DOCUMENT Strategy Spring 2019

DOCUMENTmedia.com | spring.19

DSF SPECIAL ISSUE 2 019

ANAHEIM

DRIVING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WILL TAKE MORE THAN TECHNOLOGY The 4 dimensions you need to master PAGE 20

WHY THE DIGITAL BUSINESS NEEDS INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

FINDING THE RIGHT DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION LENS FOR YOUR CCM PROJECT

12 RULES FOR CLEANING UP YOUR SHARED DRIVES

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TABLE OF CONTENTS volume 26 issue 1 | Spring.19 | DOCUMENTmedia.com

FEATURES 14

Designing for the Omni-Channel Era 4 critical questions to ask

By Scott Draeger and Bjorn Hildahl

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Selecting the Right Model for Your RIM Program

Centralized vs decentralized vs hybrid

By Cindy Zuvich

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Alexa, What’s Our Voice-Activated Communications Strategy?

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How to answer the big questions

By Lynne Andrews

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Driving Digital Transformation Will Take More Than Technology

The 4 dimensions you need to master

By Allison Lloyd

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People, Process, or Technology?

Finding the right digital transformation lens for your CCM project

By Marci Maddox

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12 Rules for Cleaning Up Your Shared Drives

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To Become a Successful Digital Business, You Need to Manage Your Information

By Jim Just

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Why information is a critical asset of every organization

By David Mario Smith

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DEPARTMENTS 06 08 08

Letter from the Editor #Trending on Social Masthead

10 12 30

Contributors What’s New Think About It!

SPONSORED CONTENT

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Document Capture: Smart Learning Ends the Feature Wars

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How to Build a Content Supply Chain

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

All Roads Lead to the Customer Experience.

Building superior customer experiences has cast a long shadow at most organizations, as many scramble to transform their traditional business models around the customer. It’s also a topic that still confounds in its simplicity. While the idea of delivering the best customer experiences seems obvious, coordinating the systems, processes, and people to do so is certainly not.

For some time, we have extensively talked about the critical connections between an organization’s content and the eventual experiences of customers.

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They are, of course, halves of a whole.

Yet, for many content professionals, the customer, at times, seems so far away to be non-existent. This is one of the biggest hurdles for enterprises. Organizations who excel in customer experience not only understand customer-centricity priorities of the enterprise, but they also understand the importance of organizing consistently around the needs of the customer, according to digital transformation consulting firm Capgemini. As with any other strategy in the organization, employees must believe that every action they take has a direct impact on the business outcome. Instilling this kind of belief system throughout the business is what executing on your strategy is all about.

As an industry, we have come a long way in redefining how we engage and communicate with our customers. Many of you who read our publication have made great strides in incorporating datadriven decision making and enhanced multi-channel campaigns, while many more are beginning to look toward artificial intelligence (AI) technology to understand context and customer intent for each interaction. According to IDC, 37% of surveyed organizations are actively looking at AI technologies to enhance their customer communications management (CCM) effectiveness.

Innovations like AI, the Internet of things, and robotic process automation (RPA) have certainly advanced digital

transformation efforts within organizations, but many overlook back-office functions and aligning these efforts with operational processes. This gap is one of the reasons why so many organizations fail in the implementation phase. “It is impossible to understand customer needs and improve their experiences without the right information feeding decision-making systems,” says analyst David Mario Smith.

Driving real transformation across the enterprise will require untangling disparate systems, tearing down information siloes, and freeing data from its shackles to deliver actionable value for the business. We continue to be committed to this vision, and I hope that the articles between these pages begin to show you the steps required for this journey. The inherent connections between strategic vision, information, organizational alignment, governance, and culture is the bedrock of our annual event, DSF ’19, May 7-9 in Anaheim. This year, we have collected some of these “digital masters” to share how they truly drive digital transformation across the enterprise. I hope to see all of you in Anaheim! If we missed you this time, look for our exclusive post-show coverage in our upcoming Summer issue.

Until next time,

ALLISON LLOYD EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

1 I n t e g r a t i o n W i t h Yo u r B u s i n e s s A p p l i c a t i o n s

Underwriting/Claims

CRM/ERP

EMR

Billing

Other

Napersoft CCM Document Platform 2 Te m p l a t e Authoring

3

Word Interface

Document Generation

Back Office

Front Office

Self-Service

Batch

Interactive

OnDemand

4 Document Archival

5 Multi-Channel Document Distribution

Print

E-mail

Fax

Text Messages

Mobile

The Web

Serving Customers Since 1986 1. Integration With Your Business Applications - We provide an open integration to your customer data (relational, transactional, XML) stored in your business applications such as underwriting/claims, CRM, ERP, EMR, billing, and/ or other systems.

2. Template Authoring - We provide an authoring tool, built on Microsoft Word with our custom-built components that enables your template authoring process to be easy, efficient and secure. To make changes to document templates, you simply check the template out from our secure content library, make changes and simply check it back into the content library.

3. Document Generation - We provide you with a choice of methods you employ to create personalized customer documents: high volume production runs (Batch), one to one customer service (Interactive) and/or customer selfservice (OnDemand). We have built in easy-to-use automated business processes so you can apply business rules to the template design in order to dynamically include customer data, reusable images, paragraphs and prompts into your personalized customer documents such as letters, correspondence, policies, agreements, statements and EOBs. 4. Document Archival - We provide an out-of-box full-function document archive for the automatic storage and management of all of your distributed customer documents, making it easy to also search, view and redistribute customer documents for one to one customer service and/or customer self-service 24/7.

