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By Rich Huff, Senior Analyst, Madison Advisors
While organizations utilizing customer communications management (CCM) traditionally worked with in-house CCM technology and staff, over the past several years various types of third-party services have developed to take on some or all functions of a company’s CCM operations. And the timing couldn’t be better. In our current business environment, where remote working is suddenly the norm with no indication of changing any time soon, large companies with in-house print and mail facilities are being forced to consider the wisdom of funding an in-house CCM operation versus outsourcing this function.
Madison Advisors’ initial report on CCM hosted managed services (HMS) as a delivery model, “Hosted Managed Services: Changing the Paradigm in Customer Communications Management,” (released October 2015) covered the value that CCM HMS offers to deliver an optimized return on investment (ROI) by shifting from a capital expenditure model (CapEx) to an operational expense model (OpEx). Our 2nd edition of the research, “Customer Communications Management Hosted Managed Services Market Update,” as a well as our most recent report, “Customer Communications Management Hosted Managed Services Market Update, 3rd Edition,” (February 2021) further support the fact that the need for more cost-effective CCM strategies and solutions is increasing. These three studies follow the changes enterprises continue to experience in the marketplace, as well new developments in how to successfully manage them.
Our research reports explain the seven critical components of CCM that can serve as decision markers for selecting a CCM HMS provider, provide updates on the latest trends in HMS and share how the HMS providers featured have developed their solutions to help enterprises solve customer communications challenges.
In working with companies to help them select the right CCM HMS provider for their business, we have learned that there is an eighth component just as important as capabilities: There needs to be a cultural fit. Cultural fit is just as critical as function, if not more so. The CCM HMS provider you choose truly acts as an extension of your organization. If how the provider makes decisions and operates internally is culturally incompatible with your organization, achieving a successful outcome may breed not only frustration, but key initiatives may also not be met. Additionally, to quote an old song, “breaking up is hard to do” when a partner is deeply ingrained in your business processes. As you check out the seven capabilities we describe, check out cultural fit, too. Ask the hard questions: Are their core business values aligned with yours? What are their processes for collaboration? How do they communicate with clients and how often? How well do they understand your industry?
If your company is ready to explore the financial and business benefits of moving to a CCM HMS model, the information provided in the Madison Advisors studies referenced above demonstrates how both traditional CCM HMS providers and emergent CCM HMS providers, otherwise known as print service providers (PSPs), are building successful and often innovative businesses around a range of client demands and a changing industry. As CCM platforms become more sophisticated and complex—and you continue to be faced with the challenges of a distributed workforce—outsourcing your CCM operations to providers that have the specialized hardware, software and staff to manage them efficiently is looming as an attractive option.
By Kemal Carr, President, Madison Advisors
Businesses, large and small, have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and in some cases their entire business models have changed. Employees who now work remotely have proven they are still productive and many of them want to continue working from a home office. This has triggered some strategic thinking about what to do with currently owned or rented office space, particularly because letting much of it go can deliver positive results to the bottom line.
However, most businesses still retain “essential workers,” those who must work on premise. Among these essential workers are the people who manage and process outgoing mail, including correspondence, transactional billing and invoicing, regulatory compliance information and marketing materials. For large companies with in-house print and mail facilities, these essential workers can be dozens of employees working on millions of dollars’ worth of hardware and software equipment that must be replaced periodically with newer models supported by additional training.
For years before COVID-19 hit, many organizations in the financial services industry had moved their in-house printing and mailing operations to outside print service providers (PSPs), which have welcomed and accommodated their business by acquiring all the security measures and compliance certifications needed to meet clients’ established deadlines. Printing, after all, is not the core business of banks or financial services firms and with the push toward digital communications, the print and mail center may become increasingly under-utilized. The insurance industry has been slow to adopt this trend, but it, like every other industry, has experienced the shift to remote working and may start rethinking the wisdom of funding their in-house print shops and those essential employees who might work fewer shifts or days out of the month.
For PSPs, printing and mailing is their core business. Many work 24/7, their costs are spread out among all their clients and, to be competitive, they must work efficiently and take advantage of the best and newest equipment and processes. Some PSPs specialize in serving certain industries, so they keep abreast of the regulations and other particular requirements of their clients. Many provide a dashboard, allowing clients to track their jobs and request that certain mail pieces be diverted or pulled out of the pack. Because PSPs deal with high volumes of mail, they also understand USPS regulations and know how to get the best postage rates and discounts.
