Customer Communications in the Context of Customer Experience

Key Market Trends and Solution Options

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

Customer Communications in the Context of Customer Experience

Trends in Customer Experience Affecting CCM

CCM Vendors Positioned for Customer Experience

A Broader Solution Example of the Transition to Customer Experience

Conclusions

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Executive Summary The Customer Communications Management, or CCM, market has evolved from the historical convergence of document generation, composition and output management technologies. Current CCM solutions include the core elements of a design tool, a composition engine, a workflow/rule engine, as well as multi-channel output management for numerous communication form factors both to, and from, customers. In terms of delivery, CCM vendors are providing new models for cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS); they are also incorporating social and mobile features for customer input and communications output, context-aware capabilities, and analytics.

CCM vendors are also aligning their solutions to the broader, but perhaps harder to define, solution area of Customer Experience Management, or CEM. This is evidenced by research firm Gartner Group, who provides the definition “[CEM] is the practice of designing and reacting to customer interactions to meet or exceed customer expectations and, thus, increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy. It is a strategy that requires process change and many technologies to accomplish.”1

“Customer Experience Management is more than a trend, it is happening.

The challenge is that it is not a product but a composition of a

number of software solutions including CCM, content management and

analytics along with the integration to other enterprise systems.”

1 http://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/customer-experience-management-cem/

PresidentContent Systems Integration Firm

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ORC International has conducted primary and secondary research on the CCM market segment and interviewed experts for a number of leading vendor solution offerings. A summary of our analysis and research findings are as follows:

• The trend towards, and emphasis on, customer experience is much more than vendor positioning. Key market drivers include increased customer interactivity, deeper personalization needs, more responsive design, increased mobile usage, and the need to be able to access and maintain a single source of truth for the customer.

• In step with market trends, we see vendor solution portfolios evolving in capabilities to support the requirements based on trends in terms of product development, acquisitions and deeper integration to related enterprise applications such as ECM, BPM, CRM, and ERP.2

• In a landscape analysis of the market, ORC has identified three classes of CCM solution providers and finds that content- focused providers are best suited to execute on the transition to the broader customer experience based on their evolving solution portfolios, which span response management, data capture, customized content and delivery.

2 ECM (Enterprise Content Management), BPM (Business Process Management), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)

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Customer Communications in the Context of Customer Experience Customer Communications Management (CCM) has traditionally related to managing service communications and delivering correspondence and recurring statements from content stored in enterprise systems of record. Before evaluating the market trends, it is important to first understand the traditional CCM solution characteristics, defined by the following:

• Software used to compose, format, personalize, and distribute content to support physical and electronic customer communications and improve the customer experience; • Supports structured, interactive and on-demand processes for content delivery;

• Supports a variety of content types including but not limited to invoices, correspondence, marketing materials, policies, statements, and welcome kits; • Content includes static and variable, or dynamic, information from enterprise systems or input directly by people involved in the composition process;

• Support for high-volume, batch processes for printed materials including both static and variable data.

Figure 1. CCM Segments and Key Capabilities(Source: ORC International, 2016)

Integration (app & data) • Content (ECM) • Customer data (CRM/ERP) • Process (BPM) • Cloud applications

Delivery • High-volume batch processing • Output management • Interactive support

Design/ Compose • Authoring • Template Development and management • iWorker support

Segments/Delivery Models

Structured

On- demand

Interactive

Primary Content Types

• Bills • Statements • Financial Printing • Marketing Materials (offset and digital print

• Online quotes • Order confirmations • Correspondance • Online statements • Account notices • Itineraries • Point of service documents

• Welcome kits • Negotiated documents • Product catalogs • Mobile ID cards • Policies • Moble print • Technical authoring

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The CCM elements, key capabilities and functionality for CCM solutions include the following as illustrated in Figure 1. The inner table represents the use case segments and the common corresponding communication types. The surrounding functional capabilities applicable to the use case segments follow the flow from design to integration to delivery and include:

• Authoring – a design capability to input and create communications, either using familiar desktop applications via application “plug-ins” or proprietary user interfaces designed specifically for this purpose;

