Clarity, Award Winning Technology by Pitney Bowes

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Interview with Marie-Pierre Belanger, VP Digital Solutions & Product Manager at Pitney Bowes
By: Skip Henk, EDP – CEO of Xplor International

Xplor’s annual Technology of the Year Award honors an individual, company or organization that has conceived and developed an original concept leading to a significant advancement in the industry.

Each year Xplor’ call for Award Submissions yields a plethora of hardware and software submissions as vendors vie for recognition which tasks the Xplor Award Committee.

This year’s winner of the Technology of the Year Award is the Clarity product by Pitney Bowes, a new cloud offering   that leverages data analytics and services to help increase productivity and lower the cost of running a print and mail operation.

I had the opportunity to speak with Marie-Pierre Belanger, VP Digital Solutions & Product Manager at Pitney Bowes to learn more about their award winning product. Marie assumed her role in August of 2016 with the mission of continuing the success of Clarity by leading highly skilled team of experts to define, develop and deliver PB Industrial Enterprise Mail equipment data optimization solutions.

Skip: First, congratulations on receiving the Technology of the Year Award. I have to say our judges were quite impressed.

Marie: Thank you and we are honored to accept this award recognizing our work in the Industrial Internet and it’s especially gratifying to be recognized by Xplor.”  

Skip: Clarity is part of the Enterprise Business Unit of PB. Could you share with our readers how it fits within the PB family?

Marie: Our clients include many of the world’s leading insurers, telecommunications companies and financial institutions who have come to rely on Pitney Bowes to process billions of pieces of mail annually. Faced with increasing competition and cost pressures, mail operations are constantly looking for ways to improve efficiency and productivity, and maintain a competitive advantage. By connecting industrial sensors, machine data, people and processes, the Clarity solutions suite helps clients access new intelligence to drive higher levels of operational performance.

Clarity Solutions is a cloud based SaaS offering available on our global fleet of production mailing systems.  It integrates and organizes data collected from sensors on our machines to drive greater operational performance for our clients.

Skip: In a nutshell, what is Clarity and what does it represent to the industry?

Marie: Clarity is a disruptive technology that brings the transformational benefits of the Industrial Internet to production print and mail.   The data and real-time insights enable the predictive analytics, and prescriptive maintenance that drive optimized performance and improved business outcomes.   The Clarity suite is comprised of three offerings:

Clarity Advisor, launched in early 2016, is our new service delivery model that offers an intelligent view into the performance of our client’s equipment to help drive higher levels of machine efficiency.  It proactively monitors trends and patterns to diagnose and resolve issues before they occur resulting in up to 10% greater machine efficiency.   Our technical experts leverage these analytics and insights to prevent system downtime and predict anomalies allowing us to start moving to outcome based service support.

Clarity Optimizer leverages actionable insights and industry benchmarks to identify an optimal combination of jobs, machines and operators to help clients improve equipment performance, operational productivity and capacity.

Clarity Scheduler provides real-time adaptive scheduling to help clients meet critical service-level agreements and drive productivity.

And in late 2017, Clarity for Production Print Systems will provide a detailed view of machine efficiency and consumable usage.

Skip: Clarity utilizes the “industrial internet”. For those not familiar with the term what exactly the industrial internet?

Marie: The Industrial Internet brings together industrial machines, advanced analytics and people in a network of highly secured connected devices to monitor, collect, analyze and deliver data-driven insights that help drive transformational business outcomes.   The business benefits include lower cost of operations, greater productivity, output and increased service levels.

Skip: This seems to be a collaborative effort with GE. How do they fit in to the equation?

Marie: At Pitney Bowes, we are leveraging a combination of physical and digital technologies to transform our businesses, which include mailing and shipping, global ecommerce and location intelligence.   We chose to partner with GE to transform our enterprise mailing business with GE Predix, the software platform for the Industrial Internet since GE has expertise in industrial manufacturing.  Our production print and mail equipment is very similar to the large scale industrial GE equipment.

Skip: What makes Clarity unique? 

Marie: This cloud based Industrial Internet technology, the first in the mail industry, allows Pitney Bowes to provide unique innovative capabilities to our clients.  Many systems collect and report data; however, by coupling the cloud analytics with our technical system knowledge and expertise, Clarity Advisor delivers the intelligent insights needed to drive higher levels of operational performance.

And by leveraging the data collected across our global install base, our clients can begin to understand how their operation compares with industry benchmarks and obtain insights that will drive the most optimal combination of jobs, machines and operators through Clarity Optimizer.

Truly innovative and unique, Clarity Scheduler leverages machine learning capabilities along with in-depth insight into the productivity relationships, trends and reoccurring patterns between operators, machines and jobs.  This provides our clients with a dynamic, adaptive real-time scheduler that learns from historical performance to unlock additional capacity and maximize yield.

And finally, all this is delivered through a secure cloud platform that allows our client to focus on their core competencies and automatically receive new features instead of supporting and maintaining complex IT infrastructures.

Skip: Marie, once again congratulations to Pitney Bowes. Do you have any closing comments? How can our readers learn more about the Pitney Bowes Clarity product?

