2/16/17

It should come as no surprise that data is a critical component in customer communications management (CCM). Given the amount of time consumers spend on computers and smartphones, personal data is collected from almost every activity we do each day. For companies that create customer communications, the importance of data is obviously not a new concept; however, many organizations face a significant challenge when it comes to extracting relevant data from source systems.

The Bottom Line

To create personalized, relevant, and timely communications in real time, the data needs to be available in real time.

At Madison Advisors, we work with many large enterprise clients that have multiple lines of business, each with a unique set of core systems. These core systems contain a significant amount of customer and transaction data and are associated with output files in a variety of data formats. The output files become the input for the document composition process. Since these files are not standardized, data preparation and manipulation processes are typically needed to create a standard input file structure. Preparing the data in this way for effective use in customer communications is a critical first step in the document generation life cycle.

2/3/17

By Roger Tapke

The heightened priority of organizations in every industry to focus on the customer experience, reflected in the augmentation of marketing roles to include Chief Customer Officers (CCOs) and Chief Experience Officers (CXOs), has placed unprecedented pressure on marketing departments to innovate in every way possible.

While not a bad thing in and of itself, this impetus for innovation can lead to disjointed and even costly outcomes for the organization. Here is a simplified, but all too common, example:

The marketing department in line of business "A" decides there is a potential customer experience advantage to be gained by changing the look of an envelope for a mailing. However, other parts of the organization are routinely using an envelope of a slightly different size. For the marketing leads in line of business "A", the decision to change the envelope seems minor. But when looked at holistically from an organizational perspective, standardizing on a single envelope instead could result in cost-savings and efficiencies that deliver significant benefits across multiple lines of business in the organization. Editor's Note: You can read more on that topic in our January/February issue or by clicking here.