• Template development and management – a design capability, typically more technical in nature, to create and manage communications templates to enable leverage and reuse based on compliant content, customization rules and personalization variables;

• iWorker Support – a design area where less technical users work on documents in terms of basic building activities and interaction with communications in the process of personalization in the flow of delivery to customers;

• Integration/Interoperability – a programmer-oriented console to develop data models and integration points to the following systems:

• Content management (ECM, WCM, etc.) • Enterprise Systems (ERP, CRM, BPM, etc.) • Cloud Applications/Hybrid Cloud Integration;

• Workflows – scripting the internal worker’s interaction with the document system, including approval processes and other manual points where business users participate in communications processes;

• Output management – the ability to generate correspondence immediately or include in a scheduled batch process and/or deliver interactive correspondence in customer-preferred formats such as print, e-mail, Web, and mobile device;

• Interactive support – the ability to embed interactive editing capabilities into existing enterprise systems and customer communications while controlling the user experience;

• Analytics – the use of analytics (sourced from BI systems or from the CCM system itself) to drive systematic and automated personalization.

In addition to the capabilities and functionality, there is also another aspect in terms of the delivery model of the CCM solutions to end customers. For a variety of reasons, these solutions were traditionally delivered in an on-premise model installed, operated and managed by the end customer. Increasingly, cloud-based solutions are being introduced to serve certain components of these solutions in private or public clouds or as a managed service provided by the vendor.

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Trends in Customer Experience Affecting CCMBased on the foundational capabilities discussed in the previous section, the CCM market is evolving and increasingly tied to the broader solution category of customer experience, referred to as CEM or, more recently, as CX or CXM. The ability to link CCM to all points in the customer journey is gaining ground, with stronger mobile support and integration with marketing automation and digital experience delivery platforms. CCM is a key part of the broader customer strategy, even looking at the customer journey and focusing messages to the emerging executive role of Chief Experience Officer.

A few of the key trends related to the broader customer experience initiatives include:

Consumer interactivity is key: Enterprises are seeing opportunity to provide better customer experiences by adding interactive features to traditional communications. They want to create interactive statements, documents, emails, or web pages that have links, support drill downs, include data summary and charting, and embed animated objects. This approach motivates customers to engage with the content, accomplish simple tasks, and encourages paper suppression.

Effective personalization requires analytics and a reliable source of truth for customer information: Personalization is absolutely foundational to drive customer experience and help customers navigate their “journey”. To execute on personalization, integration with enterprise systems of record, such as CRM or ERP, which store up-to-date information, and additional analytic capabilities specific to the application are needed. Furthermore, the enterprise content needs to be managed and organized in a manner that is suitable for the delivery of a personalized experience.

Consistent multi-channel engagement is the expectation: A recent global survey by SDL found that 58 percent of millennials expect to engage with a company whenever they choose and via whichever channel they elect.3 This means that while these consumers move effortlessly between on- and offline touch points, they expect a consistent experience from brands. That consistency is also important from an information compliance perspective to ensure the same approved messages and content are communicated regardless of delivery channel.

Responsive design calls for more “Web-native” and mobile support: The traditional print, or even page-based, mentality of communications delivery is being challenged as delivery channels evolve and costs increase. For one, the requirement for print in the areas of statements and billing is lessening due to the availability of, and the subsequent demand for, paperless options. Additionally, it is estimated that companies can achieve cost savings in the range of 50-80% with paperless communications as compared to printing and mailing. Secondly, the overall notion of page-based formats is challenged in the context of mobile and social channels wherein formatting options are limited to what can be displayed on devices with small screens and the more “snippet” style of communication found in social media interactions. Lastly, as younger generations enter the workforce they are less inclined to think in terms of a “page” or printed communications, are much more familiar with mobile and social channels and generally expect a more intuitive, consumer-oriented user experience.

