security level that has all the admin privileges to the drive and is controlled by IT, and departmental groups with limited privileges (read, write, modify). Departments control their own network drives in terms of usage, naming conventions, ownership, etc. This means that there is, typically, no standardization to the company’s network drives and no corporate effort to monitor what goes into a drive and what is deleted from a drive. It is very possible that if a drive was established 20 years ago, there may be files that are 20 years old, and the file “owner” may have left the company 10 years ago.

places for users to store their files, and this creates a place to have duplicate files and to have two “current” versions of the same file in two different places. Most users already have trouble finding files and will now spend their limited time searching two repositories instead of just one and then not know if they have the most current version. The following are examples of reasons why you should decommission your shared network files, and you may have others due to your unique work and IT environment. 1. The shared network servers, whether on-premises or at a thirdparty server farm, are still costing you for the server maintenance and software updates, associated fees and IT personnel if in-house. This is in addition to the cloudbased application users have adopted. 2. Content will continue to build on these on-premises severs, and you will be adding memory capacity over time at some dollar amount. 3. Several studies, and the author’s personal experience, have shown that at least 50% of all content on a network drive no longer has any business value and can be deleted. (This also holds true for your cloud-based applications, but that is another article.) In addition to paying twice for storage, you are also paying to store unnecessary content. 4. The documents that have no business value are referred to as “ROT”: Redundant, Obsolete, Trivial material. Redundant content is typically defined as duplicate files; obsolete is defined as data in content that is outdated, trivial is defined as content that has no business value such as Christmas party pictures

Decommissioning a network file share may seem like a straightforward project, but for many companies it is quite complex, time-consuming and resource intensive. Company file shares are complex with many tiers of information protected by layers of security. Perhaps the most difficult job is identifying the shared drives and then gaining access to the drive and its contents. Once you have access, the next step is to discover the content owner and begin the process of analyzing the content to make what amounts to a keep or delete decision. Why Decommission Your Network Drives? If you have brought in a cloud-based application (or any document management system) like Office 365 or Box or Hyland OnBase, you now have two

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and movies, lunch menus and other non-essential documents. Shared network drives are typically not managed and usually treated by users as another personal drive or by a department as their “document archive” for documents that no one wants to take responsibility for. Some departments, like accounting, may have a highly organized and structured drive, but this is more of an anomality than the norm. Because of this, users spend unnecessary time trying to find the right content. Users and departments tend to create folders/subfolders (also called nested folders), sometimes 10 or more deep, as a navigation schema. Quite often, these folders/subfolders become quite unwieldly due their size and subjective naming schema. Searching a shared network server is limited and slow because File Explorer is not a modern-day search engine and network drives do not allow for “metadata” to be added to the file to facilitate searching. Along with creating subfolders, users want to protect their content by creating special security groups or adding passwords or encrypting their files. This can be a nightmare when someone leaves and you need to see that person’s files. Once the folder is accessible, there may be many nested folders that need sorting through in order to determine if the content should be kept or deleted. Time, resources and cost can be significant depending on the size of the shared network drives and how long they have been in operation. Shared network files do not allow the documents/content to be identified as a business record and to categorize it according to your records retention schedule. This means the documents that should have been deleted will be not be deleted and the content will continue to grow over time. It also means that documents that should not have been deleted, as a business record, can be deleted, which exposes your company to legal issues should those deleted files become part of legal case and

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you are required to present those documents. 10. Shared network files do not easily allow the documents to be identified as part of a preservation order (a legal order to hold documents until released). Even if identified, documents will have to be moved to a specially created subfolder that has restricted permissions. Migration Planning Steps Decommissioning a network file share can be a complex undertaking that requires extensive planning and resources. We suggest that you form a decommissioning project team composed of a business user and an IT representative and have representation at the company VP level (the Core Team). Below the three key players, select a “project lead” from each department. This person will do the lion’s share of the work in the department and become the focal point for distributing communications, answering questions from users and providing feedback to the core team. Here are the suggested basic steps, and you may want to expand on this list. 1. Plan the migration a. Name and organize the core migration project team b. Identify and name department leaders c. Review and acquire software tools needed for migration d. Emphasize user communication and change management 2. Analyze your content a. Using a content analysis tool, get a basic picture of the share file contents by extension, size, age, file owner, restricted permissions/access b. Organize the analysis by department c. Document use cases such as: i. Personally Identifiable Information (PII) ii. Photo and video storage iii. Multiple interactive Excel spreadsheets using macros iv. Documents that make heavy use of hyperlinks v. Software application storage

vi. Large file storage like engineering/architectural drawings 3. Remediate the content a. Fix problem files that may not migrate to the new repository b. Delete files with no business value c. Delete duplicate and temporary files d. Delete ROT 4. Identify the new repository(s) a. You may have several repositories to handle different types of content such as photos, videos, and office-type documents 5. Migrate the content a. Using the selected tool or vendor, migrate the content in stages b. Audit and approve migrated content c. Make your shared drive read only for 90 days d. Remove/decommission shared drive after 90 days 6. Cutover to new repository a. Let users know that the migration has taken place, that the shared drive is now read only, and that they can use the new repository b. Provide user training and support as necessary for the new repository If you opt to begin the process of decommissioning your file shares, there are basic steps that should be taken next. To see those steps as well as the conclusion of this article, click here. O

BUD PORTER-ROTH has over 20 years of experience as an ECM consultant, with a focus on electronic document management, records management and paper document projects. Areas of specific expertise include project definition, business process definition, requirements analysis, opportunity cost/benefit analysis, RFP development and vendor selection and project implementation. He has a broad-based knowledge of public and private industry having participated in projects for the IRS, state, local and city governments and private businesses in the financial sector, retail industry, petroleum industry and others.

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