Another consideration in the value of outsourcing is disaster recovery. A hurricane, tornado, fire or flood can shut down any print and mail operation. Many PSPs have agreements with their counterparts in other geographic regions that can take on the work to ensure the mail gets out on time, or as close to it as possible.
Deciding to move an in-house mail operation to a third-party provider requires addressing some critical issues to ensure it is the right move. For example, you want to find a PSP that understands your business, including any governmental compliance regulations, down to the state level if you do business nationwide. Do they have the security required to protect sensitive customer information? Can they handle your volume and meet your deadlines? Do they offer service level agreements (SLAs) and do they have adequate backup agreements in case of disaster? All this, and possibly more depending on your company’s needs, must be taken into account before selecting where to outsource your work.
Outsourcing can turn capital expenditure into a more balance sheet friendly operational expense by eliminating the need to accommodate an in-house print and mail center, purchase and install equipment and hire and train competent people to manage it, while at the same time ensuring the work gets done appropriately and on time. The decision to outsource may not be simple or easy, but many organizations have realized positive results in the long run.
By Kemal Carr, President, Madison Advisors
Selecting the right business partner for customer communications management (CCM) delivery is a critical task. Shrewd organizations use the Request for Proposals (RFP) process in an attempt to make the best decision. After receiving partner responses and confirming references, there is one more important step before your final selection: Conduct a site visit to the finalists’ production centers.
A well-crafted RFP will help you gather information about the prospective vendors. Technology, operational performance standards and pricing can be compared. At Madison Advisors, we utilize our industry-recognized Best Practices Assessment (BPA) to assist in creating the partner candidate long list. However, because of our extensive pre-work, we can eliminate many firms that don’t meet our clients’ base requirements, thereby saving valuable time and expenses for all parties.
Even when correctly executed, RFPs can be a drain on all parties, both buyer and seller alike, so the more pre-work that can be completed in advance the less stress on all parties. Our enterprise clients are savvy enough to know that while there isn’t a vendor fee for RFP participation, those costs ultimately have to be borne by their clients, so they end up paying in some form or fashion.
Therefore, streamlining the partner selection process with the ability to invite only appropriate partners reduces costs for all parties and ultimately saves money.
Here is how Madison Advisors’ process works to make the above critical considerations happen:
1. Our extensive work with service providers gives us the rare opportunity to interface with clients that know and may even use the prospective partner submitting the RFP. This virtually eliminates the time-consuming need for calls with references to determine how (and if) the prospective partner manages and sustains relationships. Our process enables you to skip this entire step, again, saving time and unnecessary expense. In the past two years, even with the pandemic affecting us all, Madison Advisors performed 14 Best Practices Assessments (BPAs), our comprehensive study designed to examine best practices across the converging markets of high-volume outbound and inbound communications (including internal document services operations), for the top print service providers in the nation.
2. When we’ve narrowed the long list to the short list of participants, we help facilitate the site visit. This is a critical step as it adds important insight about the vendor. Seeing the actual equipment, layout and work environment allows one to compare what is written in a bid response to what takes place at the facility. Several RFPs have been won or lost during a visit. Again, due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, Madison Advisors conducted site visits as our clients’ proxy.
3. It’s important to bring the right members of the RFP team along for the visit. While there isn’t a right number, generally less is more. At a minimum, the project sponsor, sourcing manager and a print/mail subject matter expert (SME) should attend. The vendor will have a team of folks on hand to impress the prospect, so multiple attendees help level the playing field. The SME’s focus will be on the equipment and processes used in production.
4. A tour of the production floor is mandatory. Don’t settle for a view from a conference room balcony. As you walk through the facility, takes notes on how work is staged, the make and models of equipment used. Follow the workflow in particular. Look for security controls, including cameras. While the vendor has probably taken extra preparations for the visit, the truth is right below the surface.
5. Take a moment to talk to the employees. Not just to the people the vendor has hand-picked for briefings, but any employee you may pass. Don’t conduct an interrogation, but just carry on a conversation. “Good morning.” “How are you, today?” “What are you working on?” One thing I like to ask is how the piece of equipment they’re running is performing today. That will typically get a rich dialogue going about challenges with the work product, equipment or both, especially if it’s not going well.
