By Kemal Carr

Early announcements of Ricoh’s INTERACT 2018 conference, held June 18–21 at the Westin Hotel, Westminster, CO, near Ricoh’s Boulder plant, promised to be bigger and better this year, and it delivered in several ways.  Now in its eighth year, the biggest change for this event was that it brought multiple Ricoh product groups together:  wide format, continuous feed, cut sheet and software and services. All of these groups previously held their own customer events, but now share a single forum, signaling the ongoing convergence of technologies within the industry and across all segments.

The 450 invitation-only attendees were a mix of customers and prospects, with an estimated 250 of these being actual customers drawn from both enterprise print operations and print service providers (PSPs), both of whom can benefit from the innovations and techniques that were displayed. Ricoh also was able to secure commitments from dozens of vendor partners to participate in the event and offset the event costs. Vendor kiosks and table top exhibits lined the conference hallways, and Ricoh, of course, showcased its own products, giving us a hands-on look at two new inkjet presses before they were publicly released.

As an informational forum, the conference offered four tracks:  the software user group; print hardware education; business development, with an emphasis on marketing; and sessions devoted to showing attendees the full scope of Ricoh’s hardware and software options. It was interesting that Ricoh’s software team appears to be embracing and promoting the concept of being hardware agnostic in that Xerox, HP or Canon machines can all use Ricoh’s software tools.

In terms of hardware, INTERACT gave us previews of two new inkjet printing systems, each targeting a specific segment of the industry, although the hardware itself indicates that the lines between the segments are blurring. These are:

• Ricoh’s Pro VC70000, unveiled to the public on June 29, and designed for commercial printers who want to move work from offset presses to digital inkjet with no tradeoffs. The press is equipped with a continuous feed platform that allows commercial printers to produce higher quality materials, such as high-end catalogs and magazines, traditionally the preserve of offset. Additionally, Ricoh has developed inks that the company says enable savings in paper costs while expanding the list of acceptable media.
• The second system, officially announced on July 2, is the Pro C7200 series, a sheetfed toner-based system that features fifth color station models to expand commercial shops’ capabilities and satisfy the needs of certain specialty and niche (read value-add) markets. The press accepts sheet sizes up to 49.6” with in-line sensors and calibration for improved front-to-back registration and color consistency. Notable, too, is Ricoh’s new invisible red toner that produces images visible only under ultraviolet light, perfect for adding security features on tickets, coupons, ID cards, etc.

INTERACT 2018 reinforces what we at Madison Advisors have been saying regarding the convergence of the transactional print and commercial print markets. Transactional service providers are always looking at improved throughput to drive earnings growth in a price-conscious market, whereas commercial printers have typically focused on digital image quality and color accuracy coupled with availability of a wide variety of substrates, similar to what they use in the offset world. This allows them to transition  from offset to digital relatively seamlessly and/or to produce hybrid products, employing each of the different print technologies in one finished product, optimizing the different operational and cost efficiencies of each. Ricoh clearly is concentrating on providing a universal print hardware and software technology platform that satisfies the priorities of both markets.

As it grows, INTERACT will challenge similar existing events such as HP’s Dscoop and IBM’s Think.  All of these events, staged by manufacturers for their customers, have broadened their scope to keep up with advances in digital hardware and software. They provide invaluable opportunities for networking with peers and sharing experiences. Perhaps best of all, they provide manufacturers with insights about what they may be missing and what more they can do for us.

Gary Simpson, Vice President of Business Development & Service Delivery

There’s a reason Robotics Process Automation (RPA) is one of the hottest topics within the C-suite and it’s not just being discussed within a few specific industry segments. RPA represents the biggest opportunity for traditional enterprises in all industry segments to change their weary productivity paradigm.

Why is there such a focus on RPA, and why now? It’s the clearest path to the next revolution in enterprise productivity and the technology required to support it is proven, accessible and affordable. What’s more, RPA automations have been built in a modularized fashion and are configurable to accommodate business processes of all types while allowing customization for specific lines of business and functions within that business. I’ll get back to that point later.

Business productivity needs a reboot. Traditional, or conventional, companies not born in the digital age operating from legacy systems continue to process 80% of their work manually and 20% utilizing some sort of un-optimized automation. Approximately $100M is spent each year on digital transformation, yet many of these projects fail. Rewriting old code is too expensive and too time consuming. Process reengineering by integrating and modernizing all applications within a business process is not practical. Traditional companies continue to struggle to keep pace with and compete against the customer experience standards being set by “born digital” startups in their respective industries.

