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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.

skip_Henk_Photo_2011

 

Skip Henk, EDP
President/CEO
Xplor International

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.

“Xplor at Graph Expo” Event Sponsored by Industry Leaders

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Lutz, FL — July 26, 2016: Xplor International today announced that Canon Solutions America, Compart North America, Pitney Bowes and Xerox Corporation will be sponsoring this year’s Xplor at Graph Expo event being held September 27, 2016 during the Graph Expo show.

Customer Experience: A Critical Factor for Achieving Success will be moderated by Matt Swain of InfoTrends who, along with panelists, will address whether the advancements in technology and changes in human behavior make superior customer experience a moving target. A superior customer experience has emerged as a critical success factor for companies. It is about meeting, and ideally exceeding, the expectations of your customer.

The complimentary event is limited to the first 200 registrants. Registration includes admission to the panel session, a networking breakfast, and a Graph Expo exhibit hall pass, all courtesy of the event sponsors. For more information, or to register for the event, visit the event page: http://bit.ly/1U9jX6g

“Over the last couple of years the concept of delivering a great customer experience has taken center stage and has become a critical success factor for companies.” says Skip Henk, President and CEO of Xplor International. “Our panelists will discuss the critical success factors in delivering a superior customer experience, as well as the obstacles and how companies can overcome them.”

Event Details:

Date: September 27, 2016
Time: 8:30 AM to 10:00 AM (Breakfast starts at 7:30 AM)
Location: OCC North Building – Level 3, Room N310 E&F
Cost: FREE (Registration required and limited to the first 200 registrants)

For information about Xplor at Graph Expo, please visit: http://bit.ly/1U9jX6g. You can also contact Xplor Headquarters at +1-813-949-6170.

About Canon Solutions America
Canon Solutions America is a leading provider of digital document technology solutions.  The Océ brand has a reputation for delivering high speed, outstanding quality and rock-solid reliable production printers to some of the biggest industries and brands. From cut-sheet to continuous feed, monochrome to full-color, and toner to inkjet, these scalable printing and workflow solutions are customized for your business and backed by award-winning service. As part of Canon Solutions America, we have the brightest R&D minds advancing tomorrow’s innovations to help you grow your business, control costs, and practice environmental stewardship. Whether it’s improving productivity or opening new markets and applications, we can help you be ready for the future. Learn more at pps.csa.canon.com.

About Compart North America
Over the course of two decades Compart has helped over 1,200 companies worldwide, across a broad range of industries, to successfully implement output management solutions. Our international team has extensive technological expertise in providing output management solutions for complex enterprise environments. We work with you to design the ideal output management solution for your business. www.compart.com

About Pitney Bowes
Pitney Bowes (NYSE: PBI) is a global technology company offering innovative products and solutions that enable commerce in the areas of customer information management, location intelligence, customer engagement, shipping and mailing, and global ecommerce. More than 1.5 million clients in approximately 100 countries around the world rely on products, solutions and services from Pitney Bowes. For additional information, visit Pitney Bowes at www.pitneybowes.com.

About Xerox Corporation
Xerox is a global business services, technology and document management company helping organizations transform the way they manage their business processes and information. Headquartered in Norwalk, Conn., we have more than 140,000 Xerox employees and do business in more than 180 countries. Together, we provide business process services, printing equipment, hardware and software technology for managing information — from data to documents. Learn more at www.xerox.com.

About Xplor International
Xplor International is a worldwide, not-for-profit professional association that consists of thousands of users and suppliers of the products and services that create, modify and deliver customized information using a wide variety of document technologies. The association provides educational products and programs for its members and the industry at large through conferences, meetings and annual events. Xplor International has its worldwide headquarters in Lutz, Florida, with affiliated offices around the world. Further information is available at www.xplor.org.

Facebook: facebook.com/XplorInternational
Twitter: twitter.com/Xplor_Int or @Xplor_Int

Xplor International Media Contact:
Chad Henk
Marketing Manager
+1-813-949-6171
Chad@xplor.org

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!”

skip_Henk_Photo_2011

 

Skip Henk, EDP
President/CEO
Xplor International

Improving the Customer Experience through Better Document Management

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Submitted by Alexandra Truchot, Content Creation Specialist for Objectif Lune.
June 24, 2016

Every organization produces an endless stream of documents. And the more your business grows, the more documents you produce. So managing all those documents becomes very complicated.  And it often negatively affects the customer experience.