5. Multi-Channel Document Distribution - Our multi-channel distribution engine enables you to distribute documents based on your customer’s individual preferences - print, e-mail, fax, text messages, mobile and/or the Web.

Request A Demo www.napersoft.com | USA: 1-800-380-1000 | Int’l: 1-630-420-1515

#TRENDING ON SOCIAL @DOCUMENTmedia | DOCUMENTmedia.com

TOP TWEETED 6 Reasons Why Your Customer Communication Program Isn’t Getting Funded in 2019 https://documentmedia. com/article-28936-Reasons-WhyYour-CustomerCommunicationProgram-Isnt-GettingFunded-in-2019.html

TOP SHARED ON FACEBOOK

2019 Automation Survey: The Path to Digital Transformation

READ https://documentmedia.com/article-2886-2019-AutomationHERE Survey-The-Path-to-Digital-Transformation.html

president Chad Griepentrog publisher Ken Waddell editor Allison Lloyd [ allison.l@rbpub.com ] contributing editor Amanda Armendariz contributors Lynne Andrews Scott Draeger Bjorn Hildahl Jim Just Marci Maddox David Mario Smith Cindy Zuvich advertising Ken Waddell [ ken.w@rbpub.com ] (o) 608.442.5064 (m) 608.235.2212 audience development manager Rachel Chapman [ rachel@rbpub.com ] creative director Kelli Cooke

#TOPREAD ON WEB PO BOX 259098 Madison WI 53725-9098 p: 608-241-8777 f: 608-241-8666 email: customerservice@rbpub.com

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Why Digital Communication Is Key to a Good Customer Experience READ HERE https://documentmedia.com/article-2895-Why-DigitalCommunication-Is-Key-to-a-Good-Customer-Experience.html

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The articles in this magazine represent the views of the authors and not those of RB Publishing Inc. or DOCUMENT Strategy Media. RB Publishing Inc. 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.

Forrester Says Customer Communications Management Will Improve Digital Adoption in 2019 READ HERE https://documentmedia.com/article-2890-Forrester-Says-Customer-Communications-Management-Will-Improve-Digital-Adoption-in-2019.html 8

DOCUMENT Strategy Media (ISSN 1081-4078) is published on a daily basis via its online portal and produces special print editions by RB Publishing Inc., 2901 International Lane, Madison, WI 53704-3128.

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APPLICATION ARTICLE

Document Capture: Smart Learning Ends the Feature Wars Advanced capture moves document recognition far beyond basic Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, but how can Smart Learning mean the end of vendor feature wars?

Evaluating feature sets has always been the only means to compare one system with another, but it does not provide a means to getting even halfway toward everyone’s objective: high accuracy output at lower costs with improved productivity.

Most businesses are still using hand tools or batch capture techniques when highly efficient power tools or advanced capture capabilities are available. Until you have to drive many nails, no one appreciates the difference between a hammer and a nail gun when it comes to productivity. Smart Learning offers the next level of innovation in advanced capture powered by machine learning.

Time to live or the time it takes from implementation to User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is a critical factor due to the expense and time typically dedicated to system development until you actually go live with the solution and begin to take advantage of its benefits. With zero configuration, Smart Learning eliminates all the rules based configuration and coding requirements as well as the time to deliver and test them. All of this work is now transitioned to “compute time” and typically accomplished in hours with the relevant data sets.

Smart Learning Major Shift in Technology Solutions

Real-Time Adaptability or unattended self-learning means the system learns on its own as it goes and does not rely on (nor is it subject to) attended learning or the errors associated with the human-supervised learning and rules-based models. This significantly increases the ability to deal with new forms or transactions without having an engineer write new rules in the capture system.

Smart learning is unsupervised or unattended machine learning that adapts in production environments. A big problem with assisted or supervised learning in advanced capture has been its tendency to miss-train or cause the system to learn incorrectly due to poor data. Smart Learning adapts on the fly so it is no longer dependent on only one initial sample set. It also requires zero configuration.

Reduction of Risk in terms of access to specialized skill sets and tribal knowledge (experience) when it comes to configuring and maintaining an advanced capture platform are no longer impediments. Illness, vacations, job competition and basic cost for specialized talent are no longer a substantial organizational risk when it comes to advanced capture.

For businesses, what this means is that the long list of vendor features becomes irrelevant. Instead, businesses focus on results:

Simply stated, Smart Learning ensures more documents are processed faster with fewer people and less errors. Leveraging Parascript Smart Learning with its greatly reduced configuration and development requirements, our clients experience the fastest “Time to Live” solution in the industry. There is no better way to facilitate the corporate goal of achieving the highest accuracy at lower costs with improved productivity.

888.225.0169 www.parascript.com

CONTRIBUTORS Marci Maddox Research Manager, Enterprise Content Strategies, IDC Ms. Maddox is responsible for content workflow and content technologies research at IDC, including the evolution of managing enterprise content, customer communications, content sharing and collaboration, e-signature, forms, and capture solutions. She has over 15 years of experience in content and process applications at companies like OpenText, Vignette, and IBM. She has a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas and an MBA in e-Business.

Jim Just Partner, IMERGE Consulting Mr. Just has over 20 years of experience in business process redesign, document management technologies, business process management, and records and information management. He focuses on helping organizations attain business process optimization, using process analysis and redesign techniques, often utilizing best-of-breed technologies. He has worked with diverse organizations, including commercial, city/county governments, manufacturing, insurance, and diversified multinationals.

