By Gina Ferrara, Senior Analyst, Madison Advisors

Madison Advisors just released a new research report, “Enterprise Output Management Systems, 4th Edition: Moving Beyond Print Management.” Our 3rd edition was published in December 2010 and since much has changed over the years, it was time to present our new findings on the latest trends in this industry.

Enterprise Output Management Systems (EOMS) play an important role in the production of customer communications. This technology is not often top of mind when one thinks about customer communications management technology, unless, of course, you are an enterprise in-plant or print service provider that manages print production. Initially, output management systems were used to manage the production of printed communications. Now these solutions offer so much more than that. New features and functionality provide enhanced workflow and automation with additional output capabilities that give organizations the ability to offer multi-channel delivery and a better customer experience. Enterprise in-plants and print service providers can benefit from some of the key findings in our report, which include:

• Why multi-site print operations need to have a single consolidated view into their production environment
• How enterprise in-plants interested in outsourcing print and mail to a service provider can determine whether to optimize their communications as a part of the transition to a new provider or simply do a “lift and shift” of the operation
• Our research includes 11 EOMS vendor solutions that offer sophisticated workflow and business process management capabilities, enabling organizations to receive print jobs, automate work to flow seamlessly through the production operation, and deliver through the channel of choice

EOMS solutions can ingest data files from multiple systems and in multiple formats, transform that data and direct it to the appropriate output channel. In the past, these solutions were adopted to manage multiple print devices by combining and splitting print jobs to optimize utilization of print hardware. Now, EOMS solutions have grown beyond traditional print production management with enhanced workflow and automation, robust print transformation capabilities, and additional delivery channels such as email and SMS—all of which streamline print production operations and allow service providers to increase their value proposition beyond print and mail.

To communicate with customers electronically, organizations are looking for solutions that can provide multi-channel delivery for high value customer communications in order to keep up with consumer expectations and remain competitive in the industry. EOMS solutions can provide this functionality, without having to make changes to the document composition process upstream, giving service providers the ability to ingest legacy output and enhance the document by adding color, variable content, such as targeted messaging or graphics, and delivering the output to electronic channels, as well as an archive solution.

Madison Advisors anticipates EOMS technology to continue to expand capabilities and become the pivot point allowing organizations to transition legacy output into enhanced communications that can be delivered across multiple channels to meet consumer expectations for multi-channel delivery. These solutions will take on a major role in the overall CCM ecosystem as technology providers continue to upgrade their solutions in response to changing market trends.

To purchase the full research report “Enterprise Output Management Systems, 4th Edition: Moving Beyond Print Management,” click here.