3 http://www.sdl.com/about/news-media/press/2014/sdl-study-reveals-channels-are-irrelevant-to-consumers.html

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CCM Vendors Positioned for Customer ExperienceSegueing from the discussion of general capabilities of CCM solutions and the impact of trends related to customer experience, ORC has analyzed the key vendors in the CCM market to classify them and provide context around their positioning and solution capabilities relative to the market trends. ORC has roughly categorized leading vendors included in analyst firm reports as follows:

• Legacy providers focused more on high-volume batch processing and print with representative vendors including GMC, HP, and Pitney Bowes;

• New providers pivoting to/focused on customer experience with representative vendors including Thunderhead.com;

• Holistic CCM solution providers with emphasis on content management with representative vendors including Dell EMC and OpenText.

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Table 1. CCM Solution Provider Categories and Characteristics

• Solid and dependable solutions, focused on CCM features and capabilities particularly in the areas of authoring, workflow, composition and multi-channel output• Strong base of financial services customers• Considered by the market to be expensive• Lacking in content management capability• Noted for technical complexity• Newer features/technologies “bolted on” to demonstrate innovation• Moving to the cloud, but offerings have been modest• Expensive support• Rely on 3rd party integration, particularly for broader customer experience• HP signaling movement away from the market selling its key CCM assets to OpenText.

• Focused more on interactive and on-demand relative to structured, high-volume applications• Strong authoring and design capabilities, browser-based interfaces and unique XML-based templating capabilities that support multi-channel communications with a single template. • Design capability is nearly fully featured in a thin client.• Opted out of CCM market in favor in Customer Experience to the detriment of that customer segment• More aggressive regarding cloud adoption, though many customers may not be ready• Targeting retail oriented customer base, but also notable partnerships with GuideWire for insurance and Salesforce.com• Expensive solution• Lacking native content management capability

• Dependable and capable CCM solutions with strong content management ties• Noted for usability and ease-of-use• More emphasis on interactive and on-demand scenarios, although capable of structured, high-volume applications• High leverage of existing customers of ECM or specific ERP systems such as SAP• Focus on standalone CCM space somewhat diminished; now targeting broader content management solutions• Because content is so important to customer experience, well positioned to address the broader market/segment requirements with a more holistic, single-vendor solution stack• Vision towards support for next gen user experience, social and mobile deployments (Dell EMC LEAP)

Legacy providers focused more on high-volume batch

processing and print

New providers pivoting to/focused on

customer experience

Holistic CCM solution providers with emphasis on content management

In Table 1, we have noted some of the key characteristics of the three categories based on our analysis of each classified vendor’s historical context, current offerings, and feedback from solution experts interviewed during our research phase.

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A few notable points related to Table 1 are as follows.

The legacy providers are noted for strong and mature CCM capabilities and an extensive customer base particularly in financial services. That said, their solutions and support are considered rather expensive and their creation of more affordable cloud offerings and business-user-friendly interfaces has been slow. HP is noted for their strength in technical performance in high volume scenarios and market presence with its Exstream product, but their sale of CCM portfolio assets to OpenText certainly could be interpreted as a move away from the core of CCM and antithetical to the trend towards the broader customer experience. As noted in our research, a broad customer experience management platform that included HP Aurasma, HP Explore, HP MediaBin, HP Optimost, HP Qfiniti, and HP TeamSite was emerging in HP, but with the sale of these to OpenText they will now become part of the OpenText customer experience management portfolio.

Regarding new entrants focused on customer experience, Thunderhead had “re-joined” the CCM market after pivoting, from a positioning perspective, to the broader customer experience market vis-à-vis their SaaS-based ONE Engagement Hub solution. They have been successful in their go-to-market strategy in working with key partners and their CCM solution is considered advanced in terms of interactivity, communications design and collaboration. Our research found that Thunderhead, while interesting in their use of customer analytics and data, is lacking in terms of a content management solution and integration to various content systems. Research participants also noted some challenges in their on-premise vs. cloud strategy, in which they were witnessing a shift in R&D and development focus from their cloud-based Smart Communications platform to ONE Engagement Hub. In fact, this shift was manifested recently by Thunderhead announcing the sale of their Smart Communications platform to private equity firm Accel-KKR4, signaling another, more permanent, pivot to exclusively focus on customer engagement.