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David Mario Smith Founder and Principal Analyst, InFlow Analysis Mr. Smith is a Gartner veteran of over 16 years and an IT industry professional with 20 years of experience in the collaboration and workplace technology markets, having helped thousands of enterprises with their collaboration and workplace strategies. Mr. Smith’s career spans from being a Senior Analyst at Gartner to Research Director and Lead Analyst at Aragon Research.

APPLICATION ARTICLE

How to Build a Content Supply Chain The principles and associated benefits of a content supply chain are well known in the digital asset management (DAM) space, and are now moving into more mainstream content management channels.They embody the full lifecycle of a piece of content from inception, to creation, and finally distribution.

• Provide a simple way to “file” content • Make that content available to all relevant users - in a manner that makes sense to them • Provide a simple way to search for that information • Offer tools for editing, processing, sharing and distributing that information • Deliver a solution that is simple to use, and does not hamper creativity Again, classic information management issues - and challenges that are now addressable.

Metadata Matters The key to moving beyond the limitations of folder-based filing and towards a content supply chain, revolves around metadata filing, or tagging to use the modern term. Instead of placing a file in a folder, you add tags to it. Those tags describe “what” the file is and “what” it contains, as opposed to “where” it lives. This article could be tagged as: • Document management strategy • Content supply chain • Article • Thought leadership • Filing cabinets • And so on.

Content Challenges A major challenge is around repurposing content. As an example in DAM, assume a photographer has taken hundreds of photos on a shoot for a new marketing campaign. Those photos could be stored in a photoshoot folder, making it easy for the photography team, or in a campaigns folder for the benefit of the marketing team. Or duplicate photos could be put in both.

Is this sounding familiar yet?

This is a classic information management problem that has been around since the invention of filing systems, perpetuated by the filing cabinet, and more recently by folder-based computer filing systems. The challenge is that a filing system that works for one group does not work for another - and ultimately that impacts on the ability to find information, and re-use that content.

The first three steps of a content supply chain are straightforward - plan, acquire and create. It is step 4, manage and deploy, that poses challenges. This step looks to:

This approach does require more effort up front to define the tags, but artificial intelligence (AI) is starting to help with automated tagging. The approach also requires a flexible set of search capabilities to allow users to find content after is has been filed, and to create their own groupings and categorizations of that content (just a different tag).

Conclusions A tagging approach is simple, but the benefits significant. The ability to find content quickly based on what it is and what it contains, the ability to integrate that into editing and approval workflows, and subsequently drive outbound delivery and publishing of that content - all within a consistent framework.

DAM users are using this approach to realize the fruits of their labors after many years of frustration - isn’t it time that information management users started doing the same?

888.882.0969 www.nuxeo.com

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

Why You Should Take an Agile Approach Toward Document Management Document management systems have become very complex, especially when implementing a new system across many departments. Because of diverse technologies and departmental needs, we have come to recognize that the “big bang” approach does not work. https://documentmedia.com/ article-2899-Why-You-Should-Takean-Agile-Approach-Toward-DocumentManagement.html

Big Bucket vs Small Bucket: Finding the Right Size for Your Records Retention Schedule

The use of the big bucket or small bucket retention method has been debated by proponents of each for many years. Is one method really better than the other? https://documentmedia. com/article-2898-Big-Bucketvs-Small-Bucket-Finding-theRight-Size-for-Your-RecordsRetention-Schedule.html

Ephesoft Launches New Hybrid Cloud Capture Service with Cloud HyperExtender Showing the gaining traction of hybrid cloud infrastructures, Cloud HyperExtender allows organizations to import and process documents from their on-premises system to the cloud for fast processing. https://documentmedia. com/article-2892-EphesoftLaunches-New-HybridCloud-Capture-Service-withCloud-HyperExtender.html

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This Is Why You’re Approaching Your AI Project Wrong

Artificial intelligence (AI) will remain a hot topic in 2019.

To be clear, AI technology is impressive, and it will transform almost every aspect of information management— from document capture to the customer experience.

However, despite the hype, it clearly hasn’t transformed our organizations yet. The problem is that buyers and sellers of AI software alike don’t know how to plan and execute these projects. https://documentmedia. com/article-2896-This-IsWhy-Youre-Approaching-YourAI-Project-Wrong.html

4 Steps to Deliver Better Content for Improved Customer Experiences While the path to a better customer experience does require us to change the way we think about our content, it is a journey that is achievable. Here are four steps to not only deliver better content but a better customer experience as well. https://documentmedia. com/article-2897-4-Steps-toDeliver-Better-Contentfor-Improved-CustomerExperiences.html

Government chief information officers (CIOs) report that their main technology investments for the new year are equally focused on business intelligence (BI)/data analytics (43%) and cyber/information security (43%). Cloud services/solutions fell to the third spot at 39%. https://documentmedia.com/article-2888-Data-Analyticsand-Cybersecurity-Will-Be-Top-Investment-for-Governmentin-2019.html

OpenText Buys eDiscovery Provider Catalyst for $75 Million

Flexing its muscle in the legal technology space, OpenText announced the acquisition of Denver-based firm Catalyst Repository Systems, Inc. for an estimated $75 million in cash. https://documentmedia.com/article-2894-OpenText-Buys-eDiscovery-Provider-Catalyst-for-$75-Million.html

Nuxeo Builds Strengthened AI Framework with LTS 2019

This latest edition, billed as LTS 2019, introduces an increased focus on artificial intelligence (AI) services, tighter integrations with office productivity apps, and intelligent content connectivity. https://documentmedia.com/article-2891-Nuxeo-BuildsStrengthened-AI-Framework-with-LTS-2019.html

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DESIGNING FOR THE OMNI-CHANNEL 4 critical questions to ask

By Scott Draeger & Bjorn Hildahl

A

s we bring our document applications into the omni-channel era, it’s critical to understand several important questions before starting any major redesign of your customer communications.