6. At the same time, the SME should be talking with machine operators. Do they understand how the system works? What is their awareness about printing technology and postal regulations? How do they handle jams or misfeeds and recreates/mutilated documents? As in the example above, don’t just have discussions with the operators at the machines the vendor spotlights, but talk to as many people as possible.
7. When the visit is finished, the RFP team should discuss what they learned. Specifically:
The business partner awarded the outsourcing contract will impact the relationship with your customers for the length of the contract. The formal RFP responses will provide a lot of information, but not everything you need to know about the vendors. In general, site visits will help bring the entire process to a conclusion. The investment of having a trusted advisor in your camp is minimal and relatively cheap insurance when compared to the knowledge gained in helping you make the best possible decision.
By Kemal Carr, President, Madison Advisors
Of course, making money is the number one focus for businesses, yet how the money is spent is just as important. Keeping costs and spend under control improves operating efficiency and adds to the bottom line, as well as helping to ensure the quality and consistency of the product or services you offer your customers.
Depending on the size and scope of your enterprise, certain expenses can be difficult to get your arms around for a number of reasons. You may not have a central record to store all the data, hence, you are unable to capture the details of all the interactions in play, including purchases made by different lines of business. Vendor management is one such area. With certain vendors, you may not have a defined contract lifecycle, so the choice of vendors and the cost for some items becomes more or less an open discussion. If no benchmarks or standards are set in place, there is no defined way of managing the relationship with the supplier or of ensuring the vendor has all the capabilities to provide exactly what you need. This is where an established vendor management process becomes valuable in terms of cost—and time.
In establishing a vendor management program, we’ve found these five categories to be helpful:
Gathering all the information about current interactions can be the most time consuming aspect of this process, but it’s an essential first step toward implementing all the rest. Different buyers in your company may be purchasing the same or similar products from different vendors for different prices. In many cases, you’re doing business with a particular vendor because you’ve always bought from that vendor, even though you may find lower prices and/or better service from another company. And is there—or should there be—any one person or department who can track all this? Often this responsibility is given to procurement.
When you’ve determined what you’re buying and can sort your vendors into segments, you’ll be able to compare their prices, quality and service levels to decide who to keep and who might be eliminated, or if it might be time to look for someone new. Talk to your “keepers” and new vendors to make your expectations of them clear, as well as to understand their concerns and requirements. Based on two-way communication, you may want to develop a contract with them that includes milestones and KPIs that are agreeable to both of you. Often, you’ll find a simple transparent discussion with your keeper vendors about price or service concessions will inspire them to uncover special discount programs available to your firm, thereby saving you money without switching risks.
Risk management and mitigation is another area that is often neglected. What if a vendor goes out of business, is acquired by another company or suffers some other disaster that makes it impossible to deliver on their promises? Do you have a replacement available or can another vendor in a similar field take on additional orders? A continuity plan should be determined in advance of a vendor’s emergency situation to avoid disruptions in your own operations. We also advocate what I like to call a “challenger” program model for each vendor type. Have a secondary supplier doing small jobs as a safety measure for continued best-in-class service and price, in addition to continuity, should your primary supplier fail.
Most large manufacturers, whose business depends on a constant and reliable in-flow of materials, typically have vendor management procedures in place because it’s critical to their survival, but it’s really a best practice for enterprises in any field. Effective vendor management can save you time and money and ensure you can live up to your own customers’ expectations.
By Kemal Carr, President, Madison Advisors
Although it seems unlikely that Ralph Waldo Emerson originated the phrase, “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door,” he has been credited with something similar: “If a man has good corn or wood or boards or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.” In any case, it’s a thought that holds true even in the age of digital communications.
In a business environment like the current one, with more remote workers, as well as remote consumers, communication is critical for providing positive customer experiences and securing customer loyalty. The obvious challenge is achieving this with less face-to-face customer interaction and more through customer-preferred, often digital media channels. CCM solutions have already been an important area of operations for many organizations, but the need for effective CCM strategies and solutions is now even greater than ever before. Madison Advisors’ new report, “Customer Communications Management Hosted Managed Services Market Update, 3rd Edition,” indicates that more providers are entering the field to meet these needs.
