DOCUMENT Strategy Winter 18-19

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TABLE OF CONTENTS volume 25 issue 4 | Winter.18/19 | DOCUMENTmedia.com

FEATURES 14

The Automation Survey The path to digital transformation

By Holly Muscolino

18

14

Customer Communications Management in 2019

What to expect in the new year

By Kaspar Roos

22

Special Sponsored Content: Put the Customer in the Center

18

Rethink your customer communications strategy

26

FinTech Is Changing Customer Communications

The opportunity for communications service providers in the new banking ecosystem

By David Stabel

28

Selecting a CCM Hosted Managed Services Provider 7 key capabilities to consider

By Gina Ferrara

DEPARTMENTS 06 08 08

Letter from the Editor #Trending on Social Masthead

10 12 30

22

Contributors The Best of 2018 Think About It!

26

SPONSORED CONTENT

4

11

Enterprise Platform to Maximize Customer Experiences

13

Top CCM Trends: Cloud and Content Services

15

Transactional Documents: A Powerful Customer Communications Channel

17

Enabling Hybrid Communications

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You don’t have to be an evil genius to get intelligent control over customer communications.

You just need Messagepoint.

Watch the full video at www.messagepoint.com/CCM

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

The Rise of Integration

For those of us in traditional document management domains and highly regulated industries, the ways in which our business operations, products, and customer experiences have changed over the past 20 years would’ve been hard to predict. In fact, Keypoint Intelligence – InfoTrends Research Director David Stabel observes that, more than ever, “customer interactions are shifting from face-to-face engagements to digital interactions.”

In many ways, this fundamental shift has brought with it a new set of challenges, as customers engage with

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businesses across numerous channels, sometimes, simultaneously. The intersection of business processes, information siloes, and technology infrastructures have become quite chaotic in our quest to deliver seamless experiences. Definitive market segments have blurred, leaving enterprise users unsure of who actually owns the customer interaction or process.

An example of this convergence is the increasing overlap of customer communications management (CCM) within the larger framework of customer experience management (CXM). “Today, customer communications are about the outcomes that consumers are trying to achieve,” says Scott Draeger, Vice President of Customer Transformation at Quadient. In this way, both CCM and CXM are primarily concerned with leveraging customer interactions for improved experiences but have distinct priorities that are unique unto themselves.

This doesn’t even account for the pervasive adoption of cloud computing, Internet of things (IoT), analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies seen at most organizations today.

“There’s a renewed interest in integration technologies because integration requirements between systems of engagement and systems of record require real time for seamless boundaries, omni-channel, and higher volumes, with end-to-end security,” says Forrester Principal Analyst Henry Peyret.

According to Forrester’s “Global Digital Experience Delivery Survey,” one-third of respondents report that the ease of integration is their top priority when buying digital experience technology—ahead of cost and best-of-breed status. Perhaps this is why integration platform as a service (iPaaS) is one of the fastest-growing software segments in 2018, topping $1 billion in revenue for the first time in 2017.

As CCM marches toward digitally transforming their communication practices, the need for integration within the digital experience management suite will only become more and more necessary. With the spend on digital transformation technologies predicted to rise to $1.97 trillion in 2022, according to IDC, it’s clear that we must marry our traditional approaches with completely new ways of thinking.

It’s difficult to encapsulate all the ways in which disruption touches the various parts of the enterprise, but in this special CCM issue, I hope you find a deeper understanding of the market trends and solutions that can help you to rethink your customer communications and digital experience strategies in the new year!

Until next time,

ALLISON LLOYD EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

#TRENDING ON SOCIAL @DOCUMENTmedia | DOCUMENTmedia.com

TOP TWEETED Why the California Consumer Privacy Act Is the Biggest Change in US Privacy Law in Decades https://www. documentmedia.com/ article-2865-Why-theCalifornia-ConsumerPrivacy-Act-Is-theBiggest-Change-inUS-Privacy-Lawin-Decades.html

TOP SHARED ON FACEBOOK

PeopleDoc Acquisition by Ultimate Software Points to a New

READ Trend in ECM HERE https://documentmedia.com/article-2843-PeopleDoc-Acquisition-

TOP SHARED ON YAMMER Microsoft Sets Its Sights on the Enterprise with 5 Major Announcements from Ignite 2018 READ HERE https://documentmedia.com/article-2862-Microsoft-Sets-Its-Sights-onthe-Enterprise-with-5-Major-Announcements-from-Ignite-2018.html

TOP LINKEDIN POST

Gartner Reports Consumers Are Underwhelmed by

READ Digital Experiences HERE https://documentmedia.com/article-2856-Gartner-Reports-Consumers-

Are-Underwhelmed-by-Digital-Experiences.html 8

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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

by-Ultimate-Software-Points-to-a-New-Trend-in-ECM.html

#TOPREAD ON WEB

The Value of Simplification in Customer Communications https://www. documentmedia.com/ article-2866-TheValue-of-Simplificationin-CustomerCommunications.html

president Chad Griepentrog publisher Ken Waddell editor Allison Lloyd [ allison.l@rbpub.com ] contributing editor Amanda Armendariz contributors Gina Ferrara Holly Muscolino Kaspar Roos David Stabel

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 RB Publishing Inc., 2901 International Lane, Madison, WI 53704-3128.

All material in this magazine is copyrighted © 2018/2019 by RB Publishing Inc. 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, RB Publishing Inc., or its staff becomes the property of RB Publishing Inc. 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.

REPRINTS: For high-quality reprints, please contact our exclusive reprint provider, ReprintPros, 949-702-5390, www.ReprintPros.com.

CONTRIBUTORS Kaspar Roos Founder and CEO, Aspire Customer Communications Services Mr. Roos is a leading expert, consultant, and recognized thought leader in the customer communications management (CCM) industry. Before starting Aspire, he ran InfoTrends’ global production workflow and customer communications advisory service. Mr. Roos has a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering and Management from the University of Twente (Netherlands), with specializations in information systems and business-to-business marketing.

Gina Ferrara David Stabel Director, Customer Communications Advisory Service Keypoint Intelligence – InfoTrends Mr. Stabel conducts market research and analysis for the customer communications industry and is a frequent speaker at tradeshows, customer events, and industry conferences worldwide. Previously, Mr. Stabel worked as a Director of Software Strategy and Market Analysis at Canon (formerly Océ). Mr. Stabel holds a master’s in business administration, with a specialization in services management, and a bachelor’s degree in computer science and electrical engineering.