It becomes even more complicated because the documents are on a variety of media and have to be sent through different channels (mail, Internet, email, EDI, etc.). Document management becomes a huge puzzle! It takes an incredible amount of time and frustrates employees, as well as customers who don’t understand why it’s taking so long to get an answer.

When it comes to answering customer queries, a single employee spends an average of two- and-a- half hours a week looking for information. Moreover, searches are carried out using, on average, three different content managers (all types of media included). It’s no surprise that most employees find it painful!

When you call Customer Service, do you appreciate being put on hold for several minutes before getting an answer to your seemingly easy question?

Automate your document workflow
Automating your document workflow is a must and helps centralize your information. If you don’t automate, having a content management system (ECM) will not be enough because you won’t have the ease and flexibility of using and sending your documents as you please.

Besides, you should be able to manage your documents regardless of delivery channel or medium. In other words, it shouldn’t be difficult to send an invoice to a customer by email, and save it in XML in your archives, even if you’ve received the initial invoice information on paper.

By automating your document workflow, you can cut down on costs, not only by reducing printing but by enhancing productivity and minimizing errors.

Facilitate communications with your customers
Imagine each time you receive a purchase order, no matter which channel it comes through, the document is captured and automatically saved in your systems. You can then retrieve the data needed to complete the order process. At the same time, you can save it in the proper file so that when your customers call to talk about their purchases, you’ll quickly know where to find the information, whether they’re calling one week or six months after making the purchase!

Now picture your delivery confirmations being automatically saved in your company’s content management system each time you deliver a product to a customer. At any time, you would be able to easily prove that the delivery was made, and more importantly, you wouldn’t have to chase after your drivers when a PO goes astray or is illegible.

You would be able to provide quality service to your customers throughout the purchase cycle.

Are you thinking that automating these steps is complicated? Or that this kind of solution is only for large businesses?
Think again—document management can be much simpler and help you as your business expands!

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.

Xplor at Graph Expo Registration Now Open

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Lutz, FL— June 15, 2016: Xplor International today announced that registration for their keynote breakfast panel during the Graph Expo event, September 25 – September 28, 2016 at Orlando Convention Center, is now open. Registration is available here: http://www.cvent.com/d/xfqvqg

The breakfast keynote session, moderated by Matt Swain of InfoTrends is titled “Customer Experience: A Critical Factor for Achieving Success” and will focus on the importance of the customer experience, as well as understanding customer expectations, with end user panelists sharing their insights in their efforts to create the perfect customer experience.

This sponsored breakfast session is presented at no charge, thanks to sponsors Canon Solutions America, Compart North America, and Xerox Corporation. Space will be limited to the first 200 people who register.

When:  September 27, 2016
Where: Orlando Convention Center
Time: 7:30 AM-10:00 AM
Registration Fee: Complimentary (Registration Required here: http://www.cvent.com/d/xfqvqg)

Questions and requests for additional information can be directed to Xplor Headquarters via phone at +1-813-949-6170 or via email at info@xplor.org. Additional sponsorship opportunities remain open for the event. For more information on becoming a sponsor, please contact Deborah Green, Director of Sales, at +1-770-444-3845 or deborahgreen@xplor.org.

About Xplor International
Xplor International is a worldwide, not-for-profit professional association that consists of thousands of users and suppliers of the products and services that create, modify, and deliver customized information using a wide variety of document technologies. The association provides educational products and programs for its members and the industry at large through conferences, meetings and annual events. Xplor International has its worldwide headquarters in Lutz, Florida with affiliated offices around the world. Further information is available at www.xplor.org.

Facebook: facebook.com/XplorInternational
Twitter: twitter.com/Xplor_Int

Xplor International Media Contact:
Chad Henk
Marketing Manager
+1-813-949-6171
Chad@xplor.org