are you in control of your customer communications?

White Paper

October 2014

Are You in Control of Your Customer Communications?

Written for Prospects and Customers of Scriptura Engage

(an Inventive Designers Solution)

WHITE PAPER Are You in Control of Your Customer Communications?

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Table of Contents Executive Summary ................................................................................................................. 3

Key Findings ......................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 4

Customer Communications Management ........................................................................... 4

Solutions to Challenges in Modern CCM ................................................................................. 5

Get Everybody Involved ....................................................................................................... 5

Reduce Your IT Cost and Increase Your Business Agility ................................................... 6

Understand Your Cost of Communications ......................................................................... 7

Become Truly “Omnichannel” ............................................................................................. 8

Taking a Strategic Approach to CCM ...................................................................................... 9

The CCM Evolution .............................................................................................................. 9

A Centralized Communications Hub ................................................................................... 10

About Inventive Designers ....................................................................................................... 10

Background .......................................................................................................................... 10

Portfolio ................................................................................................................................ 11

Scriptura Engage Communication Center ........................................................................... 12

Scheduling Communications ............................................................................................... 13

InfoTrends’ Opinion ................................................................................................................. 14

About the Author ..................................................................................................................... 15

List of Figures Figure 1: Process steps of modern CCM solutions .................................................................. 5

Figure 2: True Cost of Printed Business Communications ..................................................... 8

Figure 3: How is/will your company’s total communications spending be distributed by the various communication types you use? ........................................................................ 9

Figure 4: The CCM Evolution .................................................................................................. 10

Figure 5: Managing Communications with Communication Center ...................................... 12

Figure 6: Example of a Scheduled Communication ................................................................ 14


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Executive Summary Customer Communications Management (CCM) is subject to changing market

conditions driven by digitalization, the Internet, a rich choice of media types, and

changing regulations. Under these market conditions, organizations are advised to

take a closer look into their customer communications practices.

Nevertheless, in-depth research by InfoTrends1 revealed that most organizations

struggle with getting CCM to work. This document discusses the challenges associated

with this and presents a grow path for CCM to help organizations improve their

customer communications, reduce the cost associated with these communications,

and to deepen their customer relationships.

Key Findings CCM best practices require a combination of technology, organizational change, and

cross-departmental alignment at a strategic and operational level. InfoTrends

observes an evolutionary approach among organizations in adapting centralized CCM

practices. Organizations seeking to get to the next level in this CCM evolution process

are advised to consider the following aspects:

• Get everybody involved. Organizations should invest in a central authority body that oversees customer communications for the entire organization and coordinates communications across all stakeholders involved within the organization.

• Reduce your IT cost and increase business agility. A CCM solution should enable business users to control and manage communications independently from IT.

• Understand your cost of communications. There is a lack of understanding in regards to the costs associated with electronic communications and the end-to-end cost for all customer communications. Modern CCM solutions help organizations by making this cost transparent.

• Become truly “omnichannel.” Change in the customers’ preferences for communications is one of the key drivers in the CCM transformation process. Modern CCM solutions must not only support multiple channels, they must also orchestrate the communications among them.

• Implement a centralized communications hub. CCM is affecting all customer touch points of an organization. Implementing and operating CCM can, therefore, only be done successfully when it is institutionalized in a central manner and managed by a so-called centralized communications hub.

1 Overcoming Implementation Challenges of CCM Solutions in Enterprises; InfoTrends, 2013.


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Introduction Digitalization and the Internet are empowering customers that want to be more in

control of how and when to engage with organizations, as well as allowing customers

to be more knowledgeable about prices and conditions. In addition, the rich choice of

communication channels and blurring borders of time and space in this respect has

resulted in customers being more sensitive to the way organizations communicate

and engage with them. Information must increasingly be more relevant to the

individual customer. Deepening customer relationships is now more crucial than ever

for organizations to maintain and grow their customer base and to increase the

lifetime value of their customers. In addition to that, especially after the 2008-2009

financial crisis, a raft of new regulations have put burdens on many businesses,

forcing them to act with agility to meet new regulatory requirements or minimize

risks.

Under these market conditions, organizations are well advised to take a closer look at

their customer communications practices. Modern CCM solutions are able to address

the aspects mentioned above, thus providing organizations with the right means to

equip themselves against these challenging market conditions.

Customer Communications Management CCM relates to strategies and technologies that enable the creation, administration,

production, and fulfillment of data-driven, multichannel communications.