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Senior Analyst, Madison Advisors Ms. Ferrara has 20+ years of experience in the banking and financial services industry as a project manager and business analyst in e-commerce, with a focus on online banking, electronic bill payment, and print/mail optimization. Her project management consulting experience includes print and mail operations, postal optimization and address quality, as well as multi-channel delivery.

APPLICATION ARTICLE

Enterprise Platform to Maximize Customer Experiences Customers use three or more channels when contacting companies. This demands a new business model moving beyond disconnected, multichannel communication to offer Omni Channel engagement with real-time back office integration for enhanced customer experience and streamlined operations. The consistency of the message is ensured by endto-end integrated, seamless customer communications across the customer journey.

The Papyrus ACM-based collaboration platform for campaign management earned the highest honors for digital transformation excellence, agility and high value creation. Creative Services Teams are driving the creation, modification and administration of a large number of marketing and regulated materials with more than 60 media types in nearly 30 languages and more -efficient approval cycles to guarantee quality and compliance.

Inbound mail automation Creating and managing business correspondence for physical and digital can be an expensive nightmare. The Papyrus single source document administration is here to help! Document layouts and building blocks are created only once by business teams and reused across templates for e-mail/HTML, Mobile, Web, PDF and print — achieving efficiency, corporate design, precision and quality. How cool is that! Corporate design is enforced and manually generated communications restricted to using pre-approved templates, layouts and resources. Changes to documents are quick, easy and cost effective, passing through an approval process in the award-winning Papyrus Change Management.

Communication is delivered to each individual in their preferred channel and language. This channel could be an e-mail, WebChat, mail, SMS, Social or mobile with feedback loop. Whichever channel is used, it is integrated in a single solution to give your sales and customer service agent visibility of all customer contacts and current status, so queries can be resolved quickly and correctly.

A single view of all customer activity for a more seamless experience.

Digitizing and intelligently extracting data from incoming documents and messages in structured and unstructured formats including hand written information is a key strength of Papyrus Software. State-of-the-art machine learning technology utilizes pattern recognition to increase accuracy and efficiency of data capture.

Transforming your Online Business Channel Doing business online is a critical element of your organization’s existence – it connects you faster and conveniently to customers, prospects and partners. Digital business transformation now demands that we ensure operational support for this external activity, increasing emphasis on how we deliver on the promise of digital business via the online channel.

Papyrus Software enables business applications for digital transformation, operational enhancement and customer engagement in an Omni Channel world. With the Papyrus Platform enterprise teams choose where to improve, whom to empower and how to scale — gaining the knowledge and tools to create, manage and enhance business applications with reduced IT dependence.

All channels are presented in a unified view to understand which communication has taken place (outbound/inbound) and which channel was used, even when crossing channels in parallel conversations. Monitoring and reporting tools provide evidence that communications get delivered in a timely manner and identify problems at the earliest point in a conversation.

Business First is an important concept when implementing a new global business communication solution. A powerful digital approach allows for business creativity and flexibility in multilingual product offerings, plus pricing and placement of promotional content across all lines of business. Invoicing customers can be per ad-hoc request, moving from paper to e-mail and Webportal to avoid payment delays, applying GDPR/EU-DSGVO.

info@isis-papyrus.com 817.416.2345

The Best of 2018 Catch up on all the news, opinions, and featured articles that caught our eye on documentmedia.com.

1

4

8

How to Build an RPA Center of Excellence https://documentmedia.com/article-2836-How-to-Build-anRPA-Center-of-Excellence.html

OpenText Is Serious About the Digital Business: Here’s Why That Matters

https://documentmedia.com/article2815-OpenText-Is-Serious-About-the-DigitalBusiness-Heres-Why-That-Matters.html

5 2 Gartner’s Top 10 Technology Trends for 2018

How Blockchain Will Impact Information Management

https://documentmedia.com/article-2850-How-Blockchain-Will-Impact-Information-Management.html

9

https://documentmedia.com/article-2764Gartners-Top-10-Technology-Trends-for-2018.html

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3 The 4 Types of CCM Technology You Need to Know About

https://documentmedia.com/article2801-The-4-Types-of-CCM-Technology-YouNeed-to-Know-About.html

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Quadient Brings Omni-Channel Dominance to the Digital Experience with Inspire R12 https://documentmedia. com/article-2825-QuadientBrings-Omni-ChannelDominance-to-the-DigitalExperience-with-InspireR12.html

7 4 Questions to Ask When Building a Records Management Program https://documentmedia. com/article-2780-4-Questionsto-Ask-When-Building-aRecords-ManagementProgram.html

10 Ike Kavas Wants to Bring Intelligent Capture to the Masses

https://documentmedia.com/article2774-Ike-Kavas-Wants-to-Bring-IntelligentCapture-to-the-Masses.html

APPLICATION ARTICLE

Top CCM Trends: Cloud and Content Services Integrating CCM with your Digital Experience Stack

Companies of all sizes and across all industries are busily moving everything to the cloud, including customer communications management (CCM). This drive to streamline business agility and operational efficiency has forced these companies to face their fears about data privacy and security. What they’ve found is that the real benefits outweigh the perceived risks. In fact, what they have discovered is that cloud-based CCM solutions are just as secure—and often more so—than their previous onpremise practices.

These same companies have also changed how they view CCM. It’s no longer seen as department-driven siloed software. In this new age of serverless computing, CCM is now part of an integrated, enterprise-wide digital experience stack, where features from multiple software applications come together to create new capabilities that users can access across multiple touchpoints.

Cloud-Native CCM Cloud-based CCM has all of the benefits of other SaaS solutions, including increased flexibility, infrastructure savings, and the shift of many risks to vendors. Some CCM-specific benefits, for example, include content creation and review/approval workflows that can be easily extended to folks outside the firewall.

With many flavors of “cloud” available, you must be aware of what you’re getting. Some so-called cloud solutions are little more than a legacy on-premise solution running on top of a public cloud provider. Other CCM offerings have some parts in the cloud, with a smattering of pieces parked on-premise. You’ll need to carefully construct your requests for information to dig deeply into how “cloudy” a given CCM solution really is, and how well that works for you needs and operational environment.

Content Services According to Gartner, Forrester, and industry leaders, content services represent the future of customer communications.