These days, communications should no longer be initiated by the enterprise on their own schedule. Instead, it’s important to understand why each communication is being sent in the first place. This requires the design of an integration-friendly system that responds and reacts to customer

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demands. As a result, you must be open to application programming interface (API) calls conducted by other systems (for such tasks as credit scoring, data validation, data acquisition, ad targeting, and digital signatures) across all the channels you support.

It’s also necessary to have systems that store and supply information on the customer’s channel of choice for a particular interaction. For example, if we’re talking about your call center applications, you probably also have interactive voice response (IVR) systems. However, for this to work, you

need to integrate all the contextual data across the various systems used— even those that you acquired from other companies. To further boost the customer experience (CX), look at how you can automate the most cumbersome interactions with robotic process automation (RPA) systems, since many customer-initiated communications are repeatable and can be automated.

Organizations should also determine who is going to receive the communication and what needs they might have. To conform to legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act

(ADA), the communication must be designed for screen readers and meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 compliance for web and mobile presentations. This requires knowledge of HTML 5 standards as they apply to the end user experience in each channel.

Similarly, styles across the entire business need to be managed and checked if the channel preferences are overridden by a customer’s need state.

For example, an auto insurer may prefer the mail channel, but the customer certainly won’t when they are pulled

over for speeding. Designing for inclusivity requires greater efficiency with your content management strategy, ensuring the channel-specific format is an attribute of a single design for the communication whenever possible.

It’s important to understand where the customer is on their journey, which means opening up access to the archive system for all of your customer-facing employees. If the customer can see all of their relevant communications—from email to phone to paper to web page—so should the customer service representative assisting them.

Omni-channel means you are working across channels, so it’s crucial to know the requirements of the device.

Is the screen large or small? If it’s small, what are the elements that can be moved down or removed? To meet these challenges, responsive design must be considered to understand the way design elements interact in a variety of form factors.

With design becoming more flexible, it’s important to reuse content elements as much as possible, so investing in your content management system becomes critical.

Channel-based formatting should be an attribute of a great omni-channel design, not something designed and maintained on a per-channel basis.

Organizations should also consider designing a preview infrastructure that reduces the cost of compliance by creating an easy markup and approval process for your expensive legal and compliance review team.

We find that one of the toughest questions for organizations to answer is, “Where is the data coming from and going to?” This is because the answer may not be readily available. No matter what business you’re in, data privacy and security regulations are coming for you. Even if you aren’t forced by regulations to pay increasing attention on security, you should still be motivated by new stories of major breaches occurring every day.

To deliver omni-channel communications, you must know where all your

QUESTIONS FOR YOUR REDESIGN PROJECT

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WHY IS THE COMMUNICATION BEING SENT? WHO IS GOING TO RECEIVE THE COMMUNICATION? WHAT DEVICES ARE PRESENTING THE COMMUNICATION? WHERE IS THE DATA COMING FROM AND GOING TO?

data is coming from, where it’s being stored, and who has access to it. When well-intentioned people from marketing want to use a new service that scores leads, you have to know the policies on how each piece of customer data is managed.

It’s clear that we must build our technology tools to support the maximum flexibility of design and delivery with as little complexity and vulnerability as possible. The only way to achieve this level of coordination is to simplify the underlying technology stack, because we all know architectural complexity exponentially grows with organizational complexity. O

SCOTT DRAEGER is Vice President of Customer Transformation at Quadient. His broad experience includes helping clients improve customer communications in over 20 countries. Follow him on Twitter @scottdraeger.

BJORN HILDAHL is the Head of Digital Experience for Quadient. With deep experience in a wide variety of platforms and technologies, he has helped define and drive the mobile revolution in the financial sector for Fortune 500 companies. For more information, visit www.quadient.com.

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SELECTING THE RIGHT MODEL FOR YOUR

RIM PROGRAM Centralized vs decentralized vs hybrid

By Cindy Zuvich

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T

o manage your organization’s records, there are a couple of different models at either extreme: from a fully centralized records and information management (RIM) program to a decentralized approach, to a hybrid alternative that’s more middle ground.

Each has their own merits, depending on your specific environment. Here’s a highlevel overview of these three approaches for your RIM program to consider.

A fully centralized program is usually controlled and managed by a central corporate authority (e.g., the legal department). This central authority oversees the program in its entirety, including the governance, implementation, management, and operations.

They are responsible for all aspects of the program—from retention policies to processes and procedures to daily monitoring of all RIM activities.

This might seem ideal, since it’s efficient, cost effective, consistent, and practical. When the business world was primarily paper-based, a centralized RIM approach was common practice, since records could be stored in central filing systems. However, as records become more and more digitized, this centralized model has become more difficult to maintain.

This is because a centralized RIM approach is more suited for organizations with limited locations or a homogeneous line of business, such as law firms, chain stores, or financial services. Unfortunately, for many global organizations with multiple lines of business and distributed locations, this is not always possible or practical.

On the other end of the spectrum, a fully decentralized program allows each business unit or department to have their own policies, schedules, processes, and procedures for governing and managing their records. This type of

model has many drawbacks, including inconsistencies and conflicts between records, confusion and frustration among employees, and difficulty with searching, accessing, and retrieving records or information from different departments.

A decentralized program can be less efficient, more costly to maintain, and may cause duplication of effort.

global RIM policy and retention schedules, define the processes that run the program, and provide general guidelines for implementation and management.