Communications can be produced in a scheduled or structural way (e.g., monthly

invoices and annual statements), on-demand triggered by sales agents or customer

service representatives (e.g., welcome kits, insurance proposals, and claim

processing), or interactively by the client filling out and submitting a request for

quotation form through the web or via a mobile device.

CCM solutions originate from the transactional printing market, and have undergone

tremendous development since then. Modern CCM solutions outpace their

predecessors by far and offer communications management well beyond print only.

Such solutions typically are part of a wider eco-system that includes archiving

systems, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, enterprise content

management (ECM) systems, and legacy information systems (e.g., mainframes). The

figure below illustrates the four main process steps of each modern CCM solution.


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Figure 1: Process steps of modern CCM solutions

In the first step, existing customer data is analyzed, segmented, and structured to

better identify and understand customer behaviors. Effective and relevant customer

communications depend on these behavioral insights, creating customized and

personalized communications in the second step. The multichannel production step

ensures that each customer communication is delivered through the customer’s

preferred communication channel. This can be via print, e-mail, social networks,

SMS/MMS, or other electronic forms. In the final step, the response of the customer

is measured and analyzed. This establishes not only the effectiveness of the

communication, but also improves the existing customer data available so that even

more targeted customized communications can be delivered to individual customers

or specific customer segments in the future.

Solutions to Challenges in Modern CCM In-depth research done by InfoTrends2 revealed that most organizations struggle with

getting CCM to work. CCM best practices require a combination of technology,

organizational change, and cross-departmental alignment at a strategic and

operational level. This section will discuss best practices in implementing CCM

solutions to help organizations improve their customer communications, reduce the

cost associated with it, and deepen their customer relationships to improve their

customer lifetime values.

Get Everybody Involved Organizations send out a staggering amount of communications that are managed

and produced by a wide range of people, systems, and resources. Coordination

between these assets is vitally important, but most organizations have a very

decentralized management structure of these resources. As a result, organizations

primarily see customer communications as an activity initiated and managed by each

individual line of business (LOB). Without some degree of central coordination or

executive authority over customer communications, organizations are susceptible to

2 Overcoming Implementation Challenges of CCM Solutions in Enterprises; InfoTrends, 2013.

•  Output%across%all%channels%

•  Capturing%/%data%mining%•  Data%integra6on%•  Customer%segmenta6on%and%analysis%

•  Channel%listening%and%monitoring%•  Feedback%analysis%•  Trigger%for%addi6onal%ac6ons%or%on=demand%communica6ons%

•  Content%op6miza6on%•  Archiving%and%retrieval%

•  QR=codes%or%augmented%reality%for%addi6onal%interac6vity%

•  Structured,%on=demand,%and%interac6ve%•  On=statement%messaging%can%be%embedded%in%electronic%content%

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Customer$Communi5

ca/ons$

Mul/5Channel$

Produc/on$

Channel$Listening$&$Response$Mgt.$ •  Business%process%

linkages%such%as%e=billing%and%mobile%payment%


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lower customer satisfaction (e.g., different experiences between communication

channels), higher cost (e.g., redundancy in systems and procedures), missed revenue

opportunities (e.g., lack of up/cross-selling), breaches in regulatory and security

compliance (e.g., when LOBs have different interpretations about compliance rules),

and other brand and operational issues. Ideally, organizations should invest in a

central authority body that oversees customer communications for the entire

organization and that coordinates communications across all involved stakeholders

within the organization. Any modern CCM solution should support each stakeholder

in the CCM process. InfoTrends’ research identified the following key roles within an

organization involved in CCM:

• Project manager or CCM lead: The project manager or CCM lead is the central point of contact and oversees all customer communications activities within the organization.

• Legal: The legal department provides a layer of assurance over all communications when it comes to protection of the organization and ensures the company is meeting the required regulations.

• Marketing: CCM is becoming a key element for successful marketing campaigns executed across multiple communications channels that are also highly personalized to provide relevant information to the individual customer or specific customer segments.

• LOB or product manager: LOBs or product managers play a key role in the look and feel of their communications set. They may not be the primary source of the design, but they are heavily involved in what features, functions, channels it is delivered through, and the information that is included on the communications.

• IT: IT’s responsibility ranges from managing IT infrastructure to having a role in direct CCM-related functions, such as document composition and the programming of templates that are composed through the CCM solution.

• Procurement: Procurement is often responsible for the approval and funding of software and technology purchases, including CCM solutions.

• Print operation: The print operation is often tasked with the responsibility to address concerns with communications, research new software technologies for multichannel distribution, and developing a strategy around CCM.