According to Gartner analyst Gene Phifer, writing in Adapt Customer Communications to the Demands of the Digital Customer Experience (Gartner, Inc., November 7, 2018), organizations should ask CCM vendors about their three-year product roadmap. We would further recommend that, if you don’t see cloud and content services on your vendor’s near-term horizon, you should find another option.

Topdown’s INTOUCH cloud-native CCM solution is built using microservices, which is why Forrester, Gartner and others analysts consider INTOUCH to be a content services application.

Topdown makes these services available to customers as

application programming interfaces (APIs). Content services multiply the agility and flexibility of the cloud, increase the ease of integration, and extend the return on investment (ROI) of INTOUCH. Better Together INTOUCH represents the best of both worlds. It’s the only cloud-native CCM solution built from microservices. That means you can use it to address your current CCM use cases, and then leverage the content services to solve for future use cases as they emerge.

Contact Topdown today to discuss moving your customer communications to the cloud and to see a demonstration of INTOUCH.

info@topdownsystems.com 1.800.361.1211 topdownsystems.com

AU TOM AT ION

By Holly Muscolino

B

y now, most organizations understand that embarking on a digital transformation journey is tantamount to their ability to compete in a changing and dynamic marketplace. At IDC, we expect the worldwide spending on the technologies and services that enable the digital transformation of business practices, products, and organizations to reach $1.97 trillion in 2022, with a compound annual growth rate of 16.7%.

The rise of innovation accelerators, such as the Internet of things (IoT), robotics, and artificial intelligence, has only put more weight behind this mandate.

To better understand the opportunities and challenges facing organizations in their digital transformation efforts, IDC recently conducted a survey—in partnership with DOCUMENT Strategy—to see how businesses are using technology to improve their operational efficiencies, reduce costs, drive new revenue, and build deeper relationships with employees, partners, and customers.

Two-thirds of survey respondents were based in the US, while over a third reside outside the country. Top industries represented in the survey include insurance,

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education, professional services, government, and healthcare. A little over 40% of the respondents work inside a large enterprise (over 5,000 employees worldwide). For the purpose of this survey, we define automation as a means to minimize or eliminate manual touch by deploying technology for a specific business benefit. This automation may augment or replace human activities.

The vast majority of respondents (roughly 81%) report they have already deployed software to automate business tasks and processes or expect to deploy this technology in the next 12 to 18 months.

Of those who have already deployed automation software (or about to deploy this technology), they are primarily using business process management (62%), workflow automation (69%), or workflow software that is embedded in another application, such as enterprise content management, content collaboration, capture, e-signature, etc., (65%). It’s of note that less than a quarter of this group have deployed robotic process management (RPA) technology.

This segment still remains nascent, as organizations evaluate how RPA fits into the larger task automation ecosystem.

Nonetheless, IDC expects RPA to be the fastest growing segment of automation technology, especially as it becomes more “intelligent” with the injection of artificial intelligence technology.

When it comes to the topic of automation, a common refrain we hear is “augmenting labor, not replacing it.”

Survey respondents seem to agree, listing improved accuracy and/or error reduction (67%) and employee productivity (64%) as the top two benefits of deploying automation software. Perhaps most interesting, only a quarter report that reducing the number of full-time employees as a benefit. This aligns with the school of thought that offloading repetitive, mundane tasks leads to increased worker productivity and job satisfaction. For a closer look at “The Automation Survey,” turn to page 16. O

HOLLY MUSCOLINO is the Research Vice President of the Content Technologies and Document Workflow group at IDC and is responsible for research related to enterprise content management, including records management and case management. Follow Holly on Twitter @hmuscolino.

APPLICATION ARTICLE

TRANSACTIONAL DOCUMENTS: A POWERFUL CUSTOMER COMMUNICATIONS CHANNEL More than ever, customers expect businesses to communicate with them with messages that are personalized and relevant to their wants and needs. Yet, in today’s environment, where customers are bombarded by more than 5,000 marketing messages every day, how do you get through?

document license based on the number of documents. Our entry-level price for a per-document license is affordable and offers all the benefits of a full solution. So, smaller businesses can still have the features, reliability and performance of even our Fortune 10 companies.

The email channel, in particular, is clogged. Even though nearly half (47 percent) of consumers say that email is their preferred channel for brand communications, more than half of them (55 percent) ignore marketing emails because of inbox overload.

Businesses are grappling with ways to break through this clutter and are searching for innovative new ways to engage with these information-weary customers. With advances in data mining and customer profiling, it’s easier today to send messages that are much more targeted, personalized, and relevant to a customer’s interests. But what’s the best channel for conveying them?

Another concern for organizations considering implementing a document CCM program is the burden on IT departments. Our Business Communication Center (BCC™) solution makes it easy for non-IT departments like marketing, sales, and HR to use our simple user interface to integrate data-driven communications into documents and forms based on their customers’ buying history, industry, region, and more—without any changes to existing business software.

Unleashing the Power of Transactional Documents Now, advances in document software and digital printing are making it possible for organizations to incorporate targeted messages into transactional business documents like monthly statements, invoices, and order acknowledgements. Because they’re the documents customers have a vested interest in, customers read and refer to them often. In fact, according to InfoTrends, 95 percent of transactional documents are opened and read. With their high open rates, they offer a high level of confidence that your marketing and educational messages will be received and read by your customers.

Yet, even with all the potential benefits of integrating targeted messages into transactional documents, many businesses are still not taking advantage of this communications channel.

In fact, only about 15 to 20 percent of companies with the capabilities are actually using customer communication management (CCM) solutions.

One possible reason for this reluctance to launch a CCM program for transactional documents is the sheer volume of documents that are in rotation at large enterprises. Some insurance companies, for example, have thousands of document types. So, the prospect of launching a CCM program for all of those documents at a cost that can be as much as $2 million is daunting.

Breaking Down the Barriers Eclipse provides a solution to the high cost of implementation.

Unlike competing offers that offer only a full solution with a high entry-level price, we provide the option of purchasing a

With our BCC solution, any department can seamlessly integrate rich, relevant information into the documents and forms they generate every day. Consider this healthcare scenario: BCC makes it easy for healthcare practices to embed physician recommendations—such as nutritional guidelines, even ads for recommended products—into billing statements or other patient-facing documents. Even common free-form abbreviated notes from the physician can trigger recommended over-thecounter or home remedy messages, eliminating the need for the physician to manually type the appropriate suggestions.