As demand increases, most organizations using CCM still face the same need to orchestrate a conglomeration of legacy systems, multiple document composition tools and content repositories, thousands of document templates and multi-channel delivery. Upgraded, cutting-edge capabilities provide stronger support to navigate successfully through all this, but the newer systems can be more difficult to run and taking on new and more complicated tasks is probably not a priority for the IT department. Previous reports on CCM Hosted Managed Services (HMS) have detailed how third-party providers—the HMS part of the equation—have taken on some or all CCM functions so that corporations can focus their attention and resources on their core business.
Print service providers (PSPs) for years have partnered with organizations in many industries, most often to take in, process, print and mail transactional materials such as monthly invoices and statements, but often including other items like targeted marketing insertions or even correspondence. These PSPs have also seen their capabilities expanding with newer and more complex hardware and software, at the same time that many of their clients are migrating away from hard copy communications to digital channels. Having seen and kept pace with these changes, they are recognizing the opportunity that CCM HMS offers them. They are already trustworthy and reliable providers, why not expand services to also cover CCM?
Our new report outlines six companies engaged in CCM HMS. Three of these offer traditional CCM services with or without print included, and three of them are PSPs that have moved into the CCM HMS field with less emphasis on print. Although these firms offer a wide variety of CCM services, all of them turn CCM functions from a capital expense (CapEx) to an operating expense (OpEx), giving their clients a better return on their investments. They also allow for a level of flexibility, in that clients can pick which specific services they want—for example, those particularly suited to insurance carriers or banks, and/or handling only certain types of communications, like customer outreach or tracking customer journeys for improved personalization.
At Madison Advisors, we have believed for some time that PSPs were uniquely positioned to expand into CCM HMS and, while this has been happening, the migration has been slower than expected. Privacy concerns and a sense of a loss of control on the part of potential clients account for some of this, although many successful PSPs already have met stringent security certification standards and may be delivering an impressive percentage of communications through email, SMS text, HTML for websites and so forth. For them, CCM HMS is the logical next step in their own evolution.
Whether a business is considering using outside CCM HMS support or is a PSP seeking a more sustainable future, they will find a wealth of new ideas and in-depth insights in this new report, and perhaps a way to attract clients to “beat a path to their door.”
Visit this link to download “Customer Communications Management Hosted Managed Services Market Update, 3rd Edition.”
By Keith Woedy, VP of Research & Practice Lead
Madison Advisors has just completed a market study addressing the evolution of post composition in the customer communications management (CCM) space. A little more than two years ago, we identified a trend that expanded the boundaries of the traditional definition of post composition as a tool to “fix” applications prior to print production. Little did we know how relevant these insights would become on the heels of a worldwide pandemic.
The participants in this study included BlueCrest, Crawford Technologies, Pitney Bowes, Racami, Sefas and Solimar Systems. All of these companies are extremely capable solutions providers and worthy of significant consideration if you are looking to evaluate or improve upon your CCM delivery platform.
After engaging these six leading CCM solutions providers, I came away with the sense that the current business climate, the evolution of technology and increased importance of customer preferences had moved post composition forward in the realm of consideration for enterprises and print service providers alike. Post comp was once considered a set of tools that helped migrate legacy data streams and assisted organizations in re-engineering and enhancing their documents. It grew into a solution used to optimize data to improve equipment performance while addressing regulatory and security requirements, assisting the digital transformation to omnichannel delivery and improving visibility and management of the production process across the enterprise— and all of these mission critical components of the communications workflow can be accomplished without the need to engage costly professional developers.
The consumer climate was changing and becoming more demanding even prior to the appearance of COVID-19. However, this unprecedented event created a sense of urgency for enterprises, large and small, to embrace digital transformation and the customer experience (CX). As people were required to work from home in large numbers, the demand increased for organizations to take a hard look at how they could become an omnichannel communication distribution hub using post composition tools. Ultimately, the question became how to expedite digital transformation using their current investment in CCM and post composition technology.
The insights provided by the six companies I engaged with during this study provided tremendous thought leadership on this topic. Utilizing existing investments in post composition to make just-in-time content, messaging and format changes to drive omnichannel communications, track and dashboard across all these channels and apply preferences and invoke real-time decisioning to personalize messaging or accompany communications with relevant and precise content were all called out as opportunities to demonstrate true business value. This, of course, should be the ultimate business goal for enterprises and print service providers.
