March 30, 2016, Colleyville, TX—Madison Advisors—Madison Advisors today announced that Stephanie Pieruccini, VP of research and enterprise & technology consulting services, and Gina Ferrara, senior analyst for Madison Advisors, will be speaking and sharing insights on the advancements and the future of customer communications management (CCM) at Xplor’s 2016 annual conference being held April 5-7 at the Caribe Royale Orlando in Florida.

On Monday, April 4, Pieruccini will be part of GMC Software’s Pre-conference Leadership Forum presenting a whitepaper, “One Platform to Rule Them All.” She’ll also participate in a Q&A session after the presentation. Additionally, on Tuesday, April 5, Pieruccini will be part of a four-person industry panel in the Evolving Trends track of the conference designed to offer views from industry analysts and consultants. This panel will seek to answer the question “What’s next?” by discussing the evolution of technology, the changes in human behavior it will drive and how it will affect how we communicate with customers.

Ferrara will also be part of the Evolving Trends track. Her presentation “Outsourcing Print: Inevitable or Avoidable?” on April 6 will outline changes with the in-plant transactional print and mail market due to a number of competitive constraints that include advancing technology, excess capacity and significant pressure to reduce costs. Attendees will learn what has and hasn’t worked as she shares Madison Advisors’ case studies of innovative companies that have engaged various strategies to address these issues. Attendees will come away with the six converging factors that create the “perfect storm” for making the decision to improve things in-house or prepare to outsource print.

Pieruccini will also be moderating a panel in the Customer Experience track on April 5. The panel “The Great CCM Debate” is comprised of panelists from top CCM providers and will explore such questions as what is the real definition of CCM, what has been accomplished in this area so far and what does it mean and what it will take to move from customer experience to customer engagement.

For more information on Xploration 16 visit http://xplor.org/xplor16/.

March 23, 2016, Colleyville, TX—Madison Advisors—Madison Advisors today announced its 2016 CCM Executive Roundtable, held at The Vinoy® Renaissance St. Petersburg Resort & Golf Club, March 7- 9 was deemed a huge success by attendees and sponsors alike. More than 50 attendees representing top enterprises in the insurance, finance and banking industries spent two and a half days with recognized industry leaders participating in thought-provoking discussions that addressed today’s most pressing customer communications management (CCM) challenges.

Now in its 6th year, Madison Advisors’ CCM Executive Roundtable has proven to be an incredible opportunity for enterprises of all industries to join in highly focused interactive sessions with peers who face similar challenges and successes in their implementation of CCM. Each roundtable session explored the most current issues around the state of CCM and the technologies involved, with the goal of gaining a comprehensive understanding of how to improve the quality of the customer experience and advance a company’s CCM processes.

Along with an impressive list of attendees, the 2016 CCM Executive Roundtable welcomed a roster of notable sponsor companies that included Canon, FIS, Inlet, Broadridge, Crawford Technologies, DST Customer Communications, Fiserv, RR Donnelly, CEDAR Document Technologies and NEPS. Each sponsor was given time to present to the group their unique insights on CCM best practices, share case studies and discuss what firms should be doing today to better improve existing CCM processes. Attendees also heard from Madison Advisors analysts on the latest research findings on CCM trends. Additionally, there were opportunities to connect with analysts, sponsors and fellow attendees during networking breaks throughout the day and during evening events.

The group also toured two facilities while at the Roundtable. The first tour was at Valpak, North America's leading direct marketer, that has built one of the most advanced and automated manufacturing centers in the world. The group also visited Florida-based FIS, the world’s largest global provider dedicated to banking and payment technologies.

“We’ve designed Madison Advisors 2016 CCM Executive Roundtable to be an opportunity unlike any other to connect with peers and industry leaders who recognize that having a solid CCM strategy in place determines how effectively you engage customers throughout the entire communication lifecycle,” said Kemal Carr, president of Madison Advisors. “We are proud to say that 85 percent of firms that participate in this event come back every year. We want this year’s attendees and sponsors to know how much we appreciate and value their enthusiastic participation that made this event a success. Plans are underway for 2017 with several sponsors already committed and we look forward to seeing our return attendees.”

3/15/16

By Stephanie Pieruccini, Vice President of Research and Enterprise & Technology Consulting Services, Madison Advisors

Managing customer communications continues to be a challenge for today’s insurance organizations. Customer communications and their corresponding workflows quickly become very complex due to the need to maintain compliance and make regulatory changes along with making communications more personalized, relevant and actionable. Add in the growing channel delivery expectations in the digital world and these hurdles have caused many insurance organizations to fall behind when it comes to achieving strategic communication goals and engaging with customers.

As might be expected, these rapid changes in customer communication requirements have driven software providers to build additional capabilities into their solutions. Unfortunately, these ever-increasing capabilities can often create a technology proficiency gap that leaves companies struggling to make effective use of or generate a return from their customer communications management (CCM) investments. Moreover, document composition tools represent only one element of customer communications lifecycle management, leaving internal IT departments with the burden of integrating numerous tools into an already disparate CCM infrastructure.