By Gary Simpson, Vice President of Business Development & Service Delivery

Once again, MAILCOM has met its objective to serve those who manage mail communications for their organizations at this year’s 38th national convention. It was another great success for Lance Humphries, his team and the attendees they are dedicated to serve.

In this age of digital transformation and focus on Customer Experience (CX), physical mail and mail distribution remains a cornerstone when it comes to fulfilling a positive customer experience for major corporations, government entities and educational institutions.

MAILCOM 2018 played an important role in helping to bridge the gap between physical and digital communications. While physical mail isn’t going away any time soon, the way inbound communications are managed is changing rapidly. No longer can managers look at their mail operations as simply an entity within their organization that receives and distributes mail.

MAILCOM acknowledged the changing mail operations paradigm by providing 15 different seminar tracks including strategic management, production inkjet, leadership and staff development, mail systems management, data and digital document management, professional development and postal mail management seminars to name a few.

In addition, Daniel Dejan (Sappi, North America) delivered an impressive keynote speech on the intersection of physical paper-based communications and digital communications; and how one complements the other. While the internet represents a “river” of data with a constant dynamic flow of information used for quick research, print is evolving into a higher quality and specialty experience that utilizes physical material to produce more brain responses, thus leaving a deeper footprint on the brain. Daniel went on to point out the complementary effects of physical and virtual media on the human brain, supporting the notion that integrated marketing campaigns are an effective means for organizations to share their message and solidify customer’s buying decisions or engagement with a product or brand.

I was thrilled to be invited to co-present with Jason Fonner of HM Document Solutions at the event. We discussed how the confluence of customer communications management technology, document delivery systems and workflow management software are providing businesses with new tools and opportunities for digital transformation. We also talked about the process required to re-platform and transform the operations of print and mail providers into dynamic full-service CCM Centers of Excellence.

Mail professionals continue to focus on using technology to digitize physical mail as quickly as possible, pulling critical data from the printed page to create value for their organization’s downstream processes.  MAILCOM 2018 proved, once again, to be an ideal place for enterprise mail professionals to share and network with technology and service providers to find ways to further improve mail printing, processing and distribution services.