Marie: We are proud of the recognition we have received from Xplor for Clarity.   This innovation offers the Xplor community a solution that will transform the way print and mail operations provide high quality service to their clients and driver better business outcome.  We invite you to learn more about how Clarity might benefit your operation.  Click here to do so.

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Skip Henk, EDP
President/CEO
Xplor International

Much More Than a City in France

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An Interview with XLPrint USA CEO, Gerard Callaghan
By: Skip Henk, EDP – CEO of Xplor International

At our last conference I had the opportunity to meet and speak with Gerard Callaghan, CEO of XLPrint USA, about the various changes in our industry.

I must admit, I was not familiar with XLPrint but after speaking with Gerard and spending some time on their website  (http://www.xlprint.com/) it is apparent that their platform, Paris, is relevant, agile and totally focused on transaction documents.

I decided to circle back with Gerard and get him to share a few additional thoughts on XLPrint and his vision for our industry.

Skip: Gerard thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with the E-Document News audience.

Gerard: It is my pleasure Skip.

Skip: For our readers that are not familiar with XLPrint and its Paris product, give us your 15 second elevator pitch?

Gerard: XLPrint is a software company and Paris is our flagship product. Paris has been employed in over 55 countries, in almost every industry and in thousands of customers producing billions of printed and digital transaction documents a year. Paris is the culmination of more than 30 years of development and refinement of the tools required to efficiently design, compose and deliver transaction documents. Everyone knows that you need the right tool for a job and XLPrint remains focused exclusively on delivering exactly the right tool for transaction document workflow. We do not attempt to make tools for marketing automation or graphics arts, for example. We focus entirely on transaction document production and workflow. We believe that we continue to excel at this.

Skip: Looking ahead 2-4 years, what will our industry look like?

Gerard: I can’t think of a more exciting time to be in our industry. The rate of change and evolution in the customer communication management (CCM) and customer experience (CX) industry is astounding. Having been in this industry for over 30 years I can’t think of any other period of such great innovation and value creation. However, as exciting as these new opportunities are, companies are still very focused at fulfilling the most basic obligation of delivering transaction documents. This is usually done from business systems that have been in place for a decade or more and will remain in place for another decade or more. Many companies need a solution like Paris to handle these requirements, yet be confident they are investing in solutions that support future requirements. ‘Transaction Document Production‘ may not sound as glamorous as ‘Marketing Automation‘ or ‘Customer Experience’, but it is a vital component of any business and its workflow.

Skip: What effect will emerging technologies have on our customers and our industry?

Gerard: We are working on some very exciting ideas for transaction document content and delivery which will appeal to some of our more forward-thinking customers, but the truth is that the majority of our customers expect only incremental change in this area. Our customers still expect to be delivering significant volumes of printed and PDF/Email transaction documents in 2 to 4 years. As we saw with email delivery, there was no overnight change. Print and mail is still the main medium for transaction documents and it has been, and continues to be, a very gradual change to digital delivery. We believe that businesses will continue to look for specialized, robust, future-proof tools for transaction document production and we believe that XLPrint is one of the most focused and reliable providers out there.

Skip: What does the longer view look like? What will transaction document production look like in 15 years?

Gerard: So, even in 10 years’ time, transaction documents will still be printed and mailed and Paris will be there for them however we believe that by then we will be reaching (or have reached) a tipping point and that the majority of transaction documents will be electronically delivered. At this point, there will be an incredible opportunity to deliver spectacular functionality. We believe there will be an explosion in functionality and capabilities. We are already envisioning and working on these ideas and plan to be there for our customers as they evolve into this very bright future. XLPrint has both feet firmly planted on the ground focusing on what customers need “today” but we are very excited about what lays ahead in the longer term.

Skip: Gerard, thank you for your time. If someone would like to get in contact with you and learn more about XLPrint what is the best way to do that?

Gerard: There is obviously our web site at xlprint.com however you can also contact me directly at gcallaghan@usa.xlprint.com

About XLPrint
2017 sees XLPrint celebrate its 31st year in the business of document production and workflow solutions. We have witnessed, and been a party to, incredible changes in the way that documents are produced, distributed and managed and continue to be at the leading edge of that evolution. With thousands of installations spanning more than 55 countries, producing billions of physical and electronic pages each year, our global industry and market experience is unparalleled.

We pride ourselves on thinking beyond today, and strive to revolutionize how your business will manage tomorrow’s document production opportunities. We base our success on leading-edge technology, reliable and knowledgeable support and solid partner relationships

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Skip Henk, EDP
President/CEO
Xplor International

Why should my company look at EDP Industry Certification?

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An Interview with Scott Draeger, M-EDP, Architect of the EDP Challenge
By: Skip Henk, EDP – CEO of Xplor International

When I was asked to interview someone who has done something significant for the EDP Program that no one else has, I immediately thought of Scott Draeger, M-EDP, Vice President of Product at GMC Software. Scott is the architect of what we today call the EDP Challenge.