The actual program activities are left to the business units or departments to execute and manage.

It’s important to note that the central authority only offers guidance, advisory services, training, and support for business operations.

It does not monitor or police how the activities are completed. That responsibility falls entirely on the business to comply with the policies and guidelines set forth by the central authority.

For many, a centralized model may seem like the optimal solution, but the implementation and maintenance of this approach is more difficult than it first appears. In practicality, a hybrid approach is a good starting point for most, especially for those companies with limited resources. However, the governing authority must provide RIM education, training, and set expectations in order for the business to execute those policies effectively.

When deciding which model is best for your organization, it’s important to consider the type of business entity and lines of business in your enterprise, industry, corporate culture and willingness to accept change, autonomy of business management, resources, and your ability to enforce the RIM policies and guidelines. O

“While centralized and decentralized approaches for managing an organization’s RIM program represent the two extremes, many companies fall somewhere in between.”

With that said, it is highly suited for large, global companies in diverse locations with very distinct and unrelated lines of business, which operate separately from one another. This is common in large LLCs or holding companies, where the parent company owns distinct and separate profit centers in different industries and doesn’t actually manage the business operations. In these environments, it is not unusual to have autonomous programs, even though they belong to the same parent company.

While centralized and decentralized approaches for managing an organization’s RIM program represent the two extremes, many companies fall somewhere in between. In such a hybrid scenario, the central authority provides the program governance and implementation support. Essentially, they own the

CINDY ZUVICH is the Principal of Unigrated Global, an information governance consultancy and records management services company based in White Plains, New York. Contact Cindy at cindy.zuvich@unigrated.com.

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ALEXA,

WHAT’S OUR VOICE-ACTIVATED COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY? How to answer the big questions

By Lynne Andrews

C

ustomer communications have transformed into conversations. This is because outbound marketing monologues are being replaced by customer-initiated dialogues. For brands, this means taking another look at a voice-activated communications strategy.

Creating near-human interactions by combining artificial intelligence (AI) voice technology, user-spoken intents, and client transactional document data is simply smart business. We continue to see steady growth and use of voice-enabled devices.

In fact, Forrester forecasts that smart speaker adoption in US households will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34% by 2022, and nearly twothirds of Internet users access their voice

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assistants with their smartphones, according to the “Voice Assistant Consumer Adoption Report 2018.”

These one-to-one engagements between a brand and its intended audience lead to more efficient two-way communications, reduced inquiries for customer support centers, on-time bill payments, and increases in e-adoption rates. Perhaps this is why a reported 62% of senior decision makers in the US plan to invest in voice technology within the next two years, according to research by eMarketer.

Implementing a voice-activated communications strategy can also help brands to deliver content (including historical and current statement information) via popular voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, encourage self-service

capabilities, and allow customers to set and receive reminders and status updates across all smart devices.

Before a customer can ever ask, “Alexa, how much more is my gas bill this month compared to last month?” some legwork behind the scenes is required. Often, senior-level decision makers rely heavily on strategies used for other tech investments when implementing voice-activated technology. To build confidence in your investment, you’ll need to answer the big questions: What is your competition doing with this technology? Can you leverage it in a way that uniquely positions your brand? Do you understand how your customers will use voice-activated technology? Is this technology safe from a privacy standpoint? Which documents

should be enhanced with voice-activated technology first?

One of the first steps to take for your voice-activated communications strategy is to gain buy-in from the necessary stakeholders. To do this effectively, set aside time to educate them. It’s important to connect voice-activated capabilities to the company’s business objectives and challenges.

For most organizations, data siloes exist.

This is most likely due to unaligned marketing and communications initiatives that are housed in different areas of the company rather than under the umbrella of customer experience. Dismantling those siloes will help you begin the process of creating a single database of sources. This centralization will activate your content, making key data elements accessible, calculable,

manipulable, and easy to incorporate into a data-driven service or application.

Building the right Alexa Skill or Google Action (i.e., the functions that allow voice assistants to react to user commands and queries) requires significant information technology (IT) expertise and industry experience. Ask yourself, “Does your organization have the infrastructure in place to implement voice-activated technology?”

If not, own up to this as early in the process as possible. Then seek out external support with a firm grasp on what’s trending, jargon, regulations, caveats, audience preferences, and industry best practices.

Remember, speed to market will be an added bonus.

By combining verbal communications with existing communication methods, brands will be able to increase their

customer’s ability to access, understand, and retain content. The result?

Everyday inconveniences are bypassed, decision making becomes informed, and brand loyalty increases. With this kind of upside, it’s time for brands to find their voice. What will your voice-activated communications strategy sound like? It’s an important question, because your customers are ready to talk. O

LYNNE ANDREWS is Vice President of Product Development for RRD’s Business Communications Solutions. She has decades of experience helping businesses seamlessly integrate tools and technology to provide better engagement for their customers. For more information, visit www.rrdonnelley.com/business-communications-solutions.

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DRIVINGDIGITAL DIGITAL WILL TAKE MORE THAN TECHNOLOGY 20

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TO The 4 dimensions you need to master

By Allison Lloyd

keep up with evolving customer needs and the necessary infrastructure required to orchestrate seamless customer experiences, organizations continue to invest heavily in the technologies that enable the digital transformation of their processes and products.

In fact, these investments are expected to grow to almost two trillion dollars by 2022, according to research conducted

by IDC. As companies pour more and more money into digital technologies, the question remains: Are these

organizations making any progress in executing their digital transformation strategies?