Reduce Your IT Cost and Increase Your Business Agility For a traditional customer communication, typically an art group within the LOB or a

more central group directed by the LOB designs a document. This document design

mock-up is then sent to the IT department to program it into a template that can be

processed by the document composition tool in place. This process can be quite time-

consuming, relying on IT’s availability and placing an additional strain when

regulatory or legal departments require even minor edits to these documents.

The response to this challenge has been a demand for empowering business users

with tools and technology that enable them to have more control over customer

communications documents. Business users can be direct employees (e.g., help desk


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employees or product managers) as well as agents or businesses that act on behalf of

the organization. The benefit of CCM solutions that empower business users is the

decreased strain on IT resources facilitated by the increase in automation and the lack

of relying on IT to make minor tweaks to templates when the LOB, marketing, or legal

would like changes.

Modern CCM solutions should support this scenario of business user empowerment.

The key for such solutions is to ensure compatibility with standardized file formats

(e.g., XML) to easily integrate with existing office environments and minimize the

learning curve of the business user. There is also a desire to deploy CCM functionality

through a web interface or thin client to minimize installation, updates, and

troubleshooting efforts by IT.

Understand Your Cost of Communications Cost measurement and understanding is important for any organization. If an

organization is unaware of the true cost of anything, it can impact recognized

revenues. For printed communications, it is important to understand the cost of

production — particularly as organizations evaluate whether or not it is more cost

effective to maintain an in-plant or outsource. InfoTrends’ research3 for the true cost

associated with printed business communications reveals that changes in the ratio of

print versus non-print related cost over time (see Figure below) reflect the adaptation

level of workflow and process automation — as well as the increase in productivity

levels.

For electronic communications, it is also important to understand the cost associated

with it. Nevertheless, due to the lack of physical costs — such as paper, ink, and

postage — these costs are not transparent for most organizations. As a result, such

costs typically have lower priority for organizations, although these costs are not

necessarily lower than printed communications.

3 The True Cost of Business Communications, InfoTrends 2012.


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Figure 2: True Cost of Printed Business Communications4

Source: The True Cost of Business Communications; InfoTrends, 2012

Modern CCM solutions make this cost of customer communications transparent to

the organization by measuring and tracking the involved activities and the ability to

process and present this data in an aggregated form based on the audience (e.g., a

LOB manager typically is more interested in the overall costs, while a print operation

manager typically is more interested in cost associated with each type of

communication channel).

Become Truly “Omnichannel” Digitalization is disrupting the traditional media landscape at an unprecedented rate.

In practical terms, it means that the customer is given more media choices, but also

more time to engage with brands. The Figure below shows the trend in

communications spending of enterprises in the United States. While print

communications still accounts for the biggest amount of spending, the gap with

online/web communications is closing. InfoTrends observes that CCM is subject to a

major transformation process and changes in the customers’ preferences for customer

communications is one of the key drivers in this process. Next to mobile, e-

presentment, digital mailboxes, e-mail, video, and social media are important

communication channels.

Modern CCM solutions not only support these different communication channels,

they also orchestrate the communications among them to synchronize the message

sent to the customer. This way, the customer communications become accessible

across all mediums (“omnichannel”), which is an important aspect for ensuring a

delighted customer engagement.

4 Assumptions: 500 copies of 1) Manual (200 letter pages, 4/4 cover, 1/1 text); 2) Brochure (8 letter pages, 4/4); 3) Sell-sheet (2 letter pages, 4/1); 4) Presentation slides (20 letter pages, 4/4), included cost are 1) Creative cost; 2) Editorial cost; 3) Project mmanagement cost; 4) Printing cost; 5) Warehousing and archiving cost; 6) Cost due to obscolensce; 7) Shipping and distribution cost.

100%

0%

20%

60%

40%

80%

2006 2001 2009 2012

50.0%

86.0%

35.0% 46.0%

14.0%

50.0% 54.0% 65.0%

Non-Print related cost

Print related cost


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Figure 3: How is/will your company’s total communications spending be distributed by the various communication types you use?

N=1,026 enterprises

Source: Vertical Market Study; InfoTrends, 2012

Taking a Strategic Approach to CCM It should have become clear by now that CCM is affecting all customer touchpoints of

an organization — whether this concerns customer service, IT, marketing, legal,

corporate communications, or procurement. Implementing and operating CCM can,

therefore, only be done successfully when it is institutionalized in a central manner

and managed by what InfoTrends refers to as “a center of CCM excellence.” This

center of CCM excellence should not only manage day-to-day activities and individual

projects that are required by LOBs, they should also manage the overarching

processes and workflow for producing customer communications.