To give you a little background about Scott, he has been involved with Xplor now for over 15 years. Over the years, Scott has attended Xplor conferences, spoke at events, chaired education tracks, served as a board member, served on a variety of panels/committees, and much more. His insight and forward-thinking has really helped the industry and Xplor as an association.

Skip: Scott, thank you for taking the time today to speak to me about something I know you are passionate about, the EDP Certification program.

Scott: It is my pleasure as it certainly is a passion of mine.

Skip: When did you get your EDP and what drove you to strive for it?

Scott: When I graduated from UNLV, it was a tough job market. I applied for a “Document Designer” position at National Data Services of Chicago, and I was hired by Louise Wilhelm, EDP (then EDPP). She was especially passionate about the EDP program, because she was part of the first class. She invested time into her team, showing me and my coworkers how the EDP program can turn a job into a career.

From that meeting, I had a personal goal of getting my EDP as soon as possible. I moved on to a different position in the industry, gained my five years of experience, and then went for my EDP. I asked Louise to be my mentor, and she agreed. We put together a portfolio, and I was awarded my certification on stage in Dallas in 2004. I was proud to be recognized as an EDP by a large new group of peers, and I am grateful to Louise for introducing me to this community.

Skip: What does it mean to you personally to be an EDP?

Scott: Being an EDP means that I can prove longevity and dedication in a profession that has a deep well of knowledge, a requirement to constantly learn, and a commitment to improving our craft. EDPs care about how we can improve things, why we are doing these projects, and increasing the impact of the things we to in the design, creation and delivery of electronic documents.

It also means that people often ask me, “What’s an EDP?” (M-EDP in my case.) I love telling them about Xplor, the EDP concept, and how our industry is committed to leading valuable changes that streamline the business aspects of our projects while we are bringing new features and channel to the customer experience.

 

Skip: Has the certification helped you professionally throughout your career?

Scott: Most often, this has helped when I meet people. Every time someone asks, “What’s an M-EDP,” I get a chance to show passion about our industry. This passion then reflects positively on the work I am doing as well as the company I represent. Many times in my career, other EDPs and I have networked to solve some difficult technical, business, or Xplor-related topics. EDPs can find and resolve difficult problems.

 

Skip: A few years ago, you approached me wanting to put your company through an “EDP Challenge”. You have since done it for three years and you’re looking at a fourth. How did the EDP Challenge come about and why did you push for your organization to do an EDP Challenge?

Scott: I was on the EDP Commission, and I saw that the numbers of applicants appeared low to me I know that it is a great program that has added value to my career. I realized that the numbers were low, because I wasn’t doing my part. I looked around at my colleagues and saw a bunch of great potential EDPs. Adding EDP to a business card or an email signature brings credibility to a person. Even when it brings a question, “What does EDP Mean,” it is a chance to show passion for our skills, industry and work.

Once I realized there were many great candidates with a low level of awareness, I looked around for some budget, and negotiated a way to get a large number of EDPs through the program on a single portfolio submission price. Then, it was a matter of hosting some lunchtime webinars about the designation, the process, and the program. The first one generated over 20 new EDPs from several countries. 

 

Skip: What does the certification mean to all the people you’ve guided through the program?

Scott: Over the years, I have mentored or assisted over 50 people through the program. However, I am the worst mentor in all of Xplor’s history, as I believe I have the highest portfolio resubmission rate.  I started to notice that a lot of new skills were becoming requirements for some of the projects. I noticed that a lot of “electronic documents” were moving away from projects run by Xplorers, and moving to some digital, mobile or web agencies. So, I worked a bit with the Xplor EDP Commission to get some of these new skills recognized. Today, applicants can get points for some of these web, mobile, and marketing skills.

This is usually because I am trying to bring people with new roles into the program, because our industry is changing rapidly. Some of these experiences have made earning the EDP designation more valuable for both me and the EDP (they all passed.) Some of the people I have mentored have gone on to achieve some wonderful things in this industry and have even mentored other EDPs. As Xplorers, we need to stop the erosion of communications to fragmented digital projects, so younger EDA applicants with new types of experience are of particular interest to me.
Skip: What does it mean for your company to be investing in their people?

Scott: At GMC Software, two of our shared corporate values include Performance and Passion. We are looking to constantly improve our skills and make sure we are excited about what we do. We invested time in 2 EDP Challenges at GMC. This helped people see that our industry has a lot of skills.

Once they go through the process, Support people see a deeper importance of sales and marketing. Marketing people see the depth of knowledge needed to make great campaigns that speak to potential clients, and the product owners learn more about the deep requirements of integrations into larger processes. So, every applicant learns to appreciate the value of the part they contribute as well as how their part fits into the larger process. Once people see this mix, they have more pride in their work and more awareness of the value of their work in the wider world.

 

Skip: Who do you think should attain their certification?

Scott: I think people who go through the process will be surprised at how large the return on investment of time can be. So, I think that anyone interested in learning about themselves should attain this designation. If you are mildly interested in this as a career, get an EDA. If you’ve been here for five years, and you think you have a story to tell, go for an EDP. I promise you have three great stories to tell, which is the basic criteria for a gret EDP portfolio. I can also promise that going through the process will improve your perspective about where you fit in the industry. With some passion, this context, and an EDP, you can take your career to some amazing places based on the personal insight you gain through the process.