Our BCC solution is fueled by the data generated by any business software and works with legacy ERP, EMR, and CRM systems. Now, documents and forms can come to life with relevant custom messaging for customers and partners.

Wasted white space becomes valuable real estate. Any product or service or data point on a form can trigger communications or messages without the need to make any changes to your business software or database.

Now that adding targeted messages to transaction documents is affordable and user-friendly, can you afford not to get started?

EclipseCorp.US 678.408.1245

The Automation Survey:

Top Automation Technologies 69% are using/looking to use Workflow

Automation Software.

65% are using/looking to use Workflow Software in Another Application.

62% are using/looking to use Business Process Management Software.

THE PATH TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Less than a fourth of respondents have deployed robotic process automation (RPA) technology.

Conducted by

and

Amazon Alexa Siri Cortana

73% 20% Almost three-fourths of the respondents have already deployed technology to automate their business tasks and processes.

While a fifth of respondents are planning to deploy automation technology within the next 12 to 18 months or are currently exploring technology to automate their business tasks and processes.

Only a quarter of respondents report that a benefit of deploying technology to automate business tasks is the reduction of full-time employees.

Adoption of technologies like decision support software, digital assistants (Amazon Alexa, Siri, Cortana), and augmented/virtual reality are still emerging in the enterprise.

Top Departments Deploying Automation Technology 1

Information Technology (IT)

2

Operations

3

Accounting/Finance

4

Customer Services

ď Ą

Followed by Administration Services, Human Resources, and Procurement/Purchasing.

Top Benefits

16

67%

64%

60%

54%

51%

Higher accuracy and/or error reduction

Improved employee productivity

Cost savings

Reduced operational risk

Freeing up staff for higher value tasks

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Source: IDC & DOCUMENT Strategy, December 2018

APPLICATION ARTICLE

Enabling Hybrid Communications Today’s customers demand personalized, relevant communications across a growing number of channels.

As companies rush to understand and adopt emerging digital channels, it is generating complexity, confusion, and a growing disconnect in most customer journeys today. As organizations bring on new channels of communications for their customers — including social channels, chatbots, mobile apps, mobile sites, websites, smart device apps and more — they often struggle to bridge the communications from these channels into the backend processes used to actually fulfill on customer requests.

The reason is that back-end processes are primarily based on traditional channels and may not have been considered as important integration points when new digital projects were being planned and conceived. This is true even in the industries that are most advanced in bringing forward digital experience. In the retail industry, for example, only 25% of survey respondents indicated that they are delivering a seamless and consistent experience across sales channels.

Regulations and compliance cause a bigger divide This disconnect between digital channels and traditional channels is even larger in industries where regulations and compliance mandates are more challenging. As an example, the lack of integration between offline and digital customer touch points is strikingly evident in digital banking in the United States, where 68% of digital banking users have been frustrated with their digital experience.

If not digital, what are customers looking for?

The most important elements are ensuring that issues are resolved in a single interaction and that customers receive a speedy and timely response. However, only 17% of customers expected that their issue would be resolved in-channel, without being deflected to a traditional service channel. This seems to indicate that customers are more concerned that they receive timely, efficient service than being able to resolve their issue in one unique channel.

Hybrid Digital/Physical Experiences”, the team at Forrester found that hybrid communications that harnessed the power of both digital and traditional channels delivered the highest positive emotions for customers for virtually every sex, age and income group.

“Hybrid CX now has, on average, a two-point lead over purely digital and purely physical CX. Even a single point in CX improvement can yield hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue growth.”

- Forrester, “Customers Prefer Hybrid Digital / Physical Experiences, 2018” How does customer communications management help?

Modern CCM solutions are designed to turn communications design and delivery into a process — allowing your organization to leverage your CCM to standardize and personalize communications for delivery across any channels.

Since digital requires much more than just document output and sharing in digital-ready formats, CCM solutions such as Quadient Inspire are becoming an important layer in the systems that large enterprises are using to govern overall CX, allowing processes to incorporate new digital channels, approved and compliant communications templates and language, as well as data from across the enterprise (including core systems).

Whether the process supports signing up for new services, making a claim or reviewing an interactive statement — it is clear that what customers want today is an integrated experience that allows them to easily and productively interact with companies to consume their products and services more efficiently. Processes and systems that support hybrid experiences are the key to capturing the attention of customers.

The importance of frictionless service How does this play out across the customer expectations that US digital shoppers have for brands? The most important element here is a consistent level of service across physical and digital channels and a frictionless flow of information between these channels.

Making the case hybrid experiences These findings are very much in line with those of Forrester Research. In their 2018 report entitled “Customers Prefer

1.800.250.1850 Info@quadient.com www.quadient.com/hybrid

By Kaspar Roos

Customer Communications Management

in 2019 18

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What to expect in the new year

With 2018 behind us, it’s that time of year when we reflect on the past developments that took place in our industry and to speculate on the technology innovations yet to come. We saw the emergence of three major trends in the customer communications management (CCM) marketplace this past year. Today, we take a look at how technology integrations, the evolving services-led business model, and the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence will continue to impact the vendor landscape and change the CCM space as a whole in 2019.

As CCM is used more and more in conjunction with other enterprise information technology (IT) systems, we will see a strong demand for integration. Increasingly, CCM technology needs to be integrated with campaign management, content management, core business systems, or other enterprise IT systems—many of which have become more customer-facing themselves over the last few years.

Instead of relying on document editors and composition capabilities of these other systems, it makes sense to use a dedicated CCM solution that can be accessed from within that business

system. Not only does this provide a much richer authoring or editing experience, it also offers better versioning, approval, and auditing capabilities, as well as the ability to centralize communications for more cost-effective production or true omni-channel output.

We’re seeing some examples of this type of seamless integration with Smart Communications and claims management system software provider Guidewire or the functionality of creating a communication natively within Salesforce using OpenText Exstream’s Empower Editor. Another example comes

from Belgium-based Inventive Designers, which has integrated its online designer with a local campaign management deployed at a large Belgium bank. This allows marketers to create personalized communications from within the campaign management tool, irrespective of channel (e.g., print, email, mobile, etc.).

This move toward integration is introducing three big shifts in the marketplace.

First, vendors are opening up their CCM solutions through dedicated and granular application programming interfaces (APIs), which can access every major part of their product portfolio. While most DOCUMENTmedia.com winter.2019

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The Aspire Leaderboard is a free, interactive, online tool that dynamically visualizes the CCM vendor landscape.