According to a recent survey conducted by Capgemini of over 1,300 global executives charged with digital transformation within their organizations, companies are still struggling to turn their investments into real business outcomes six years on. Some of this stagnation can be attributed to the increasing complexity introduced by newer innovations, such as artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of things (IoT), and enterprise-wide process automation, as well as the deep and seismic changes to traditional business models that are required. As these companies cross the halfway mark on their digital transformation journeys, some of these expectations have naturally been realigned. The takeaway here is that transforming your organization is much harder and more complicated

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than at first glance. It will take a lot more than technology to execute on your vision.

Of those respondents surveyed, most made significant progress on their customer experience efforts, which include capabilities like analytics, social media, mobile channels, and IoT devices. In fact, these organizations report they nearly doubled the use of mobile channels to sell products and services over the last six years, going from 23% in 2012 to 43% in 2018. Companies are also beginning to pair AI and analytics tools to deliver more personalized content and to align both online and offline experiences in pursuit of boosting customer engagement. However, these advancements remain isolated to customer-facing functions, leaving support mechanisms (such as digital design of products, real-time monitoring, quickly adapting operational

processes, and digital collaboration among knowledge workers) sorely lacking. More than half (64%) of the organizations surveyed struggled with advancing their operations, slowed down by the challenges found in the implementation phase.

While 39% of organizations maintain they have the necessary technological capabilities to transform the way they do business, only 35% agree that they have the right corporate structures in place to drive this change across the enterprise. It’s especially notable that in 2012, organizations reported the same level of digital capabilities, but six years later, their confidence in executing those strategies fell by 10%. The lesson here is that simply having technology available doesn’t necessarily mean that employees will use these new tools, most especially among seniorlevel executives.

The Building Blocks of Digital Transformation

Source: Capgemini Consulting, 2018

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To build their digital competencies, organizations are now realizing they will need to invest not only in technology but equal parts vision, organizational alignment, governance, and employee engagement. In their recent report tracking digital transformation efforts by organizations, Capgemini has identified core dimensions and best practices displayed by “digital masters” (the highest performing organizations in their survey) to show how enterprises can sustain their digital transformation strategies.

First, digital masters align their internal operations around customer demands. These organizations use digital technology to link customer-facing and operational processes in new ways.

Only 29% of overall organizations surveyed said they were modifying their operational processes as compared to 73% of digital masters who incorporate their internal operations with their customer experience priorities.

This alignment also extends to breaking down the siloes that exist between the business and technology teams in the organization. In 2018, only 37% of respondents surveyed felt that the chief information officer and senior business executives have a shared understanding of the role of IT, plummeting from 65% in 2012. On the other hand, digital masters ensure that the business and IT departments work together and share aligned goals and objectives. In fact, 63% of digital masters say it’s easy to organize cross-functional teams in their organizations.

Digital masters dedicate a lot of time on articulating their vision for transformation. In particular, this dimension remains a problematic area for many organizations, with only 31% of companies saying they have clarity on exactly how their business will change. A majority of employees (64%) don’t even

“No matter where a knowledge worker sits within the organization, those that believe their actions directly impact the customer’s experience and business objectives will determine how successful you will be.” believe that their strategies are radically different than their current practices. To embed your visionary goals into the lifeblood of the organization, leaders need to communicate the importance and need for the transformation very clearly and as often as possible. The authors of this report point out, “While digital initiatives are often supervised by senior management, it is middle management that is typically involved in the day-to-day execution.” The backbone of such efforts lies in a strong governance structure. For example, 61% of digital masters have redefined their roles and responsibilities and key performance indicators to align with their digital transformation objectives compared to just 14% of organizations categorized as beginners.

Finally, digital masters empower their employees by instilling a digital culture

that’s focused on data-driven decision making, customer-centricity, and ownership and accountability. No matter where a knowledge worker sits within the organization, those that believe their actions directly impact the customer’s experience and business objectives will ultimately determine how successful you will be. Nearly two out of three digital masters say that customer-centricity is at the heart of everything they do, and 60% of these respondents agree that their employees take ownership of implementing new and innovative ideas. Too often, employees have no way to join the conversation around their digital initiatives (only 36% of those surveyed allow employees to be a part of these projects).

According to Capgemini, providing digital mechanisms to communicate and provide feedback accelerates the speed of change and engagement as well as

increases transparency in the organization. Instilling rewards and benefits tied to these kinds of behaviors from your staff lays the foundation for the required culture change. To excel in the digital era also means investing in the skills and talent pool of your employees as well.

Over half of digital masters say they have built learning infrastructures in order to develop the skills necessary to execute on their digital initiatives.

A long-term digital strategy can mean a 10- to 20-year journey, and many fail along the way because they lose momentum. Organizations who are truly committed to transforming their business practices, products, and processes—not just technology—will renew their focus on operations, governance, people, and the digital culture to bring their vision to life. O

ALLISON LLOYD serves as the Editor of DOCUMENT Strategy Media. She delivers thought leadership on strategic and plan-based solutions for managing the entire document, communication, and information process. For more information on Capgemini’s digital mastery framework, visit www.capgemini.com.

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PEOPLE, PROCESS, OR TECHNOLOGY? Finding the right digital transformation lens for your CCM project

By Marci Maddox

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hat has the biggest impact on the success of a customer communications management (CCM) project: people, process, or technology? It would be unfair to say all of the above, so I’ll go with people. This is because even the best tools and well-orchestrated processes will sit on the virtual shelf, gathering dust, without the right people to support it, fund it, or use it. The reality is that it takes a champion within the organization who can envision the possibilities and who will become an advocate for the adoption of the CCM solution.