Skip: Thank you very much Scott for taking the time. I look forward to seeing you in Orlando from March 28-30 for Xploration 17 where your newest class from your EDP challenge will be awarded!

If anyone has any additional questions regarding the EDP Certification program, please visit www.xplor.org/edp and take a look around.

Until next time! Take care.

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Skip Henk, EDP
President/CEO
Xplor International

OpenText Exstream, Digital Transformation and Customer Communications Management

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An Interview with OpenText Exstream, Senior Manager of Product Strategy
By: Skip Henk, EDP – CEO of Xplor International

Last year Open Text Corp. acquired certain customer-communications management assets from HP Inc., an acquisition that certainly expanded and complemented the OpenText portfolio of software offerings.

Now that the dust has settled a bit, I wanted to catch up with Avi Greenfield, EDP – Senior Manager of Product Strategy, to discuss his views about digital transformation and Customer Communications from an OpenText Exstream point of view.

Avi, a 20 year industry veteran, is focused on technology solutions that build business value, focusing on customer communications and content management strategy. As I mentioned he is a Senior Manager of Product Strategy for OpenText Exstream, responsible for understanding the needs of customers for managing business-critical communications in complex and demanding environments, and driving the direction of the Exstream portfolio to meet those needs.

Avi received his Electronic Document Professional (EDP) certification in 2012.

Skip: Avi, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts today.

Avi: You are welcome; we appreciate Xplor allowing us the opportunity.

Skip: For our readers who are not familiar with OpenText Exstream, can you give us your 15 second   elevator pitch?

Avi: OpenText Exstream offers the fastest, most reliable communications production engine to enable

digital transformation for companies. Exstream helps companies in a range of industries and sizes optimize customer engagement through the design and delivery of personalized, consistent, compliant, anytime, anywhere communications for better customer experiences across all channels. The latest version includes capabilities that enable users to create responsive, mobile-ready content; generate robust, interactive charts; perform controlled in-context editing; and better handle PDFs.

Skip: There is a lot in the media now about “digital transformation” and “digital business/digital economy” – what does that mean to OpenText and why is it important? 

Avi:  With 50% of the workforce expected to be made up of those who were “born digital” by 2020, digital communications are becoming more and more important and many companies are looking to move to a digital business model. A recent Gartner report states that 89% of companies will compete on customer experience and 90% of CEOs place CX as one of their top three priorities, so companies will need to be able to provide exceptional customer experiences across multiple channels to stay competitive in the future.

The Millennial generation is now larger than the Baby Boomers and they have more than one trillion dollars in purchasing power. Companies need to adapt their customer communications to appeal to this highly digital and technologically advanced group. Digital transformation of your business will be critical and is much more than being able to send email or PDFs because these consumers want much more engaging experiences and access to their brands 24/7. They have the highest adoption and usage of mobile devices of any generation, and they navigate seamlessly between devices and channels, which means they expect relevant and consistent content, experiences and branding across all channels.

Skip: What is the impact of digital transformation on CCM?

Avi:  We see it driving a lot of demand for modern CCM capabilities. Digital transformation means rethinking business processes to meet consumer demand for frictionless multichannel interactions. This frequently means updating or replacing core systems of record and systems and engagement like CRM, billing, customer care, and claims for example. Most organizations already have multiple systems that are used to produce and deliver traditional and digital communications. So when they update those core systems, it’s a great time to consider whether their current CCM tools and processes are able to serve all of their enterprise needs for engaging customers in a way puts them at the center and gives them the freedom to engage using the channels and devices of their choice. We see this leading to increased investment in enterprise-grade CCM tools and also increased focus and organizational resources dedicated to producing and delivering timely, relevant, compliant communications.

Skip: Given these changes, and a shift to digital documents and communications, what steps can people take right now to take advantage of this?

Avi: In the digital age, it is critical for your company to move from traditional paper-based documents to engaging conversations across all channels. By delivering communications in the channels preferred by your customers and designing with digital in mind, you can turn your communications into a differentiator.

Your communications should use clear and concise language and be compliant, accurate, and controlled. All this requires synchronizing the right data with CCM software and the business processes that intersect with customer touchpoints.

Communications—whether traditional or digital—are the primary customer touchpoint for most organizations. The quality, timeliness, and accuracy of those communications have a huge impact on the consumer’s perception of your company. And the quality of a customer’s experience is the single greatest predictor of whether they will return and promote your company or defect to a competitor and malign it.

The design of any communication is important and can either drive desired behaviors, additional revenue or loyalty if done well. If not, it can undermine customer experience and create expensive call center inquiries. As far as best practices, five key things to consider when designing any communication are:

  1. Design for understanding – What do you want recipients to understand?
  2. Design to drive action – What do you want recipients to do or not do?
  3. Design for digital first, but don’t neglect traditional channels – Do recipients have a seamless cross-channel experience?
  4. Design to align business user profile with the business process – How do you involve business users? Do they own content and messages? Can they help personalize communications for the front office?
  5. Design customer-centric communications from the outside-in – What do you do to modernize your processes and systems of interaction to deliver on consumer expectations for seamless cross-channel interactions?