Traditional enterprises are in need of viable alternatives to drive efficiency to expedite an improved customer experience and are turning to the intelligent digital workforce and RPA to accomplish this. RPA bots are intended to transform, not replace, human work. RPA bots are supplementing worker activities by removing repetitive mundane tasks, thus allowing workers to focus on high-value decision- making activities. “Low-code,” or self-service data management and RPA tools, are enabling finance, human resources and other departments to address data challenges in their function and eliminate repetitive tasks. Embracing this technology allows traditional companies to disrupt their operations with tools that bridge the gap between the inadequacies of legacy systems and related data management and their quest for “digital transformation.”

So, let’s get back to my earlier point about the ease and speed of bot deployment. At its recent premier customer experience event in New York, I was introduced to Automation Anywhere’s Bot Store. The Automation Anywhere Bot Store enables organizations to deploy and mobilize bots in a fraction of the time it takes to build them from the ground up. The Bot Store features verified, off-the-shelf prebuilt bots from strategic partners such as EY, Accenture, Genpact and others that run on the Automation Anywhere Enterprise platform. The prebuilt bots can be snapped together like LEGO® blocks to automate complex business processes, such as order fulfillment, mortgage processing or logistics management. For instance, all businesses purchase products and services. This process involves creating purchase orders, receiving goods and making invoice payments. Line items, quantities and dollar values need to be reconciled among purchase orders, invoices and delivery receipts—a process referred to as “three-way matching.” While the process may sound generic, it is implemented differently in every organization with different systems and processes. Automating the three-way matching process can be costly and time consuming, but with prebuilt, customizable bots from the Bot Store such a process can be automated in weeks, if not days.

Access to the Automation Anywhere Bot Store is open to all, but bot submissions and downloads are currently restricted to customers and partners. Bots are available to Automation Anywhere customers and partners free of charge for an introductory period.

In its appropriate context, the Bot Store has been created to introduce a deployment model that dramatically shortens the time-to-value for business process automation initiatives. The question has been asked, “Are prebuilt bots and bot stores really helpful in speeding up robotic process automation?” Perhaps this is the wrong question to be asked because there really is no question about it, they do speed up deployment. A deeper and more meaningful question might be centered on the use and reuse of specific IP and its applicability across enterprises and their respective business units. Prebuilt bots listed in the Bot Store encapsulate business process expertise and best practices that can be leveraged by other organizations with licenses from bot creators who own the IP that resides in the bots they list.

Complex business processes cannot be easily encapsulated into a single, monolithic bot. The way one enterprise implements three-way matching can obviously vary from that of a competitor and it may also vary by line of business within the enterprise. By breaking down complex processes into modular, configurable automations, processes can be implemented in ways that are meaningful to each enterprise and their respective business units.

Enterprises realize that there is no silver bullet to bridging the digital divide between legacy systems and their organization’s digital transformation. They are looking for compartmentalized automations that provide for customization rather than full end-to-end process automation solutions. No two companies are alike, and very few business processes across business units within companies are exactly alike. In this age of the “sharing economy,” the Automation Anywhere Bot Store is an open marketplace that provides the opportunity for partners, RPA developers and customers to directly engage and transact with each other. In addition, with RPA as the driver, these bots also extend the sophisticated AI and cognitive functionality on the Automation Anywhere platform, something that may not be found with other providers.

Developing a strong RPA ecosystem by packaging reusable modular automations provides a way for enterprises and their partners to begin the journey toward integrating the intelligent digital workforce and transforming the way they conduct business.

By Gina Ferrara, Senior Analyst

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” This proverb, credited to the writings of Thomas H. Palmer and later popularized by William Edward Hickson in his “Moral Song,” applies to many circumstances in life and in business. But not all circumstances. The five companies featured in our 2nd edition of the “Customer Communications Management Hosted Managed Services Market Update” understand this completely.

At Madison Advisors, we engage with clients that struggle with customer communications management due to a complex technology infrastructure that consists of legacy systems, multiple document composition tools and content repositories, thousands of document templates, and limited multi-channel delivery. Many have sought point solutions to meet an internal line of business requirement to deliver communications electronically. These point solutions add to the complexity of technology infrastructure that is already poorly integrated. This places heavy reliance on internal IT not only to manage all the technology, but also to balance and prioritize new development projects against change requests to existing documents.

Often, organizations believe that a major technology refresh will solve these challenges and so they try again. On the surface, eliminating old technology sounds like a good idea; however, some organizations may lack the necessary resources and skills to reap the benefits of this undertaking and obtain the anticipated ROI from making the capital expenditure. Others may not know where to begin, or worse yet, have begun and ran out of funding or hit a major roadblock along the way and abandoned the project altogether.

Let’s face it—CCM is not easy, and we give kudos to those who have tried to make it work. Standing out from the competition is no longer about selling a product or service at the best price—it is about the experience. Technology continues to change and, with it, consumer expectations. Google, Apple and Amazon have helped to fuel those expectations, leaving many enterprises to struggle to keep up.  Organizations that provide an exceptional customer experience will reap the benefits of customer loyalty, deeper relationships and increased sales. But if your organization has fallen behind and is unable to provide the digital experience that consumers are looking for, it might be time to consider outsourcing to a CCM hosted managed services provider as an alternative solution.

