By Gina Ferrara, Senior Analyst

Everything old is new again.  It is a phrase that makes one think about trends in the fashion industry.  But instead of hemlines and platform shoes, I’m thinking about how this phrase relates to print.  Let’s face it.  Printed business-to-consumer (B2C) communications – known as transactional communications – had become the proverbial thorn in the side of companies who generated them. These documents were printed because they had to be, especially if dictated by certain regulations.  When electronic delivery was introduced, print was anticipated to be a thing of the past.  After all…these documents weren’t that pretty to begin with.

Fast forward to present day.  Adoption rates for email delivery have hit a plateau while other digital channels such as mobile, SMS and even social media have become preferred delivery channels for consumers, thanks to technology.  But despite the availability of these digital channels, print is making a comeback and as organizations work to develop an omnichannel customer communications strategy, print has taken center stage.

Madison Advisors continues to monitor the print and mail industry and our Color Print Migration Market Update 2017 is a continuation of our research efforts on the migration from monochrome to full-color print output for enterprise in-plants and service providers. In 2011, our first color migration research report revealed that the use of full color for transactional communications was less than 1 in 5 images. Because the price point for a color image was significantly higher than it is today and investing in color inkjet technology required significant capital, this was not a surprise.  But as our latest research illustrates, transactional communications continue to migrate away from monochrome to full color, just not as quickly as anticipated.  But this is not bad news, because the data reveals that there is room for growth, and with growth comes opportunity.

In 2016, 62% of the 39.78 billion images produced by the participants in our research were monochrome.  For industry-leading color inkjet printer manufacturers, this represents greater opportunity to penetrate the transactional print industry. Service providers who have made the investment in color inkjet can attract more clients, and enterprise in-plants can improve the look of customer communications and potentially bring in work such as marketing collateral that was previously outsourced to a third party.

Color inkjet technology continues to improve with higher production speeds, lower operational costs and better quality of output.  Adding color to transactional communications increases brand recognition and creates synergy between print and digital communications with a consistent look and feel.  Color can be used to improve customer calls to action by highlighting important information in documents, and it can increase document clarity with colorful charts and graphs.  Despite the focus on digital transformation and creating digital experiences as a part of a multi-channel customer communications strategy, it is critical to consider the important role print can play.  For example, print can be used to drive consumers to a digital channel with website information, QR codes that can be scanned with a mobile app, or personalized URLs (PURLs). These “cross-channel” interactions increase engagement and enhance customer experience by allowing consumers the opportunity to engage with a brand through their preferred channel.

In the fashion industry, everything old is new again – but in the print industry, everything old is getting even better.

By Gina Ferrara, Senior Analyst

My colleague, Gary Simpson, VP of Business Development and Service Delivery, and I had the opportunity to participate in the thINK Conference held in Boca Raton on October 9-11, 2017. This event can be summarized in one word: kyosei, a word that represents Canon’s corporate philosophy. It is defined as “all people, regardless of race, religion or culture, harmoniously living and working together into the future.”  The thINK Conference embraces this concept with its emphasis on creating a welcoming community for all participants to share ideas for the betterment of the inkjet print industry.

Now that the conference has passed, I have begun to reflect a little more on kyosei and how it might be useful if adopted by other organizations. At Madison Advisors, we have worked with numerous enterprise clients to review, document and clarify customer communication goals relative to revenue enhancement, cost and risk reduction, technology requirements and customer experience and engagement. Using our optiMA™ process, it is our objective to develop an actionable, enterprise-wide customer communications strategy. Customer communications management (CCM) is no longer specific to one line of business or marketing, and not solely the responsibility of technology and the internal print shop—it belongs to all—but the key is to identify all stakeholders so that the strategy benefits the entire enterprise. Unfortunately, since many large organizations tend to operate in silos, creating a strategy for customer communications is no easy task. This is why I believe that the concept of kyosei can be useful for these organizations. Allow me to elaborate.

Developing a successful CCM strategy requires involvement of all stakeholders, but it is not limited to the obvious ones such as the business lines and marketing, technology and the print and mail operation (if the organization maintains an in-plant). There are other critical stakeholders that should be engaged as well, such as compliance and legal, customer support and the call center, front office personnel in the branches and field agents. Internal departments responsible for all touchpoints through which a customer may interact with an organization such as email, web, mobile app or social media should also be included. How can an organization be sure that all stakeholders have been identified? The answer is what brings me to my next point: the customer journey.

Customer journey and customer journey maps are two concepts that have recently attracted a lot of attention in the CCM industry—and this comes as no surprise due to the strategic focus placed on improving the customer experience (CX) to gain a competitive advantage. A customer journey mapping exercise is a great way for an organization to “take a walk in a customer’s shoes” and gain insight on what it is like for a customer to conduct business and interact with the organization. Those interactions may occur via any channel, whether it is print or email, over the phone or through other digital means such as a mobile app, web portal and social media. Journey maps document all of the processes necessary to complete a specific action, and can help identify the internal stakeholders, touchpoints and communications generated during the course of the interaction, e.g. the journey. It is critical to identify both the outbound and the inbound communications, since many outbound communications will trigger or require a response from the customer.

One of the keynote speakers at thINK was Captain Mark Kelly who said, “How good you are today is no indicator of how good you can become.” This statement should be kept in mind throughout the customer journey mapping exercise. To be successful and gain a competitive advantage, an organization must understand the customer journey and be open to new ideas and change. This requires engaging all stakeholders across the enterprise to collaborate as one community, and determine ways to add value and provide a positive customer experience. This is kyosei.