The CCM Evolution InfoTrends observes an evolutionary approach among organizations in adapting

centralized CCM practices (see Figure below). It was stated above that CCM originates

from within the IT departments and was purely concerned with the production of

transactional communications, such as bank statements and billing information. In

this first stage of the CCM evolution, digital printing continuous to take over

conventional printing by eliminating the production of preprinted forms (white paper

printing) and by its capability to support marketing campaign needs (e.g., variable

data/color printing, white space marketing, print-to-web features).

In a second step, multiple output channels are introduced. As discussed above, print

will be one element of a broader communication mix and synchronization among the

different communication channels will become a business issue. Focusing customer

communications in a centralized communication hub makes great sense as a means

to deal with this!

80%

40%

100%

0%

60%

20%

Next 2 YearsLast 12 Months

16.2%

29.9%34.1%

27.8%25.3%

16.7%

11.2%11.7%

12.0%10.2%

Other

Video

Audio

Print

Mobile

Online/Web


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Figure 4: The CCM Evolution

Source: Overcoming Implementation Challenges of CCM solutions in Enterprises; InfoTrends, 2013

A Centralized Communications Hub The value of a centralized communications hub is that each initiative can have

dedicated resources assigned to customer communications projects to ensure the

project hits its project goals. The CCM project team can coordinate with marketing on

guidelines for corporate style, branding, messaging, and be the point of area for

compliance requirements. Ideally, the centralized communications hub should be

closely aligned with the IT department or have IT budget themselves so they can

integrate the various communication systems to provide corporate-wide insights in

what has been communicated and help synchronize communications across all

channels. Clearly, such a centralized communications hub brings additional overhead,

bureaucracy, and cost to the communications process — but this will pay off in the

long run!

About Inventive Designers Background Inventive Designers N.V. (Inventive Designers) is a privately held family business

headquartered in Antwerp, Belgium. Guy Dehond and Patrick Morren founded the

company in 1994. In 2012, Joke Dehond and Klaas Bals took over the management of

the company. Guy Dehond is still involved in the company as the president of the

Board of Directors.

Inventive Designers mainly targets financial institutes, such as banks and pension

funds, as well as insurances, governments, telecoms, and utilities. The majority of

Inventive Designers’ customer base is located in Western Europe, followed by North

America and Australia. Customers in these regions are served through direct sales or

through partner-channels. Inventive Designers is an active member in a variety of

Conven&onal)Print)to)Digital)Print)

Single)to)Mul&)Channel)

Mul&4Channel)Synchronicity)

Centralized)Communica&ons)

Hub)

Implementa)on+Complexity+

Customer+Engagement+

Customer+Engagement+Strategy+

Majority of businesses

Current Leaders

Relevant, consistent and appropriate content delivered via the customers’ preferred channels

Authentic, purposeful and engaging communications that optimize the lifetime value of the customer


© InfoTrends 2014

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leading industry associations, such as W3C5, AIIM6, Xplor7, and the AFP

Consortium8.

It also received several industry awards throughout recent years, such as the Prize for

Digital Communications in 2012, the 2012 eGov Award for the most innovative

project in e-Government, and the Document & Content Management Award 2011 by

DocumentWereld (a Dutch Magazine for the document industry). It has also been

named one of nine most ambitious companies in the Benelux by Deloitte’s

Technology Fast 50 in 2011.

Portfolio Inventive Designers’ CCM platform is called Scriptura Engage. The latest version is

version 8.0, which will be generally available by the end of 2014. Scriptura Engage is a

CCM solution to create and deliver personalized correspondence for print, email,

online, mobile, archive, social media or other channels. Scriptura Engage is typically

used in complex customer environments with huge volumes of transactional or high

value output, and in organizations that want to communicate more using digital

channels. The platform offers a central solution that can produce and deliver output

for all business applications within a company. It is a so-called digital first solution,

with a focus on and optimized for digital delivery channels

Scriptura Engage consists of different components. Document Design and Generation is done using a visual design environment that allows users to enjoy

WYSIWYG9 capabilities. This makes it possible to design output templates without

programming. This visual design environment is also used to design Electronic Forms for web and mobile. The actual communication workflow itself (where is the

data coming from, which output format to produce and to which channel to deliver) is

also designed within this visual environment. The Interactive Document Assembly component enables users to personalize documents, like contract and

proposals, before they are being sent to the customer. This component offers a web-

based interface to manage text blocks and compose documents on the fly. The

Multichannel component supports e-mail, online, print, social, mobile, and archive.