What exactly is CCM hosted managed services? It is a technology model that incorporates the critical components of CCM in a single integrated platform. This results-driven model offers a complete end-to-end solution that addresses enterprise communication requirements, relieves the burden on IT resources, and delivers an optimized return on investment (ROI) by shifting from a capital expenditure model (CapEx) to an operational expense model (OpEx).

Our initial report “Hosted Managed Services: Changing the Paradigm in Customer Communications Management” (released October 2015) provided an introduction to CCM HMS. This latest research report further explains the seven critical components of CCM, provides an update on the latest trends in hosted managed services, and shares how the five companies featured have developed their solutions to help enterprises solve customer communications challenges. While purchasing and integrating the critical technology components necessary for a unified CCM platform is not insurmountable, if your organization is unable to achieve the desired results due to lack of time, resources and budget, it might be time to consider this alternative.

Click here to access our full report “Customer Communications Management Hosted Managed Services Market Update 2nd Edition.”

July 12, 2018 –Colleyville, TX—Madison Advisors is announcing a Call for Participation (CFP) for enterprises and print service providers to participate in its “Color Migration and Digital Delivery: Trends in Transactional Communications” research. As Madison Advisors continues to track color migration, it is expanding its research to include trends in omni-channel delivery and the role color print plays in an overall omni-channel strategy.

Participating organizations will be offered several benefits including market exposure, right to re-purpose excerpts from the study, Madison Advisors’ analyst quotes for press releases and for use on participants’ websites, and an electronic copy of the study.

Topics to be covered in the research will include the following:

• Barriers that prevent or inhibit migration from monochrome print to color for transactional communications
• The role of color print in an omni-channel communications strategy
• Adoption rates, trends and available digital delivery channels for enterprises and offered by print service providers
• Preference management, including challenges associated with collection, ownership and management of preference data to enable omni-channel delivery capabilities

For more information about the “Color Migration and Digital Delivery: Trends in Transactional Communications” study, CLICK HERE

Participation in this study is complimentary. If you are interested in participating in this valuable industry research, please call Gina Ferrara at (401) 529-6986 or email ginaferrara@madison-advisors.com.

July 10, 2018—Madison Advisors announced today the release of a new research study, “Customer Communications Management Hosted Managed Services Market Update 2nd Edition.” This report provides an update on the latest trends in customer communications management (CCM) hosted managed services (HMS) and how initial research participants have developed or enhanced their ability to help enterprises solve challenges with customer communications and compliance, resulting in an enhanced customer experience.

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July 10, 2018, Colleyville, TX—Madison Advisors announced today the release of a new research study, “Customer Communications Management Hosted Managed Services Market Update 2nd Edition.” This report provides an update on the latest trends in customer communications management (CCM) hosted managed services (HMS)and how initial research participants have developed or enhanced their ability to help enterprises solve challenges with customer communications and compliance, resulting in an enhanced customer experience.

Some key observations in the study include:

• Data aggregation concerns: Data security issues, complexity of legacy applications, the size of the hosted managed services provider and internal IT were highlighted as the primary barriers to adoption of a CCM hosted managed services solution. Lack of executive-level support or internal sponsorship were also noted as barriers.
• Organizations need to integrate their CCM and CX strategies: The convergence of customer experience (CX) with CCM is becoming more prominent as noted by the newly featured capabilities offered, such as payment integration.
• Digital engagement is slowly increasing:All participants support delivery channels, such as social media and personalized video; however, adoption rates are still low.
• The pricing models for CCM hosted managed services will typically include:Fees associated with implementation and onboarding, production support services and labor-based fees for post-implementation change requests.
• More organizations are beginning to focus on the customer experience: The prioritization of customer experience has some enterprises thinking about creating a CCM Center of Excellence; however, this remains a slow-moving trend with minimal adoption.

“The market opportunity for CCM hosted managed services is substantial. Since our last report in October 2015, Madison Advisors has an optimistic, yet still conservative, view of this market, and estimates it to be greater than $5 billion in the United States alone,” said study author, Gina Ferrara, senior analyst at Madison Advisors.

For enterprises in need of a technology update, the research evaluates if the CCM necessary technology should be developed internally, purchased and integrated with existing technology infrastructure or outsourced to a hosted managed services provider. Despite some early adopters, significant opportunity remains in verticals such as financial services, insurance and others that generate large volumes of transactional communications, such as utilities and telecommunication companies. Smaller organizations such as credit unions and savings banks that may typically lack the resources and/or expertise in CCM technology present additional opportunity for this market to grow.

To purchase the full report,“Customer Communications Management Hosted Managed Services Market Update 2nd Edition,” click here.