By David Erwin, Director, Technology Practice & Principal Analyst

In 1960, Jerome McCarthy introduced the 4 Ps of the Marketing Mix—a conceptual framework for marketing decision-making that focused on product, price, promotion and place. The 4 Ps helped cut through the confusion to ensure business success.

Two decades later, in 1981, Booms and Bitner added 3 new elements: people, processes and physical evidence, bringing the total to 7 Ps. And if 7 is good, 8 is better and thus, various marketing and business consultants added productivity to the list.

Is there room for yet another “P” in our Marketing Mix? Today there is. We need to add one more right between price and promotion—and call it preference.

Managing customer preferences has become extremely important not only to the marketing mix, but also to the overall customer experience, which encompasses how the customer looks at, thinks and feels about your brand over the duration of the relationship.

“By 2020, Customer Experience is expected to surpass product and pricing as the key differentiator for business.” - Forbes

To drive exceptional customer experience moving forward, brands will need to enable the individual to decide their personal preferences for the interactions and touchpoints as they engage with their organization. Doing so will require leveraging technology to receive, record and maintain the how, when and where of individual customer preferences.

Madison Advisors recently released an application brief that focuses on Preference Management and how it helps brands build trust with customers to create a foundation for a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship across channels—paper, email, mobile, social and more. A copy of Madison Advisors’ research brief, Preference Management for Multi-channel Communications, is available here.

We invite you to check back often as we will be updating our blog frequently with information you can use in your business as well as new research, market studies and analyst briefs that alert you to important trends you are experiencing today and in the future.

By Susan Cotter, Senior Program Manager/Analyst

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is transforming repetitive back office and customer facing processes that are critical to success for businesses in many industries, including financial services and utilities. For common processes such as standard back office data entry and period-end financial transactions, innovative applications of RPA hold the promise of breaking the “iron triangle” by lowering costs, increasing cycle time and improving the quality of workflow processes and output.

The large BPO providers have adopted RPA and have documented success stories of cost savings from labor-intensive, manual tasks.  Inbound mail processing will quickly be incorporated into these service offerings as OCR technology and advanced learned technologies advance.

In our new Research Brief, Madison Advisors delves into the potential application of RPA to inbound mail processing. Our research explores the positive impact that innovative uses of RPA can have on critical aspects of inbound mail workflows—including data capture, process integrity and return mail.

The research also explores the challenges that enterprises seeking to implement an RPA strategy for inbound mail may face and key considerations to take into account, including available technologies and the possibility that a hybrid RPA and manual workflow approach may be required.

RPA provides organizations the ability to scale as they continue to grow without burdening IT resources.  Many companies taking advantage of the cost savings associated with offshore data capture may soon be able to implement an in-house solution that provides similar or increased savings with benefits including auditability and increased transparency.

We expect the impact that RPA will have within organizations to grow as the technology matures. The time is now to explore the  window of opportunity that exist for early adopters of RPA to address repetitive workflows such as inbound mail as these organizations will be able to gain improved processes that lead to enhanced customer satisfaction and return on investment.

A Copy of Madison Advisors’ Research Brief, Utilization of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for Inbound Mail, is available here.

By Gina Ferrara, Senior Analyst

This month, Madison Advisors released the 6th edition of the Customer Communications Management (CCM) Solutions Market Study. As the author of this study, I was pleased to have the opportunity to work with all of the companies who agreed to be a part of the research. My intention for the report was not to categorize the CCM solution providers, or to rank one higher than another on certain components and capabilities, but rather to present the trends in the industry and how each provider has responded to those trends by adding functionality and services to meet client needs.

When reading the report, you may notice a common theme that can be summarized in a single word: change. The CCM industry is constantly changing, which is no surprise for the veterans of the industry. But what is interesting is the magnitude of change in a relatively short amount of time and how technology has been the primary driving force behind most of it.

CCM software has become something more than a document composition tool used to create transactional documents such as statements, bills and policies. The software manages the entire communication lifecycle, from data to delivery, and provides insight to business users and marketing through dashboards that provide metrics and reporting, data analytics and business intelligence capabilities. These CCM technology providers have figured out a way to balance complexity and usability in order to provide enhanced functionality, new delivery channels and reduced implementation times, all while empowering business users to perform tasks previously owned by IT.
With the available technology in the market today, enterprises that are burdened by a complex CCM technology infrastructure that contains legacy systems, disparate workflows, thousands of document templates and multiple repositories for digital assets, know that in order to remain competitive, reduce costs and mitigate risk, a technology refresh is critical. Unfortunately, some organizations do not know where to begin, or worse yet, have begun and hit a major roadblock along the way and abandoned the project altogether.

The good news is that Madison Advisors has a methodology that can assist organizations with these challenges. It is called optiMA. The optiMA model from Madison Advisors can provide guidance for enterprises to create an optimized CCM strategy that focuses on providing an enhanced customer experience and increased customer engagement. It includes a current state assessment and information gathering to understand customer communication goals relative to revenue enhancement, cost and risk reduction, technology requirements and customer experience. We work with all key stakeholders across the organization to identify gaps in business processes, technology and staffing so that we can understand both strengths and areas that need improvement. Key deliverables include a Target Operating Model (TOM) and a strategic roadmap that provide the enterprise with guidance and organizational direction necessary to implement its CCM optimization initiatives to align with the business and strategic goals identified during the initial phase.

All of the solutions evaluated as a part of this research effort offer technology that can optimize a legacy CCM environment. The challenge can be selecting the right solution. We are excited to share our optiMA methodology, as it provides valuable objective insight during the technology selection process to determine the best fit for our clients.