Visit www.aspireleaderboard.com.

offer API access, there are varying levels of granularity when it comes to the true “openness” offered by these companies.

A few examples of vendors known for providing deep functional access include Ecrion, Smart Communications, Topdown Systems, and Xpertdoc.

From a print and digital perspective for communications, products have been born out of the need to provide endto-end integration between enterprise generation systems and multi-channel production fulfillment solutions, including dashboards that offer full control and insights for business users. Some good examples of these dedicated integration tools include Racami’s Alchem-e, the recently released RICOH Communications Manager, and Sefas with its Harmonie Suite Producer. Striata also operates in this space with a strong digital focus.

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Vendors are also turning their product integration capabilities into dedicated integration platforms. Just look at OpenText’s newly released cloud solution OT2—an example of an integration platform as a service (iPaaS)—that offers low-code/no-code configuration of applications, which can be deployed quickly on the OpenText cloud. Furthermore, Quadient’s Inspire Scaler is a great example of technology that can connect to various enterprise IT systems, control behavior of communications, and elastically scale Quadient composition instances running in the cloud. Then there’s Adobe’s Experience System of Record that, coupled with its I/O development platform, allows data scientists to bring together data, content, and profile information across the entire customer experience solutions stack. CCM vendors may also turn to third-party solutions

to build these kinds of platforms. For example, Doxee has built its integration platform on an iPaaS from Informatica.

2018 was the year in which most major CCM vendors started to evolve their licensing model from selling on-premises licenses to hosted subscriptions. While early cloud adopters, such as Doxee and Smart Communications, already made that change a few years ago, we saw Pitney Bowes, OpenText, and Quadient adapt their models in 2018, indicating that deployment through the cloud, offering CCM as a service, and charging through a subscription model is certainly the way forward. Vendors, such as Compart, Pitney Bowes and others, are looking to modernize their architectures by embracing microservices and containerized deployment as well.

While managed services from a deployment perspective is a big trend, we are also seeing vendors add additional services on top of their platforms—so that they increasingly act as a full communications services provider. Doxee, Messagepoint, Sefas (in France), Tecra Systems, and soon several others may offer additional services, such as composition, information design, data analytics, and other outsourced services, on top of their technology offerings.

In 2019, we believe that this technology and services landscape will further converge. Incumbent print service providers, such as traditional print and mail companies, are expanding their portfolios to offer digital services around a standardized CCM technology platform, often supported by homegrown development.

New entrants in hosted managed services (HMS) are another example of how this line between technology and CCM services is blurring. CEDAR Document Technologies, NEPS, and DataOceans have already been active in the US for several years, but we are now seeing companies like Canon (in Europe) or Ricoh (in the US) entering this space, as well as dedicated providers such as AIRDOCS (in Australia and

the US) or HiperStream (in Europe). In the UK, we’ve seen accountancy firm EY (formerly Ernst & Young) come out with a dedicated HMS solution, powered by a Dutch services provider.

Before long, hybrid arrangements between technology and services providers, who operate together to solve specific business problems, will evolve into smart partnerships. With that, we will see a much stronger push to embed CCM solutions as part of a wider consultancy sell, which brings with it a significant risk for price erosion for those vendors that simply convert their licensed solutions to consumption-based pricing without linking their sales strategy to business value.

Undoubtedly, the impact of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) heavily influenced emerging technologies in 2018. This is clearly reflected in current offerings from vendors. Both Adobe and OpenText provide powerful AI engines through dedicated products called Sensei and Magellan, respectively, with capabilities ranging from pattern

recognition, content optimization, channel attribution, and next-best-action suggestions. Messagepoint focuses on content analysis, template rationalization, and conversion of legacy templates into their modern Messagepoint format. In addition, Austrian-based ISIS Papyrus uses AI to optimize approval and case management workflows as well as to build business applications based on conversational (human to chatbot) interactions.

This is the next level of low-code/ no-code application development.

Instead of developing workflows based on drag-and-drop, a business user can tell the computer what to do and create (dynamic) business rules on the fly. In general, chatbots are a big area of focus.

For example, Pitney Bowes launched EngageOne Converse initially as a deterministic chatbot but with the potential for embracing AI technology in the future.

Robotic process automation (RPA) is also an area that can benefit from machine learning, especially in customer service interactions, and this

is where companies like Indian-based Intense Technologies are focusing their efforts. Also, Xpertdoc is investing in AI to turn legacy Microsoft Word forms into responsive HTML5 formats. Besides AI, we’re also seeing some early developments in blockchain development—mainly around securing access for archives and digital vaults—but this technology is still further out.

In many ways, 2018 was a year that demonstrated the rate of change in the market. As part of the wider shift, we’ve seen encouraging improvements in customer communications, as it has become increasingly embedded into the wider digital transformation evolution, thanks to new partnerships and a move toward a services-led approach. O

KASPAR ROOS is the Founder and CEO of Aspire Customer Communications Services, a strategy consultancy firm in the customer communications space. For more information, visit www.aspireccs.com.

CCM Solution Categories Print

Communications

Interactions

ADF

Customer Communications

Business Automation

Orchestration

Data transform Print production management Output management

Batch/on-demand Interactive Personalized videos

Inbound capture Forms & signatures Process management

Enterprise integration Engagement optimization Journey mapping

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SPONSORED CONTENT

a PUT THE CUSTOMER IN THE CENTER Rethink your customer communications strategy

EDITOR’S NOTE Over the last couple of years, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the pace of change in the customer communications management (CCM) market often surpassed the limits of what was thought possible. It’s clear that the convergence of customer experience and CCM is here to stay, as these once distinct market segments increasingly overlap to optimize customer interactions across all channels. In this new age, CCM expert Kaspar Roos advises companies “to digitally transform their communication processes, become more agile, and link their communications to acquisition and retention strategies.” As enterprises consider changing customer needs versus the complex business requirements often found in CCM, buyers need to think outside the box. It’s important to balance the traditional outbound functionalities of CCM with increasingly digital-first composition tools, omni-channel, and process automation capabilities. To help navigate this changing and dynamic market, we’ve highlighted some solution providers that we thought you should take a look at.

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4POINT

A major missing piece for many organizations who transform their customer experiences is the inability to improve

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the “after sale” interactions with their customers. Existing legacy systems and outdated ways of producing the regular information that customers need after the sale result in generic, impersonal

documents that do not enhance customer retention.