To better understand the dynamics of the CCM market, IDC conducted a survey of organizations integrating CCM into their business practice—from simple formatting of billing and collection statements to more advanced strategies that drive business change for a holistic, seamless customer experience. We found that only 17.7% of organizations achieved the highest level of maturity (known as the Conversational communicator), those that optimize a wide range of internal and external systems to both better understand the customer and improve responsiveness throughout the supply chain. This group understands customer behavior, thereby, creating a seamless customer experience with the dual goals of increasing loyalty and wallet share throughout the customer life cycle.

A vast majority of respondents are still experimenting and expanding their use of CCM beyond a single department (75% to be exact). Within this group, more than a quarter (26.6%) of organizations fall under the category of

Guiding communicator, which is characterized by the widespread adoption of quantitative metrics that assess the impact of CCM on customer satisfaction and behavior in order to drive real-time decision making.

Those organizations that have not achieved this level of sophistication in real-time decision making or seamless multi-channel customer experiences are known as the Personalized communicator, and 23.3% of respondents we surveyed belong in this category.

“A vast majority of respondents are still experimenting and expanding their use of CCM beyond a single department.”

Nevertheless, this group also has a leadership team that understands the cost and complexities of effective outbound personalized communications, monitors performance metrics, and provides incentives for cross-division coordination through centralized communication budgets.

A small percentage (7.8%) of organizations remain in the earliest stages of maturity, where CCM is merely a revenue cycle tool that is limited to the periodic distribution of scheduled and structured documents and may still send correspondence via print and mail.

Improving the customer experience continues to be a large factor in digital transformation initiatives. With the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent process automation (IPA) bots to help augment work tasks, we may see technology supersede the importance of people when it comes to the success of a CCM project.

According to IDC’s 2018 “Customer Communications Management MaturityScape Benchmark Survey,” 37% of respondents are actively looking at AI technologies to enhance their CCM effectiveness. Of these AI pioneers, 30% report an interest in conversational analytics that can assess sentiment and context in near-real time to aid in decision making. Another 20.7% report considering advanced text analytics for analysis of incoming communications.

As you can see, there is a myriad of use cases for AI-enabled and advanced analytics to push the current maturity level of CCM into a new trajectory.

As CCM continues to be influenced by innovative technologies, it is vital for organizations to increase executive support and the necessary budgets to expand beyond the single department or process and step up to the next level of CCM maturity. We are at a turning point in which savvy leaders can embrace digital communications to transform the business across people, process, and technology. O

MARCI MADDOX is the Research Manager for IDC’s Enterprise Content Strategies program and is responsible for content workflow and content technologies research. Follow her on Twitter at @idcmarci or visit www.idc.com.

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BY JIM JUST

RULES

FOR CLEANING UP YOUR SHARED DRIVES

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leaning up your shared network drives and other unstructured data stores continues to be a major challenge for many organizations. This reinforces the fact that any remediation effort requires resources and commitment, along with an iron will to solve unanticipated and unexpected problems. Of course, the volume of data to be remediated will add to the complexity and more than likely require the use of a content analytics tool. Often, launching a pilot program will be important to proving the value of your remediation efforts to gain the necessary resources for your project. To get started, here are 12 key business rules for remediating your shared drives.

o N1 When assessing content, it must be classified so that retention rules may be applied. An organizational classification (or functional retention schedule) is, therefore, an important tool for content analysis. We recommend the standard ISO 15489 for creation of functional classifications.

2 Legacy drive mappings create chaos when attempting to rationalize folder structures. Many times, the very same content will be mapped to completely different drive letters within a particular business unit or even person to person. Before you begin any analysis, look at the user batch files and create a master list of content areas, mappings, and ownership so that the analysis root can be established. Input from subject matter experts (SMEs) will be crucial to understanding where data resides and the purpose of mappings.

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Too many cooks spoil the broth: While it’s tempting to have as many staff as possible involved in your content analysis discussions, it’s actually a detriment. Disagreements on what data is needed and which is redundant, obsolete, and trivial (ROT) will stifle decision making.

The business unit manager must identify key SMEs who will have responsibility over defining business rules and making content decisions. Often, long-term SMEs will have the best insights. When needed, the business manager will be the tiebreaker.

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It’s easy to believe you can create a repeatable process, but in actuality, every business unit will have many variations on rules. The expertise gained from each business unit will make it easier to establish rules for the next. Expect variability and tweak the rules accordingly.

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5 Cleaning up your content but leaving the same folder structure in place for the future will only result in recreating the digital swamp. This is an ideal place to put your functional classification to work.

Following classification, create a new folder structure. Retention rules are typically assigned at level two or three of the classification. Once the level is determined, lock down that level (i.e., read-only) and those above it. Then, migrate classified content to the new structure.

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If your organization will be moving to cloud storage, such as OneDrive for Business, Google Drive, Box, etc., it is the perfect opportunity to implement your new, classified folder structure and clean up existing content. Why move 50% to 80% of your content that’s junk to a new environment?

When migrating content to the new structure, leave the ROT behind. Once migration for an area is complete, make the old structure accessible to only a few people, such as key records management personnel, select information technology (IT) individuals, and the remediation team. If users can’t find content, these people can look for it in the “ROT drive.”

Linked files can be problematic, since content analytics tools don’t test files for links. SMEs can help determine if existing links are important and the risk of breaking them either through deletion/migration of ROT or migrating content to a new structure. Link remediation tools (such as LinkTek) can also help to identify links before migration as well as fix links after migration. Link integrity is a very good reason for leaving ROT content behind in its original location during migration.