Skip: Those are five great points. Do you believe the investment in CCM worth it?

Avi: Not only is it worth it, but it is essential to positive business outcomes. Providing a better customer experience is shown to increase loyalty and lifetime customer value and can be a key source of competitive differentiation. Delivering interactions that are clear, timely, and easy to understand leads to higher customer satisfaction.

So there are many pressures and expectations on customer communications. Companies must respond quickly to changing markets and circumstances, while providing consistent, high-quality communications in the recipient’s language and preferred delivery channel.

There is also a critical need to maintain compliance and control over communications for legal and regulatory reasons. At the same time, business users are demanding more control over the content and faster time to market. And of course operational requirements demand timely, optimized output at the lowest possible cost. So having an enterprise CCM platform with the right organizational commitment and resources dedicated to it is essential to increasing profitability, improving customer experience, and mitigating risk.

Skip: Avi, I once again thank you for taking the time to speak with me today and sharing your insights. Anyone who would like more information can contact OpenText here.

About OpenText Exstream
Exstream is a multichannel customer communication management (CCM) solution that is proven to improve the customer experience and make customer interactions more profitable. It allows business users to create the communications for connected customer journeys using the delivery formats and channels customers prefer – including email, web and mobile.

This software solution powers the transformation of all of your data—whatever file sources, formats, and systems you use—into relevant and insightful customer communications. With on-premise and cloud deployment options, Exstream is scalable to fit the needs of any department or complex enterprise environment. Design and deliver consistent, personalized, compliant, anytime, anywhere communications with Exstream.

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Skip Henk, EDP
President/CEO
Xplor International

Harry’s Corner – 47-47-6 Unintended Consequences

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Submitted by Harry Stephens, President/CEO of DATAMATX
November 21, 2016

We held our annual INg meeting at Orlando in conjunction with this year’s Graph Expo in September. One of the speakers at our meeting was a labor attorney and among the many things he spoke to us about was the upcoming Overtime Rule. For those of you that may not know specific details on this new rule, starting on December 1 2016, the salary threshold to avoid paying overtime will move to $913 per week (an annual salary of $47,476) from the current $455 per week.  Right now, hourly workers, lower-wage earners and non-managerial workers must be paid 1.5 times their hourly wage when they work more than 40 hours in a week. Under the new rule, an estimated 4.2 million workers, including those on salary, will be eligible for overtime.

On November 10th, at the Fall Board of Director’s meeting for the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, where I am on the board, the issue came up again. The Georgia Chamber of Commerce represents the unified voice of Georgia’s business community with the motto “What’s good for business is good for Georgia” driving its policy and legislative direction to ensure the future of economic mobility for all Georgians. So it makes sense that business and job creation are always a focus. I brought up this impending Overtime Rule at the meeting, encouraging both the local and national Chamber of Commerce to vocally oppose this type of job creation loss initiative as it will certainly have unintended consequences, hurting the people it intended to help.

For example, in lower-paid jobs where the minimum wage is also increasing, employers are put in the difficult situation of having middle managers making considerably less per working hour than new hires. Think of the restaurant industry where wages may be lower, hours are long and profit margins very thin. While this rule is meant to increase take-home pay, these changes may limit employment and advancement opportunities in this industry and others like it. Another good example—college graduates looking for their first job.  An employer will certainly have to think twice about hiring an inexperienced worker who needs time to “learn on the job” for an annual salary of $47,476.00 or unbudgeted overtime. Jobs are hard enough to get when you don’t have the right experience. This rule will make it even more difficult. Unintended consequences. Hurting the people it intended to help.

For every business, this rule causes a number of consequences as well, particularly when it comes to payroll. We essentially have two choices. If the increased salary threshold creates newly non-exempt employees to stay compliant, we need to either pay employees higher salaries, or pay overtime wages.

In preparation, classifying employees correctly as to whether they are exempt or non-exempt will be extremely important, particularly if you are in a business that has peaks in productivity at times that require employees to work longer hours, like month end or holidays. Because of this, I recommend checking out the Department of Labor or your state’s wage enforcement agency to get the exact requirements. The last thing a business needs is unexpected financial or legal consequences for not clearly stating an employee’s classification, entitlement to overtime and tracking of such.

It will also be important to have clear communication with employees about record keeping. For some who have been proud of being a “white collar worker” now required to keep track of time, this can be difficult. Explaining the rule and how it will affect them and your business will ease any misconceptions they may have about any changes in job description or pay.