The first version of our post composition market study details strategies for optimizing internal print providers’ and print service providers’ operations to drive costs down--things like mailing efficiencies, white paper factory and enhancing documents and applications to significantly improve critical customer communications. Since the customers we engage with every day are all at different stages of work process improvement, it was important to establish a framework for post composition. As I mentioned earlier in this piece, the boundaries of post composition are being stretched, but in order to understand this, we must first establish a baseline. Our 2021 Post Composition Market Study delivers on that mission and provides relevant data for business process improvement at all levels of CCM implementation.
Going forward, there is great interest in further expanding this market study to address Post Compositions role in the transformation from a cost cutting tool to a true business value proposition that drives business value or competitive value. We will continue to seek out the industry leaders to provide input to this segment of our market study series.
Post composition can be an extremely effective tool to optimize CCM workflows and enhance your CX strategy. The interest in this segment of the business has attracted a variety of solutions providers. These include the well-known CCM solutions providers but also have attracted some well-known intelligent automation (IA) solutions providers that historically have focused on digital workflow transformation. It is, therefore, imperative for organizations to understand which segments of their process will yield the best return on investment in this technology and to align with the solutions provider that is best suited to address your individual and specific requirements.
Since some vendors are better equipped to address different components of post composition than others, it is wise to engage a trusted advisor that understands the capabilities and landscape related to this mission-critical segment of your business and can assist in aligning your business priorities to the appropriate vendor relationship so you protect your investments and effectively improve your customers’ experience with your organization. Madison Advisors works with clients to understand their specific internal business requirements and utilizes market intelligence to align best-of-breed solutions providers to those requirements and assists in guiding you through an informed decision-making process that maximizes return on investment and create real, tangible business value.
Evolving CCM Processes Are Creating New Options
By Kemal Carr, President, Madison Advisors
We saw the inception of customer communications management (CCM) systems about 20 years ago when what was then known as document composition software evolved to include significant personalization capabilities. Fast forward to today and CCM also has become the foundation for the newer and broader concept of customer experience management (CXM). Over the years, as CCM has become more sophisticated, so have the demands made upon it, such as expectations of conducting personalized query-and-response interactions between an organization and its customers in something close to real time. As CCM becomes more complex, its care and feeding does, too. While the final objective is CXM, CCM still remains technology that requires knowledgeable operation and maintenance to achieve the desired results.
Today, several CCM operational solutions are available. Deciding what fits best with your company’s needs may depend on several things: the size of your organization, what kind of CCM infrastructure you have already, if any, and what kind of resources you’re willing and able to commit to it.
In one scenario, you can acquire a CCM system with the capability to draw upon a variety of internal data sources, including legacy and departmental systems, to aggregate customer data and content. In this case, the IT department usually builds and operates the system, including designing the templates that may or may not allow for adding variable messaging to items like invoices or statements. Modifications to the templates, like changing or updating compliance language, must be done by IT, so this can take time and expensive labor hours, as well as generating hundreds or even thousands of unique templates. Many of the enterprises that run their own CCM systems also do their own printing and mailing and electronic delivery; and they are usually very large organizations that can justify the expense of such a multifaceted operation.
Hosted systems offer an alternative to software as a service (SaaS) models, in that an outside vendor owns and operates the software and your staff accesses the applications as needed by connecting to them in the cloud. Using a hosted system still requires using your own IT staff to extract and deliver data to the hosted system, but template development, standardized content and other information are hosted and also stored in the cloud. Depending on which vendor you choose, print and mail services and electronic delivery may be available or you may do it yourself or use another service provider. The drawbacks to using a SaaS system are that you still need in-house IT staff and, for many companies, data security is a consideration. Though hosted systems can save money compared to investing in your own infrastructure, these services usually are provided on a subscription basis and, once you’ve partnered with one vendor, moving to another means going through an extensive setup process all over again.
Hosted managed services (HMS) are similar to the SaaS model in that you’re hiring an outside vendor, but often they take on the tasks of aggregating your data, developing templates and setting up document delivery channels. By outsourcing customer communications to an HMS, you don’t have to make the capital investment in technology and salaried staff to build and maintain the infrastructure required to generate and deliver customer communications. A significant benefit is that the pricing models offered by HMS providers are flexible and most often based on usage.