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There will be content that can’t easily be classified—a lot actually. You may be tempted to dump it into a “to be classified” folder with the expectation that users will eventually move files where they belong in the new structure, but that’s just a dream. Content analytics or auto-classification engines can be successful at clustering like-content so it can be classified, but in the end, you’ll still have files that will be unclassified. The simplest method to deal with this kind of content is to make the “to be classified” folder read-only. If a user finds content that they need, they will move it to its new home. After a period of years, if there’s no activity within the folder, consider disposing of it or moving it to be permanently retained.

10 A challenge most have with their shared drives is a lack of clarity on which files are drafts and which are final versions. It’s best to maintain separate folders for each kind of version, where needed. Retention rules can then be applied to drafts, so version clarity can be enforced.

11 You must monitor the new folder structure to make sure old habits don’t creep in. Most users will love the new, clean, and organized structures, but there will always be those who are resistant to change and will recreate bad file structures where they don’t belong. Content analytics tools can also monitor and report on content that appears to be misclassified.

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Finally, don’t skimp on your communications. Managers must keep staff apprised of the processes and outcomes, and the remediation and migration team must be clear about plans and timing. Any problems that are reported must be acted upon quickly. O

JIM JUST is a Partner with IMERGE Consulting. Contact Jim at 608-239-8282 or follow him on Twitter @jamesjust10.

For more information, visit www.imergeconsult.com.

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By David Mario Smith

TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL DIGITAL BUSINESS,

YOU NEED TO MANAGE YOUR INFORMATION Why information is a critical asset of every organization

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t the very heart of all the buzz surrounding “big data” and artificial intelligence (AI) lies a universal truth: Information is the critical asset of every organization. Information flows through people and applications at such a rapid pace that it demands effective management. Enterprises are flying blind if they don’t have an information management strategy.

It is impossible to understand customer needs and improve their experiences without the right information feeding decision-making systems.

Without proper information management, employee engagement is doomed.

If you don’t understand your people and

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their needs, the workplace culture will suffer. This information needs to be aggregated and cleansed to be of any benefit to business analytics systems and AI initiatives, however. As a result, it behooves every enterprise to pay serious attention to developing an information management strategy.

With the rise of the digital business, a new wave of information flows across the organization and through multiple networks has emerged. Today, information flows between people, applications, and devices, essentially becoming digital content. As it moves through an organization, it multiplies exponentially as metadata is added along the way, and thus, its meaning

and value grows as well. While increasing volumes of data doesn’t necessarily mean more value, it does require enterprises to understand the full context of that data to determine what is valuable in the organization.

As the value of information grows, enterprises will need to protect and manage it, applying the proper governance to ensure control. For some heavily regulated enterprises, such as government and financial services, information life cycle management and governance are critical.

In the digital age, managing information is a very complex and complicated endeavor. Enterprises have to think not only about mobile devices

“A true digital business has to focus on consistency and availability of information, with the end goal of enhancing the customer experience.”

and cloud-based data storage, but they now have to account for the Internet of things (IoT) and a multitude of connected devices, including wearables with built-in sensors collecting data.

Therefore, enterprises have to evaluate solutions, services, and platforms that will enable them to effectively manage information throughout its life cycle.

A grand purpose for information management is information availability and the ability to glean critical insights from it, liberating the value of enterprise data to improve business productivity and gain competitive advantage. Information management solutions have to be effective in breaking down data so it’s understandable. In this form, enterprises can

extract useful insights and recognize patterns and trends.

A true digital business has to focus on consistency and availability of information, with the end goal of enhancing the customer experience. Therefore, information has to be in context, consistently captured, and managed throughout its life cycle in order to empower business decisions. Since information management involves every area of the business, enterprises will need better business alignment around the customer experience.

Enterprises have to recognize that they are now media companies.

Managing information will be critical in how they articulately tell their story via

multiple media channels. These days, the story will be told for you if you don’t proactively control your own narrative. The bottom line is that effective information management will dictate critical decisions for both internal- and external-facing processes that bring the intersection of employees and customers into context. O

DAVID MARIO SMITH is Founder and Principal Analyst at InFlow Analysis. Dave is a Gartner veteran of over 16 years and an IT industry professional with 20 years of experience in the collaboration and workplace technology markets. Contact Dave at http://inflowanalysis.com or follow him on Twitter @DaveMario.

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Think About It / PETRA BECK / ALARIS

WE BELIEVE INFORMATION IS YOUR WINDOW TO THE WORLD. WHEN YOU HAVE A CLEAR VIEW, YOU’RE ABLE TO MAKE BETTER DECISIONS ABOUT HOW WORK HAPPENS AND WHAT YOU CAN DO TO MOVE YOUR BUSINESS FORWARD.

IN 2019, DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WILL MOVE TO A PRAGMATIC PORTFOLIO VIEW OF DIGITAL INVESTMENTS, ACCORDING TO FORRESTER.

/ CATHERINE WILSON / LASERFICHE

ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION (RPA) AND MACHINE LEARNING ARE EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES THAT WILL DRIVE THE NEXT EVOLUTION OF THE ECM INDUSTRY.

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N IL O L I B $

Worldwide revenues for big data and business analytics (BDA) solutions are forecast to reach $189.1 billion this year, according to IDC.

According to Gartner, the worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 17.5 percent in 2019. / RICK HOWARD / GARTNER

Taking advantage of data is at the heart of digital government—it’s the central asset to all that government oversees and provides.

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