In addition, specific channel functionalities are offered like e-mail testing and push

notifications.

From an architecture point of view, Scriptura Engage offers a cloud-enabled model

based on open standards with easy integration and configuration capabilities. From a

security point of view, organizations can manage users, groups, roles, and

permissions. 5 The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. See also www.w3c.org. 6 The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) is a non-profit organization of information professionals. See also www.aiim.org. 7 Xplor (www.xplor.org) is the worldwide association of users and suppliers of products and services that create, modify, and deliver customized information using a variety of document technologies. 8 The Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) Consortium brings together voices from across the print industry to improve AFP and to take this industry tot he next level in high-volume variable data –and transactional printing. See also www.afpcinc.org. 9 What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG).


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Scriptura Engage Communication Center With its new version 8.0, the Scriptura Engage platform includes a new component

called Communication Center. The objective of Communication Center is to act as a

central communications hub for customer correspondence. It is a management

platform for executing complex multichannel communication strategies in a

standardized manner and can be configured, extended, or customized to meet

strategic communication objectives of the organizations.

The different Scriptura Engage components (from template design and resource

management to output production and delivery) can be managed from

Communication Center; a 360° view of all communications is available. Its user

interface can be branded to the corporate communications guidelines of customers

allowing white label versions. The Figure below shows some screenshots of

Communication Center.

Figure 5: Managing Communications with Communication Center

Source: Inventive Designers 2014


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Communication Center is designed around the four phases that each communication

process goes through.

• Design phase: In the design phase, users can manage communications projects, templates, and related resources.

• Compose phase: In the compose phase, data is retrieved and used to assemble the actual correspondence. Users can see the status of each communication job, the number of communications that has been sent, and more. Communication Center also allows for the management of the jobs and communications: Release, pause, and restart. Jobs can be bundled. Communications can be previewed, approved, and rejected.

• Delivery phase: In the delivery phase, Communication Center supports various delivery channels and formats. Channels are configurable and new channels can easily be added. Communication Center also provides connectors for specific channels, like the upcoming digital mailbox Doccle10.

• Analysis phase: All information that is retrieved during the process of generating and delivering communications can be consulted via secure web dashboards, which includes overviews of jobs, communications, and deliveries with drilldown possibilities and statistics about the different channels and reports.

Scheduling Communications Communication Center introduces the concept of communication schedules.

Communication schedules generate and deliver communications to multiple channels

in parallel, or execute fallback scenarios when a communication could not be

delivered via a specific channel. To be able to do this, communication schedules

processes the feedback from the different output channels.

For example, a communication schedule can be configured to send an e-mail to a

customer. In case of a bounce, it will automatically try to resend it. After a certain

number of retries and an elapsed timeframe, it can be configured to send the

communication automatically via the central print channel. This communication

schedule is illustrated in the Figure below.

10 Doccle is an online platform that acts as a personal central electronic archive for receiving electronic documents from different organizations. See also www.doccle.be.


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Figure 6: Example of a Scheduled Communication

Source: Inventive Designers 2014

InfoTrends’ Opinion Building customer loyalty and driving customer advocacy are now more important

than ever before for organizations engaging with their customers. CCM is a crucial

element in this process, and it is concerned with all customer touchpoints that an

organization has with its customers. Implementing and operating CCM can,

therefore, only be done successfully when it is institutionalized in a central manner.

The pace of IT innovations and digitalization is driving advances in the CCM solutions

market. Nevertheless, choosing a CCM solution within an existing organization with

existing processes and IT infrastructures is not an easy task to accomplish. It is a

change that needs to be managed carefully and must fit into the company’s overall

communications strategy.

Inventive Designers offers a comprehensive CCM solution to the market with its

Scriptura Engage platform. It supports organization in the typical modern CCM

challenges as outlined in this document. With the introduction of its Communication

Center, the Scriptura Engage platform equips customers to take the next level in their

CCM evolution process — creating a truly centralized communications hub.

This material is prepared specifically for clients of InfoTrends, Inc. The opinions expressed represent our interpretation and analysis of information generally available to the public or released by responsible individuals in the subject companies. We believe that the sources of information on which our material is based are reliable and we have applied our best professional judgment to the data obtained.


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About the Author

David Stabel Associate Director

+49 176 8448 6057

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David Stabel is an Associate Director for InfoTrends’ Production Workflow &

Customized Communications Services. Mr. Stabel is responsible for conducting

market research, providing forecast analysis, consulting with clients, and creating

editorial content for product and market analysis reports. His primary focus area is

on the graphic communications industry, data processing and customer

communications management markets.

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