Oh, and another piece of “good news.”  The minimum salary threshold will automatically increase every three years based on wage growth. The first automatic increase will happen on Jan. 1, 2020, which means more employees will become exempt as the threshold rises. Now, if you think you are in the clear because you are a small business, I have more “good news.” The Department of Labor FAQ fact sheet does say that “the proposed rule [applies] to employees of enterprises that have an annual gross volume of sales made or business done of $500,000 or more, and certain other businesses.” Ok. If your business makes less than $500,000 of annual revenue, is it exempt? It appears the answer is still no. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), individual employees may still be “covered in any workweek when they are individually engaged in interstate commerce, the production of goods for interstate commerce, or an activity that is closely related and directly essential to the production of such goods.”  Like I said earlier – research the information on the Department of Labor’s website or your state’s wage enforcement agency to get the exact requirements of the ruling.

There is no way around the fact that this ruling is bad for business—especially small to medium businesses that have a hard enough time growing their businesses as it is. We need dedicated employees who consider themselves professionals and want to work the long hours often needed to get ahead and grow in their profession. Employers will now have a hard time giving them that choice. Instead of benefiting workers, the rule takes away flexible schedules and maybe even certain career pursuits. For businesses, it places yet another financial burden to manage. Perfect examples of unintended consequences hurting the people it intended to help.

Until next time – Harry

Harry Stephens

Harry Stephens is President/CEO, and founder of DATAMATX, one of the nation’s largest privately held, full-service providers of printed and electronic billing solutions. He has been active in the Atlanta business community for over 40 years in various professional and trade organizations, most recently as a board member of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.  As an advocate for business mailers across the country, Stephens is actively involved in several postal trade associations.  He serves on the Executive Board of the Greater Atlanta Postal Customer Council,  Board Member of the National Postal Policy Council (NPPC), Member of Major Mailers Association(MMA), and member of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service.  He is also immediate past president of the Imaging Network Group (INg), an association for Print/Mail Service Bureaus.  As an expert on high-volume print and mail, he has frequently been asked to speak to various USPS groups, including the Board of Governors, about postal reform and other issues affecting business mailers.  Find DATAMATX at www.datamatx.com

 

The importance of the customer experience when it comes to your proof of delivery process

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Submitted by Alexandra Truchot, Content Creation Specialist for Objectif Lune.
October 12, 2016

Building your customer base involves a lot of money and effort. Once you’ve attracted new customers, it’s wise to do everything you can to keep them happy and committed over the long term so that your investment was worthwhile.

If you focus your efforts mainly on getting new customers and neglect to give your current ones a special experience, you’re actually working for your competitor, who is providing a more exclusive customer experience and doing everything possible to win their loyalty.

That said, you have a golden opportunity when delivering products to interact with your customers and make the experience positive for them. The goal is to make them want to continue buying your products, and even to recommend you to others in their network. In fact, this is one of the only chances you’ll get to meet them in person and interact directly. Why not take the opportunity to wow them?

Provide quality service to maintain customers
By providing your delivery persons with a tablet to manage delivery notes, you can impress your customers by asking them not only to sign the delivery note directly on the mobile device (rather than signing a piece of paper), but by allowing them to change the quantities they received in real time. They can even add visual proof of a damaged package, and the delivery person can specify the location information to confirm that the product was delivered to the place the customer had indicated. Then it just takes a click to send the proof of delivery to the office and to email it to the customer.

Be proactive in earning customer loyalty
Since the delivery note gets to the office faster, your staff can be proactive in addressing problems. If a parcel is damaged, the office clerk will immediately receive the proof of damage and can quickly contact the customer to apologize and offer an alternative. When paper is used, it can take 24 to 48 hours, or longer, before the customer gets any news about the damaged product. But in the former case, the customer hardly has any time to get upset. With an automated digital process, customers can’t help but notice how proactive you are in dealing with such incidents.

In addition, since data entry is no longer done by hand, the data is more reliable and the billing can be done seamlessly. Not only will your customers pay faster, since nothing needs to be changed on the invoice, but there’ll be less risk of receiving complaints.

Get closer to reaching your productivity, operational efficiency and customer experience objectives one step at a time!

AlexandraTruchot ThumbnailAlexandra Truchot – Content creation specialist with Objectif Lune. Writer and compulsive reader. Eager for unknown destinations and exciting encounters. Anything is possible, you just have to believe it. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Objectif Lune has 20 years of experience developing Customer Communications Management solutions. Our solutions bridge the gap between systems and automate more personalized, relevant, multichannel customer communications. Learn more at: www.objectiflune.com.

Automating the steps in a standard purchasing process to improve customer experience

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Submitted by Alexandra Truchot, Content Creation Specialist for Objectif Lune.
September 29, 2016

Purchasing one of your products or services is only one of the steps in a more complex customer journey. By the time your customers get to the payment stage, they will have gone through many other crucial stages during which they also interacted with your company. Furthermore, following a purchase, the journey continues because if you want to build customer loyalty or have customers make another purchase, you have to keep in touch with them.  So the journey begins with the discovery of your brand and continues with the order, payment and delivery, not to mention the after-sales service, if required.

All of these steps are just as important in order to build customer loyalty and turn your customers into ambassadors of your products and services.

Managing them, however, can be complex and often involve many small and tedious manual tasks. By automating the most essential processes, you could save a lot of time and gain your customers’ trust by offering them a better experience when dealing with your company.