The final category in our landscape comprises CCM vendors who offer a holistic solution that incorporates many elements of the customer experience, particularly enterprise content management. Content management is foundational for creating personalized user experiences in terms of the development, composition and delivery of content. Both Dell EMC and OpenText are considered strong vendors in this area, offering dependable and capable solutions for CCM, particularly in the areas of interactive and on-demand scenarios as compared to the more traditional structured, high-volume applications. OpenText has been successful in market penetration via its partnership with SAP. The acquisition of HP’s CCM assets will extend their solution footprint to help address the broader customer experience offering, however OpenText’s overall solution roadmap is complex and it may take some time to integrate the HP assets into their existing offerings. Dell EMC is noted as a strong player in the CCM market, particularly in the areas of integration, both data and application, standard authoring environments and leveraging the very strong underlying content management capabilities. The forthcoming LEAP platform also represents a significant innovation in terms of the user experience, the design environment and support for mobile and social user scenarios.

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4 http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160912005600/en/Thunderhead-Sells-Smart-Communications-Division-Accel-KKR

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A Broader Solution Example of the Transition to Customer ExperienceFollowing from the previous section, as mentioned content management and personalization are vital to the customer experience. That said, there are many more requirements for effective customer engagement including response management, data capture, and multi-channel elements. Consider the following solution map (Figure 2) demonstrating the solution capabilities that comprise a quality and consistent customer experience using Dell EMC solutions as an example reference architecture.

Figure 2. Solution Mapping to 360o View of Customer Engagement

In evaluating each of the areas of the 360-degree view:

• For Response Management, Documentum xCP orchestrates the request / response cycles that dictate the current business environment;

• For Data Capture, Captiva drives engagement by including bi-directional, round-trip conversations and new types of interaction;

• For Customized Content, xPression and Documentum enable organizations to control the content, tone and format of the message, which is more critical now than ever before; and finally

• For Multi-Channel, xPression delivers content through multiple channels, in optimized formats, to meet requirements and channel-of-choice preferences.

Data Capture

ResponseManagement

Multi-Channel

Captiva

xPression &Documentum

CustomizedContent

DocumentumxCP

xPression

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ConclusionsThe focus on customer experience and improving that experience will no doubt continue as it creates value for the end user as well as the provider. The CCM market and vendor solution offerings are evolving to support these emerging market requirements. Some of the legacy players focused more on traditional high-volume scenarios have made product improvements in some areas but the foundational underpinnings of their platforms are dated and they still rely heavily on 3rd party implementation and integration to address broader customer experience requirements.

In our second category of new entrants, we find that while acknowledging the positive feedback on the technology and design aspects of the Thunderhead solution, in some respects they tried to move faster than the market was prepared to move. The sale of the Smart Communications platform is a clear signal to the market of their focus on customer engagement rather than CCM. Given the nature of CCM solutions, particularly those scenarios that have a more traditional high-volume or more print centric character, many customers desire the choice of on-premise or a hybrid cloud deployment where there is a mix of on-premise and cloud solution elements.

The final category of CCM vendors with strong content management capabilities is best suited for the evolution of CCM as part of a broader customer experience solution. The reason is that content is such an important factor in the customer experience. The way it is created, managed and integrated with other enterprise data and information is integral to creating personalized interactions. Dell EMC and OpenText are well positioned in this area. OpenText’s recent acquisitions of HP’s assets add to their portfolio but their overall solution roadmap is complex and it may take some time to integrate into their existing offerings. Dell EMC provides a robust and proven solution offering that provides the deployment options needed by customers based on their readiness to adopt and migrate to the cloud. Taking a long-term view of the market, Dell EMC will provide a very comprehensive set of options for customers particularly as it relates to the customer experience in areas such as response management, data capture, customized content and multi-channel delivery. This will help their customer organizations understand the customer journey holistically and genuinely engage with customers over time rather than merely provide good individual experiences in isolation.