Which way will CCM go in the future? Perhaps every way. With the COVID-19 pandemic, many employees, including programmers, are working remotely, so SaaS and/or hosted managed services may become especially appealing. If your organization can move the programmers out of the office, they might also consider moving the printing and mailing operations outside to an outside print service provider (PSP). Additionally, because PSPs already do some data manipulation, formatting and print and electronic output, they might consider taking on a larger share of the CCM operation in terms of collecting data and developing document design and generation capabilities.
How to decide which option works best for your organization should start with an assessment of how much you’re spending on customer communications now and exactly where you want to go in the future. In itself, this can be a complex task and should involve all the departments in your company that generate documents for whatever purpose. Here are two initial questions to ask: Will changing your existing CCM operations, no matter how manual or automated, trigger internal resistance or objections? Can you get a buy-in from all stakeholders and the necessary funding? Both these questions need answers to get the most effective and efficient results and reach your final destination of CXM.
By Dan Chevalier, VP of Business Development and Principal Analyst, Madison Advisors
2020 is showing us it’s more important than ever to be prepared for anything—and it’s a great time to talk about what teams involved with customer communications should be thinking about when it comes to disaster recovery (DR) and proven best practices for moving forward. DR programs for both enterprise in-house and print service providers were launched around the mid-1990s to ensure that even in the case of a disaster of some kind, the mission-critical work would still get into the mail and to customers on time. These critical documents vary from business to business, but usually include transactional customer communications like invoices, statements, checks and disclosures, that are produced and handed over to the U.S. Postal Service or output via an electronic media channel—all within a strict timeframe. Critical document production also involves agreed-upon service level agreements or regulatory governed mailing requirements, so if the deadline isn’t met, there are penalties attached.
There are different types of backup services a transactional print company can use, such as cold DR services, which are in business solely to provide backup services for its customers. Though a cold DR service may offer a stronger guarantee of getting your work done, it can be costly. They often require monthly retainer payments whether you use them that month or not, plus additional costs when you declare a disaster and need them to produce your work.
Today there are other options for DR services, warm DR or business continuity planning (BCP). These organizations usually have clients they serve regularly; however, they also have a certain amount of reserve production capacity so they can produce your critical jobs in case of business disruption of any length of time, particularly when the disaster is confined to your shop, such as disabled equipment, power outages, etc. BCP providers are generally less expensive than cold DR providers, but there is the risk that in the case of a widespread disaster that also affects many of their own regular customers, their excess capacity could be consumed quickly.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, both DR and BCP providers have found themselves facing the same challenges as the people they serve. Depending on their locations, they were locked down or their employees contracted the virus or were quarantined. Some companies have had to manage with thinner staffing for social distancing and other precautions and production was slower and/or spread out over several shifts. In any case, the whole concept of how to deal with a global catastrophe, as opposed to a relatively simple geographically confined disaster, has been undergoing some rethinking.
In our experience, we recommend taking the initiative today to develop strategic partnerships with multiple BCPs, in addition to having solid procedures in place for what do in the event of a local, regional, nationwide or global disaster. While you can, work with the BCP providers on producing some of your critical jobs, so they’ll be prepared to run them when it’s absolutely necessary. Use them for overflow work and even consider shutting down some of your in-house capacity and working with them as a third-party print service provider, for some (if not all) of your work. The idea is to establish multiple resources so that if one partner is unable to back you up, you’ve got others to turn to that are ready and able to help you out. As we’ve all seen, business had to go on and requirements have to be met regardless of forces outside our control. Stay safe and healthy and remember that while you can’t predict the unexpected, you can plan for it.
By Gina Ferrara, Senior Analyst, Madison Advisors
According to a survey of directors, CEOs and senior executives conducted by Harvard Business Review, 70% of digital transformation (DX) initiatives never reach their goals and of the $1.3 trillion spent on DX in 2018, $900 billion went to waste.
These numbers are scary. They are even scarier in light of the COVID-19 pandemic that forced the world to come to a screeching halt. Businesses in all industries were impacted in ways that were unimaginable, forcing them to innovate in order to survive. Countries were forced to lock down and economies went on a downward spiral. Consumers’ daily routines were disrupted with little notice and even less preparedness. Shopping at the grocery store switched to online shopping with delivery and restaurant dining became curbside pickup. Office workers and students were required to work and learn remotely while medical and therapy professionals switched to telehealth services; and real estate agents conducted virtual open houses and home tours. Daily activities that were never given a second thought now needed to be conducted in a digital manner, forcing consumers to spend even more time online.