Here are a few steps in a standard customer journey which you can easily automate.

Communications with potential customers
Sales cycles are often long. Prospecting is a complex task. It takes months to strengthen ties with your network and in order to do so, you need to provide high-quality content to potential customers.

Accounts opening
The creation of new accounts is a defining moment in the customer-company relationship. But if this step is made even more complex by the excessive use of paper or tedious manual data entry by your employees, it can be frustrating for potential customers.

Order-taking
Managing purchase orders often requires scanning piles upon piles of documents every day. Employees have to manually enter numerous data to launch the subsequent phases of the process. This causes many delays and orders can sometimes take several days before being confirmed!

Deliveries
When delivering the products to your customers, you have a golden opportunity to interact with them and ensure that their experience is a good one.

Invoicing
Did you know that transactional messages are 8 times more likely to be opened than other types of communications? This is therefore a great opportunity for you to communicate with your customers.

Document management
According to the Institute of Financial Operations, 43% of organizations say that being unable to find the right data in their different customer files remains their greatest issue where after-sales services are concerned. When Customer Service wants to respond to a request, it often wastes valuable time trying to put the information together, or simply even finding the information!

Get closer to reaching your productivity, operational efficiency and customer experience objectives one step at a time!

AlexandraTruchot ThumbnailAlexandra Truchot – Content creation specialist with Objectif Lune. Writer and compulsive reader. Eager for unknown destinations and exciting encounters. Anything is possible, you just have to believe it. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Objectif Lune has 20 years of experience developing Customer Communications Management solutions. Our solutions bridge the gap between systems and automate more personalized, relevant, multichannel customer communications. Learn more at: www.objectiflune.com.

Providing a more relevant customer experience

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Submitted by Alexandra Truchot, Content Creation Specialist for Objectif Lune.
August 3, 2016

Do you dream of flexibility when communicating with your customers? Do you want to offer a better customer experience? Are your organization’s systems too inflexible, keeping you from using all the data you need to provide superior service to your customers?

More than ever, organizations are being asked to make dramatic changes to how they communicate with their end clients. There are many occasions for communicating with your customers: welcome messages, invoices, orders, confirmation of payment or invitations to evaluate the services.

Consumers have high expectations and demand personalized, relevant communications. They no longer want multi-page transactional records that do not take their uniqueness into account or highlight the relationship they have with you. Personally, I hate receiving useless paperwork. I don’t want to feel like just another number, and I will always choose a company that offers me service that looks like me.

This is a huge issue today. Organizations that do not make the effort to optimize customer communications are going to quickly lose their clientele to competitors that have been able to get onboard sooner.

So, to keep your customers, your communications have to be responsive. And to do that, you have to be able to quickly and easily modify the documents you send them, based on their purchasing history, geographic location, or marketing campaigns in progress.

In addition to wanting to satisfy your customers, you have to fulfill numerous legal requirements related to transactional records. You have to add specific phrases to comply with a new law or modify certain segments of the invoice in accordance with more stringent laws in a country where you have a subsidiary. In these cases, you have to know how to respond quickly to comply and you really have no choice.

So what to do?

Take back control of your templates by modifying them in a tool specifically intended for document design. The design tool should give you access to advanced functions for personalizing your documents and give you greater flexibility when you want to modify them.

But obviously, you don’t want to get rid of the old templates created using your ERP system and start completely from scratch.

There are now business document composition tools that go beyond mere design. Getting a tool that functions like a middleware system and regenerates the old templates into something more dynamic and modern, will give you greater flexibility. You will not lose your old templates – you’ll improve them. You’ll make them relevant, customizable and interactive.

In addition, you will be able to take advantage of them to move to multi-source communications. A good tool will enable you to easily send your documents using various means. But to smoothly make the switch to digital, you can refer to my advice in my previous note.

AlexandraTruchot ThumbnailAlexandra Truchot – Content creation specialist with Objectif Lune. Writer and compulsive reader. Eager for unknown destinations and exciting encounters. Anything is possible, you just have to believe it. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Objectif Lune has 20 years of experience developing Customer Communications Management solutions. Our solutions bridge the gap between systems and automate more personalized, relevant, multichannel customer communications. Learn more at: www.objectiflune.com.

Why is it so difficult to switch to digital?

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Submitted by Alexandra Truchot, Content Creation Specialist for Objectif Lune.
July 20, 2016

According to IDC, a market research firm, by the end of 2017, two-thirds of the 2000 largest companies (ranked by Forbes magazine) will have digital transformation at the centre of their corporate strategy. Most already see digital transformation as a must. Moreover, 55% of those organizations feel the urgency to act within the year, at the risk of falling behind their competitors.

However, few of them have already completed the conversion. In fact, some have hardly begun.

That’s because switching to digital is no easy task, and here are the three main reasons.

Lack of flexibility in terms of communication
You have to be responsive in your communications in order to keep your customers. And to be responsive, you need to be able to easily and quickly change the documents you send them, based on their purchase history, geographic area, or even your current marketing campaigns.