Generating high-quality, high-volume, personalized, customer-facing documents from legacy and back-end systems is hard. These systems, which are critical to the organization and control almost all aspects of the business, were never intended to provide any type of “customer facing” access or information. But today’s customer expects that all their interactions with an organization are high-quality, personalized experiences.

4Point’s High Volume Customer Communication Solution provides a powerful, effective way of creating high-quality, branded, complex documents that will delight your customers. The solution integrates with any back-end system to merge data into any document. In addition, the solution can use the data

from one or more internal systems to dynamically change the appearance or content of the documents based on the information provided and the needs of the document. Our solution has been implemented in various industry segments, from Government to Financial Services and Healthcare. Regardless of the volume or complexity of the desired output, 4Point’s High Volume Customer Communication Solution will improve the customer experience and enhance customer retention in your organization. www.4point.com

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ECLIPSE

Eclipse prides itself on being the most powerful, flexible, and cost-effective document generation and customer communications

management solution for companies of all sizes. Pioneers in the enterprise document automation industry, we are the leaders in creating dynamic forms.

Over the years, we have expanded on our capabilities with our Business Communications Center software solution that features Dynamic White Space Management and leverages intelligent logic to trigger relevant ads and messages in white space on documents that would otherwise be lost. This can yield significant cost savings in reduced paper usage and postage for paper documents, lower cloud storage costs for electronic documents, increased advertising revenues, and, perhaps most important, improved customer relationships.

Since 1992, our proprietary Integration Without Modification document technology has made it possible for us to take customer data—including buying history, industry, region, and more—to improve and enhance the presentation and delivery of custom messages in customer-facing documents. Our solutions integrate with hundreds of enterprise and CRM systems. And with its bidirectional web service capabilities, our solution can access any data needed from legacy systems without modifying the current program.

With its unique installation procedure that simplifies and eliminates the complex process of upgrading to a new version, Eclipse makes it possible for customers to upgrade the software in minutes.

Eclipse helps organizations identify the customer-facing transactional documents that can most effectively deliver powerful and relevant messaging for upselling, cross-selling, and building long-lasting customer relationships. eclipsecorp.us

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MESSAGEPOINT

Customers are demanding ever-increasing levels of personalized service and responsiveness. Yet, many companies still rely on legacy approaches for customer communications management (CCM) that simply can’t support these new requirements.

The key to achieving the desired level of personalization and associated improved customer experiences requires changing how the content in customer communications is managed and used. It is the content that has the greatest ability to drive a better customer experience by enabling brands to elicit the desired emotions from each communication to truly connect and relate to their customers.

Only Messagepoint is focused on enabling organizations to manage the complex content that exists within their customer communications.

Our CCM platform provides intelligent control of content that drives greater brand consistency and unprecedented levels of personalization across omni-channel touchpoints. We do this by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to rationalize large inventories of content, identifying duplicates and redundancies, and enabling common messages to be centrally managed and shared across communications, ensuring consistency. Our patent-pending Variation Management significantly reduces the effort required in creating targeted touchpoints by leveraging master templates from which “variants” inherit default content from the parent level and are easily customized according to your unique messaging requirements. We leverage natural language rules to simplify message targeting according to jurisdiction, demographics, brands, or any other factor.

And best of all, we empower non-technical business users to do all of this directly, so that marketers and servicing teams can be more agile and responsive to the needs of the business.

To learn more about Messagepoint, visit www.messagepoint.com/ccm.

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NAPERSOFT

Napersoft is a leading global provider of interactive, on-demand, and batch customer communications management (CCM) software that facilitates highly personalized, multi-channel communications to customers, partners, and suppliers. Our newest Napersoft CCM DOCUMENTmedia.com winter.2019

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Document Platform 8 (Napersoft CCM 8) software suite is for real-time transactional business communications.

Napersoft CCM 8 provides document output management and customer communications solutions that enable organizations to automate the creation and delivery of well-designed, highly personalized communications, including contracts, policies, customized marketing collateral, and correspondence.

Specifically, Napersoft CCM 8 is exceptionally good at:  Integrating with your business applications: We provide an open integration to your customer data (relational, transactional, XML) stored in your business applications.  Enabling template authoring by business units: 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.  Facilitating automatic template version control: We provide dynamic template content version control that enables creating, testing, and approving content today, but with scheduling of automatic template content updates at a specific date/time in the future.  Automating document archive: We provide an out-of-the-box, multi-function document archive for the automatic storage and management of your distributed customer documents.  Providing multi-channel document distribution: We provide a multi-channel distribution engine that enables you to distribute documents based on your customer’s individual preferences— print, email, fax, text messages, mobile, and/or the web.

Leveraging Napersoft CCM 8, customers benefit from increased customer loyalty; a single, standards-based solution that integrates with enterprise CRM, ECM, and ERP systems; and dramatically improved design and implementation of business communications. www.napersoft.com

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OPENTEXT

OpenText Exstream empowers business users to optimize customer engagement.

Design and deliver ultra-personalized, consistent, and compliant communications that enhance customer journeys—anytime, anywhere.

The omni-channel customer communications management (CCM) solution powers the transformation of your data— no matter what file sources, formats, and systems you maintain—into relevant and insightful communications for customer-preferred delivery channels and formats. With on-premises and cloud deployment options, Exstream is scalable to fit the needs of any department or complex enterprise environment.

With more than 5,000 customers worldwide and consistently recognized as a CCM leader, OpenText Exstream helps develop strong customer relationships by providing a seamless, consistent, continuous experience.

OpenText has a robust customer engagement portfolio that allows users to extend the personalization of customer communications to their website, digital asset management, contact center sentiment/VOC, and e-forms for a completely personalized customer journey. OpenText maintains a strong partnership with SAP and provides connectivity that extends its CCM capabilities to logistics, distribution, manifests, pick lists, and more.

The extended OpenText CX portfolio includes output management for assured delivery of output as well as notifications for digital delivery of communications.

Exstream has the fastest production engine in the market and can handle on-demand and interactive communications as well as high-volume batch environments that require millions of communications to go out and meet SLA levels. www.opentext.com

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PAPYRUS SOFTWARE

Papyrus CCM Business Correspondence Solution delivers one common document

lifecycle platform that consolidates all enterprise document output supporting multi-channel, high-volume, online, and interactive business documents.