COVID-19 was not just a global health pandemic, it was a reality check for the business world. These adaptations required the ability to react swiftly, to think outside the box and to change how businesses operate. Those that were lagging in their digital transformation efforts and were reliant on legacy systems and inefficient workflow processes struggled to pivot to a new way of conducting business.
While most companies are optimized for the environment in which they operate, they might not be agile enough to adapt to global change and the COVID-19 pandemic proved just that. It also proved the importance of having a customer-focused DX strategy.
Digital transformation is not just another technology catchphrase. It is an enterprise-wide business initiative that requires a well-defined strategy for success. The goal of DX is to use technology to solve traditional problems. This means integrating technology into every area of business to provide value to customers. Digital transformation is not about making things easy for the company, it is about making things easy for your customers. A possible by-product, however, may be operational efficiencies brought on by automation.
The road to DX is not one that can be driven by one department. It needs to incorporate insight from cross-functional teams and include those responsible for customer communications management (CCM) and customer experience (CX). So how can an organization pave the way to successful DX?
Digital transformation must be thought of as part of a journey that requires an organization to continually evolve. It requires a change in mindset and executives who are forward-thinking visionary leaders that support the program. Likewise, DX is not solely an IT responsibility—all stakeholders in the company play an important role to ensure the desired outcomes are achieved. Without a customer-focused strategy that aligns with business goals, it will be challenging to get from DX vision to DX execution.
By Kemal Carr, President, Madison Advisors
The COVID-19 pandemic is having a dramatic impact on many aspects of our daily lives, compelling people to work at home where that’s possible, and for all of us to keep our distance even on routine shopping trips or walks in the park. Having said that, so far, the pandemic does not seem to be driving major changes in customer communication management (CCM). Stay-at-home policies and social distancing make it awkward, if not impossible, for businesses to communicate face-to-face with customers, but companies that provide CCM solutions are carrying on routinely in most segments.
In the area of electronic communications, companies have reported business as usual, with no significant swings in volume. This is probably due to the public perception that paper mail is still safe to receive and to handle. Despite this positive view, some firms in the print-to-digital market are actively pushing customers and prospects to move more of their paper documents to electronic processing and delivery – but this is their business focus in normal times, too. One interesting development is that some billers have been exploring the idea of delivering invoices through bank channels that already allow bank customers to make electronic payments not only for credit cards and mortgages, but also to utility companies, retailers and others.
One reason for the positive view of paper mail is that the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Surgeon General have reported that there is no evidence that the COVID-19 virus is being spread through the mail. This is good news for the United States Postal Service (USPS), which says it is closely monitoring the COVID-19 situation and continues to follow strategies and measures recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and public health departments.
At the same time, however, USPS is predicting a reduction in mail volumes for the next two quarters, with most of the loss in the category of marketing mail and periodicals. First-Class mail has also experienced a reduction in volume of 2% compared to last year. Looking ahead, USPS believes that mail volume will rise again somewhat by 2022, but it doesn’t expect volumes to reach the level of pre-pandemic years. This may not be anything new, since declines in the volume of First-Class mail have been ongoing for quite some time, due at least partly to the increasing use of electronic channels for both business and personal communications.
The leading print service providers (PSPs) are up and running and are taking proactive and stringent precautions inside their facilities to prevent any COVID-related disruptions in their operations. All non-production and non-essential staff are now working from home offices. Inside the plant, the PSPs have developed workforce separation practices and are using staggered work shifts to continue to get the work out with a limited number of people on the job at the same time. Employees are encouraged to wash their hands frequently, and all production equipment and workstations are being sanitized between shifts. They’ve also established separate ingress and egress points into and out of their facilities.
Apart from the precautions taken by the PSPs, most CCM operations continue to carry on close to normal. We expect few additional changes with the current declines in new cases of COVID-19 in most regions of the U.S. and the re-opening of businesses that have been forced to close. Many corporations are just now beginning to bring workers back into the office. As the nation moves closer to a “normal” status, we can all hope to return to the economic growth rate seen over the last couple of years. In the meanwhile, stay safe.
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