You also need to be able to send those same documents digitally (email, web portal, EDI transactions, etc.)

Nonetheless, InfoTrends estimates that it takes an average of three months to make small changes to document templates, and twice as long (seven months!) to make major changes. Some examples of small changes to document templates include updating a company’s logo or a signature, or changing small segments of a text or paragraph. Major changes include completely re-doing the template, including the style, messages and branding.

An aging architecture
Do you sometimes feel trapped by your rigid systems that never seem suited to your organization’s changing needs?

Older systems rarely provide interactive or digital features, because they were designed long before the Internet played such a huge role in business.

For example, the inflexibility of many ERP systems complicates and slows down document updating processes. ERP systems don’t allow you to take into account the new trends in managing customer communications (modern graphics, Internet and HTML use). It gets very costly to make changes directly and requires setting up long-term projects, involving the cooperation of several departments in an organization (IT, operations, and finance).

Managing data from a number of sources
Over the years, a company puts many systems in place to meet the business needs of its various departments. The company ends up with several systems from different eras that often don’t interact well with one another. It would be quite costly to replace all of them for the purposes of data exchange.

Workers have often get into the habit of directly printing documents from each system to collect the information they need. What a waste of time and money when it would have been easier if the systems exchanged data automatically.

Not only do you need a middleware system that allows you to bridge the gap between your systems and retrieve the data you need, but you’ll also want to easily convert and standardize the data moving between systems, if necessary.

AlexandraTruchot ThumbnailAlexandra Truchot – Content creation specialist with Objectif Lune. Writer and compulsive reader. Eager for unknown destinations and exciting encounters. Anything is possible, you just have to believe it. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Objectif Lune has 20 years of experience developing Customer Communications Management solutions. Our solutions bridge the gap between systems and automate more personalized, relevant, multichannel customer communications. Learn more at: www.objectiflune.com.

Customer Experience: Put the patty on the damn bun!

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By Skip Henk, EDP, President/CEO of Xplor International

Over the last year I have been spending a great deal of time better understanding the varying intricacies of a customer experience, its relationship to our industry, and how a great customer experience can pay big dividends.

An article I read the other day by Warren Buffet said, “Your business will succeed if you execute this three word mission, DELIGHT YOUR CUSTOMER.” Speaking at the 20th Graduation of Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses at LaGuardia Community College, Buffett told the graduates: “Tomorrow morning when you look in the mirror after you’ve gotten up, just write — or just put it in lipstick or whatever you want — ‘delight my customer’ not ‘satisfy my customer.’ ‘Delight my customer.’”

This perhaps is the most descriptive and succinct definition of a the Customer Experience I have read.

(To read the article http://tinyurl.com/jxgghuy )

We have dozens of customer experiences each week which can vary greatly. Whether you are dropping your clothes off at the cleaners, going to the grocery store or ordering on Amazon we have plenty of opportunity to be delighted.

Some of the most mundane of interactions can be delightful with delight being driven by expectations.

Setting Expectations
Customer experience is how we expect to be treated in a given situation. When we go to the cleaners, we don’t want to wait in line too long to drop them off and we want our clothes cleaned properly and ready when promised. At the grocery store, we expect shelves to be well stocked, for the store to be clean and for there to be plenty of cashiers or self serve kiosks to minimize our wait when leaving. When ordering online, we look for availability, price, shipping costs and time. Then we expect our purchase to arrive on or before the date promised.

Expectations vary based on the task and whether we have high or low expectations. When expectations are met, it represents a good experience.

Put the Patty on the Damn Bun
I occasionally go to a fast food restaurant, typically with fairly low expectations. I do expect to wait if I go during a peak times and I automatically assume my order is will not be right, so I check it. I also expect that it is at least warm.  Reasonable but certainly not high expectations.

hamburgerLast week, I had a Big Mac craving and ventured to McDonald’s to order myself a Big Mac and fries.  (Don’t judge me, I know the Big Mac is 560 calories and fries add an additional 368 calories; this isn’t the point)  The “customer experience” was going along well, I did not have to wait long, the order appeared correct and I saw the fries come out the fryer, so they were nice and hot. I was good to go. I sat down to eat and opened my Big Mac finding BOTH patties were hanging halfway off the bun. Not sure exactly why it crossed me but it did.

As I looked at my burger I contemplated taking it back but decided not to do so. What I realized is that the customer experience can in fact be a moving target with expectations theoretically changing with each transaction. The same may hold true for our industry.

At the Xplor at Graph Expo breakfast session, September 27th in Orlando, our panel, moderated by Matt Swain of Infotrends, will try and answer the question:  “With advancements in technology and changes in human behavior, is offering a superior customer experience a moving target?”

If you are planning to attend Graph Expo, I invite you to attend our complimentary breakfast session sponsored by Canon Solutions America, Compart North America, Pitney Bowes and Xerox Corporation. For more information and to register, visit the event website.

As far as my Big Mac expectations, “Put the damn patty on the bun!”

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Skip Henk, EDP
President/CEO
Xplor International