Business documents can never be standalone applications, as they are always tightly linked to business data business process. Since many organizations want to operate with fewer systems, it makes great sense to standardize on a common platform for business document design, formatting, and process management rather than to deploy, integrate, and maintain separate systems.

Key benefits are:  Any data type and style directly supported  Up to 50% time reduction in design phase  Up to 90% time reduction in release phase  Reduced number of maintained templates The Papyrus Platform with its central WebRepository manages the document lifecycle end to end. Corporations create and administer business documents in batch, online, and interactive correspondence from raw data to print and e-delivery. www.isis-papyrus.com/e15/pages/ti/ ti-correspondence-E.html

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QUADIENT

You need to deliver a fast, seamless, personalized brand experience on the right device, at the right time. But the device of today won’t be the device of tomorrow.

You need a solution that is highly agile and adapts to changing market needs.

The Quadient award-winning CCM solution, Inspire, helps companies around the world design, manage, and deliver personalized, accurate, and compliant communications across all channels, from one centralized platform.

Ranked as the Overall CCM Leader on the Aspire Leaderboard 2018, Quadient is the only vendor that delivers in all four key areas of traditional communications management to help you make the transformation to digital. We help you break down siloes within your business by putting your business users in control of their

own content to create omni-channel-ready statements, complex documents, correspondence, forms, and email that sets you apart from the competition. www.quadient.com

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RRD

Organizations in many sectors face particular challenges when it comes to communicating with their customers. For the majority, document communications are a vital way of providing information to customers—whether in structured or data-driven documents, such as bills, statements, contracts, and policies, or in pre-sales marketing collateral and promotional campaigns.

Today, customer communications are no longer confined to print documents.

Customers are increasingly requesting digital delivery of communications, through options that include web, email, and mobile phone. In this multi-channel environment, how can you ensure the consistency of your brand and message, as well as the regulatory compliance, accuracy, and timely delivery of your message—across all of your customer communications? Just as important, how can you provide the customer experience your customers have come to expect in these new channels?

In recognition of this rapidly changing environment, RRD Business Communications Solutions (BCS) has a team of experts responsible for analyzing and assessing digital capabilities and transformative strategies for modern customer communications management (CCM).

Through this designated team of subject matter experts, technical specialists, and business analysts, RRD BCS has formalized a process and practice in order to help its clients realize the full potential of digital communications and channel optimization.

RRD BCS can work with you to develop a long-range roadmap for revamping your customer communications, along with a plan for executing on your strategy—while meeting your resources and

your needs. RRD is ready to join your team at any time! www.rrdonnelley.com/business-communications-solutions

a SMART COMMUNICATIONS Smart Communications is uniquely capable of helping companies evolve their approach to customer communications, and this evolution is more critical today than ever. It’s no longer enough to simply keep pace with newly empowered consumers. Companies are now expected to anticipate and then exceed customer expectations if they hope to retain and grow those relationships. In fact, according to a study we recently conducted, nearly two-thirds of consumers say they are likely to switch brands if they are not satisfied with the communications they receive from them.

The time for change is now, and Smart Communications is already helping enterprises deliver more meaningful customer communications while also allowing them to operate more efficiently. We call it “scaling the conversation.” We have a long history of delivering tools that help our impressive roster of customers stay ahead of the curve in their respective industries, which, in many cases, are some of the most highly regulated. With an approach that’s 100% focused on cloud-based customer communications management, we’ve developed a “Conversation Cloud” framework that allows for easy integrations with other technologies.

This makes it possible for our customers to achieve greater ROI and for their customers to feel more valued and become more loyal. It’s a win/win. www.smartcommunications.com

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TOPDOWN

Topdown is the only CCM vendor with a 100% cloud-native customer communications management (CCM) solution built from content services. The company has

consistently been recognized by Forrester, Gartner, and other analyst firms for its industry-leading strategy and cutting-edge products. For nearly 40 years, organizations of all sizes and across industries have turned to Topdown to help them improve their customer experience and increase their operational efficiency. And with INTOUCH, the only CCM SaaS solution based on content services, companies are ready to address current communication challenges and well-prepared for the future: Our CCM app can be used to solve for today’s use cases, while content services provide content-rich experiences that you can tap into as needed when new applications and touchpoints emerge. www.topdownsystems.com

FEATURED CCM SOLUTION COMPANIES 4POINT www.4point.com ECLIPSE eclipsecorp.us MESSAGEPOINT www.messagepoint.com NAPERSOFT www.napersoft.com OPENTEXT www.opentext.com PAPYRUS SOFTWARE www.isis-papyrus.com QUADIENT www.quadient.com RRD www.rrdonnelley.com SMART COMMUNICATIONS www.smartcommunications.com TOPDOWN www.topdownsystems.com

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“While traditional banks are often burdened by legacy systems, documentation, and practices, FinTech firms are more agile and focus primarily on the digital experience.”

FINTECH IS CHANGING CUSTOMER COMMUNICATIONS

BY DAVID STABEL

The opportunity fo r c o m m u n i c a t i o n s service providers in the new banking ecosystem

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here was a time when banking institutions had a veritable monopoly on products, services, and the customer relationship. However, this influence has been weakening in recent years, as third-party financial technology (FinTech) firms continue to disrupt the banking sector with digitally native, multichannel banking solutions. On a global scale, banks are beginning to understand that the ecosystem is changing, and they must change along with it. It is only a matter of time before communications service providers will be forced to follow.

Customer interactions are shifting from face-to-face engagements

to digital interactions—an area where traditional banks have struggled. According to a recent Keypoint Intelligence – InfoTrends report, almost half of all banking and financial services firms agree that their current technology stack for customer communications is not well-suited for implementing a digital experience strategy.

While traditional banks are often burdened by legacy systems, documentation, and practices, FinTech firms are more agile and focus primarily on the digital experience. These firms are experiencing widespread success because they target specific financial offerings that are typically underserved by banks.

They improve the process altogether by offering an excellent user experience as well as employing sophisticated marketing tactics. As a result, banks are falling behind on the digital side of the equation, and third-party firms are taking advantage of this shortcoming.

To further complicate matters, federal governments are also starting to regulate access to banking and financial services systems, forcing financial institutions to open up their systems through a public and standardized application programming interface (API). As a result, the information technology (IT) infrastructure is shifting from a closed data model (where customer information is retained and controlled internally) to an open model (where customer data is stored within the set regulatory framework and can easily be accessed and shared).

A few directives have already been implemented to support this new open model, including the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) in the European Union, the Competition and Market Authority’s (CMA) Open Banking initiative in the United Kingdom, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) in Asia. Although no similar regulations have been passed in the United States at this time, the North American market will likely follow suit before long.

These developments will give rise to a new open banking ecosystem with a

clear-cut difference between the front end and the back end of the system.

The front end of this new ecosystem will be about who owns and manages the customer relationship. FinTech firms and other digital companies have already differentiated themselves in this area by providing excellent customer service and stellar digital experiences.

Meanwhile, communications service providers can add value by delivering scalability for multi- and omni-channel communications to improve the customer experience.

Banks and other financial services firms will likely manage the back-end infrastructure and regulatory processes of the new ecosystem. They will also own the customer data and have some influence over standards and regulations based on their importance within this network. Under a typical agreement, the bank will “lend” FinTechs—who will be considered their sales channel— the banking license and the regulatory framework required to provide financial services to consumers. Because banks are “platformizing” themselves, communications service providers can deliver value to these financial institutions by providing/managing critical infrastructure components, facilitating access to data, improving the intelligence of data, and improving data security and compliance capabilities.

Communications service providers will increasingly seek new revenue streams by offering services that help banks and financial institutions to improve the customer experience. However, as the banking ecosystem continues to evolve, they should also understand where they can deliver long-term value.

Increasingly, this will be the back end of this new banking ecosystem. O

DAVID STABEL is the Research Director of the Customer Communications Advisory Service at Keypoint Intelligence – InfoTrends. For more information, contact sales@keypointintelligence. com or follow him on Twitter @davidstabel.

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Selecting a CCM Hosted MANAGED SERVICES PROVIDER 7 key capabilities to consider

By Gina Ferrara

eveloping a customer communications management (CCM) strategy is analogous to putting together a jigsaw puzzle. To arrive at the solution, the pieces need to be interlocked together in an integrated technology infrastructure to manage the entire communications life cycle, from data through delivery. For some organizations, this means outsourcing the required technology model to a hosted managed services provider.

In our recent report titled “Customer Communications Management Hosted Managed Services Market Update, 2nd

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Edition,” Madison Advisors has a more optimistic—yet still conservative—view of this market, and estimates it to be greater than five billion dollars in the United States alone.

Although there are some early adopters of CCM hosted managed services, significant opportunity still remains in verticals such as financial services, insurance, utilities, telecommunications, and others that generate large volumes of transactional communications.

Smaller organizations, which typically lack the resources and/or expertise in CCM technology, present additional opportunity for this market to grow. Our research at Madison

THE 7 CAPABILITIES We’ve identified seven critical capabilities of CCM hosted managed services, each of which is crucial to managing the end-to-end communication life cycle. These capabilities can serve as decision markers for selecting a CCM hosted managed services provider.

1 DATA AGGREGATION Companies that use data to enhance their value proposition and increase customer satisfaction will most likely stay ahead of the competition. Data collection and management is the most critical aspect of a customer communications platform and an area of expertise for capable hosted managed services providers, who can ingest data files in a wide variety of formats.

22 CUSTOMER PROFILE & DELIVERY PREFERENCE MANAGEMENT Customer expectations can now be managed by dynamically presenting content preferences, allowing a customer to have control over a two-way conversation. Competent hosted managed services providers collect customer profile information necessary for both postal and electronic mail delivery, mobile messages and alerts, and delivery preferences for all channels and all communication types.

3 CONTENT MANAGEMENT Second only to data management, content management is a critical component of a hosted managed services solution. The content repository stores all of the components necessary for generation of communications.

It has a thin client user interface that provides business users the ability to control and manage content, without relying on information technology (IT).

4 DOCUMENT COMPOSITION & POST-COMPOSITION Data, content, and business rules are stored separately from document templates, which allow for easy and efficient changes as needed. As a result, proficient hosted managed services providers create flexibility in the change control process. This allows enterprises to design a communication once for delivery across many channels.

5 OMNI-CHANNEL DELIVERY A successful omni-channel delivery strategy requires the ability to engage customers in their preferred channel with content that is personalized and relevant. Adept hosted managed services providers support all delivery channels for customer communications, including print and mail, interactive PDFs, web portals, secure email, tablets, smartphones, and SMS texts.

6 Advisors shows that enterprises are beginning to recognize the importance of CCM and its impact on customer experience.

As a result, leveraging the capabilities of a CCM hosted managed services provider may be a viable option to meet these strategic business goals and objectives. O

GINA FERRARA helps organizations achieve their strategic customer communications management (CCM) goals and objectives. For more information on the full report, visit www.madison-advisors. com/resource-center/research.

ARCHIVAL An archive copy of communications is created from the document composition process. If preferred, such output can be directed to a client archive. A hosted managed services provider will manage the archiving, so it contains the appropriate indexing for easy search and retrieval as well as redelivery, if needed.

7 DASHBOARD & REPORTING Having a dashboard that shows the status of communications from both a logical and physical (print and mail) perspective is important for managing strict document service-level agreements (SLAs). This reporting functionality is accessible through a browser-based thin client from the hosted managed services provider. All production-related information (from the point of file ingestion all the way through to the delivery of communications) is available to the user.

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Think About It / CHRISTIAN BARCKHAHN / OPENTEXT

/ JOHN ZIMMERER / TOPDOWN

IMPROVING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IS ONE OF THE TOP THREE KEY SUCCESS FACTORS IN THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF ANY BUSINESS, AS CUSTOMERS EXPECT THEIR EXPERIENCES TO KEEP GETTING BETTER.

THE DAYS OF SELLING PRE-PACKAGED APPLICATIONS ARE COMING TO AN END.

/ STEVE LUKE / ECLIPSE

I BELIEVE PERSONAL AND RELEVANT VIDEOS WILL REPLACE SOME PAPER- AND EMAIL-BASED INVOICES, ORDER ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, STATEMENTS, ETC.

% 9 3

of customer experience executives believe that adopting/unifying channels is their most important future performance consideration.

According to Smart Communications, 61% of respondents were willing to share more data in order to get more tailored communications.

/ PATRICK KEHOE / MESSAGEPOINT

The nature of customer communications is changing as we move away from documents and static communications to experiences (web, mobile) and bi-directional conversations (intelligent voice assistants, chatbots, social).