DOCUMENT Strategy Spring 2017

INSIDE: PATH TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

TIPS ON SHAREPOINT DOCUMENTmedia.com | spring.17

DSF PREVIEW ISSUE 2 017

CHICAGO

THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF CUSTOMER COMMUNICATIONS The ultimate checklist JAMES WATSON, JR., PHD BY & TOM ROBERTS

MEASURING

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PART 2

GOOD CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE KNOWS NO AGE

CYBERSECURITY PROS SHOULD CARE ABOUT GOVERNANCE

volume 24 issue 1

Spring.17

DOCUMENTmedia.com

Features

Problem with 26 The Personas Good customer experience knows no age

By Arianna Valentini

Changing Landscape of Customer 20 The Communications The ultimate checklist

By James Watson, Jr., PhD, and Tom Roberts

Departments

Columns

08 Masthead 08 Contributors 10 Editor’s View 12 What’s New 36 Think About It

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The Path to Digital Transformation: Who’s Leading the Way?

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Don’t miss our annual event on May 1-3 in Chicago! Register as our VIP guest! Simply mention DOCUMENT Strategy Media upon registering.

Visit documentstrategyforum.com

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9 guidelines to follow

By Bud Porter-Roth

By Bob Larrivee

the Content 16 Automating Management Process:

Why a Centralized Approach Reduces Risk

By Nick Romano

SPECIAL PREVIEW

to Select a Document 28 How Management Vendor

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What’s in Your Vocabulary?

An Introduction to Taxonomy and Classification for SharePoint

By Charmaine Brooks

Worlds Collide 32 Where Why cybersecurity pros should care about governance

By Russell Stalters

Customer 34 Measuring Experience—Part 2 These are the industry KPIs to look for

By David Stabel

APPLICATION ARTICLE

Data Payoff: Where’s the Beef?

Quality data matters. But how does accuracy really pay off?

The linkages between data quality and its benefits can be elusive. Most successful businesses have “good enough” data to maintain profitability so where is the ROI on data accuracy?

In a recent AIIM webinar poll, over 50% were concerned or very concerned about their current data quality and its measurement. When looking at technology solution providers, it’s important to examine the overall accuracy of the system.

Spending on data quality has a natural endpoint especially when focusing on simply “checking the math.” That ensures basic efficiency. As businesses advance to establish a corporate data culture, leaders look to understand causation and leverage information to make smart decisions. Quality data can be used to identify fraud, drive workflow optimization, establish credibility with customers and manage the customer experience.

Data Effectiveness Corporations aren’t all in the business of perfect data, but they should all be in the business of using quality data. Business alignment, improved decision-making and risk management are possible once: (1) Enterprise goals are identified and business metrics aligned to these goals; (2) Metrics are enabled through the right technologies to extract the data; (3) Data accuracy is verified and hitting the targets identified; (4) Decision makers have access to the data; and (5) Ongoing alignment and technology improvements boost quality and efficiency.

Many businesses focus too much on functional capabilities of the system, and not the performance of the system. Important elements to ensure data effectiveness require identifying error rates of staff and systems with associated costs.

Measuring Performance Measuring and working to achieve high performance are common challenges. For document-based information, classification and extraction capabilities are often the focus.

These functional capabilities provide a baseline for understanding and evaluating a capture solution, but still require manual data verification. Getting beyond the baseline requires taking the next step in understanding your data and making these factors part of the selection process for automation technologies: Read Rate. The percentage of data that is located and extracted. Error Rate. The percentage of that located/extracted data that is not correct. Confidence Threshold. The statistically-significant point that allows data to move straight through the system.

True process automation requires the highest levels of data accuracy, but also requires an understanding of what data is accurate and what data is not. With these added key ingredients, process automation moves organizations beyond merely adequate processes that enable retaining current profitability to enabling them to reach a new level of data quality for smart decision making and a successful corporate data culture.

Visit Parascript at www.parascript.com or call us at 888.225.0169 to find out more about accurate data extraction.

president

Chad Griepentrog

publisher

Ken Waddell

editor contributing editor contributors

advertising

audience development manager creative director

Allison Lloyd

[ allison.l@rbpub.com ]

Amanda Armendariz Charmaine Brooks Bob Larrivee Bud Porter-Roth Tom Roberts Nick Romano David Stabel Russell Stalters Arianna Valentini James Watson, Jr., PhD Ken Waddell

[ ken.w@rbpub.com ] (o) 608.442.5064 (m) 608.235.2212

DOCUMENT Strategy Media (ISSN 1081-4078) is published on a daily basis via its online portal and produces special print editions by RB Publishing Inc., 2901 International Lane, Madison, WI 53704-3128. All material in this magazine is copyrighted © 2017 by RB Publishing Inc. All rights reserved. Nothing may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher. Any correspondence sent to DOCUMENT Strategy Media, RB Publishing Inc., or its staff becomes the property of RB Publishing Inc. The articles in this magazine represent the views of the authors and not those of RB Publishing Inc. or DOCUMENT Strategy Media. RB Publishing Inc. and/or DOCUMENT Strategy Media expressly disclaim any liability for the products or services sold or otherwise endorsed by advertisers or authors included in this magazine.

SUBSCRIPTIONS: DOCUMENT Strategy Media is the essential publication for executives, directors, and managers involved in the core areas of Communications, Enterprise Content Management, and Information Management strategies. Free to qualified recipients; subscribe at documentmedia.com/subscribe.

REPRINTS: For high-quality reprints, please contact our exclusive reprint provider, ReprintPros, 949-702-5390, www.ReprintPros.com.

Rachel Chapman [ rachel@rbpub.com ]

Kelli Cooke

2901 International Drive Madison WI 53704-3128 p: 608-241-8777 f: 608-241-8666 email: rbpub@rbpub.com

Contributors James Watson, Jr., PhD Mr. Watson founded Doculabs in 1993 as a consultancy specializing in content-based applications, providing recommendations to organizations seeking to use enterprise content management (ECM) technologies to improve their management of business content. James also regularly provides articles or commentary on the industry’s key topics and issues in leading technology publications.

Tom Roberts Mr. Roberts is a Principal Consultant at Doculabs, where he has spent the last 10 years helping his clients leverage emerging enterprise content management (ECM) and customer communications management (CCM) processes and technologies to help achieve their business goals. He has conducted consulting engagements for organizations in a wide range of industries.

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David Stabel Mr. Stabel is a Director at InfoTrends, a division of Keypoint Intelligence. Within this role, he covers the customer communications market and is a frequent speaker at tradeshows, customer events, and industry conferences worldwide. Before joining InfoTrends, David worked as a Director of Software Strategy and Market Analysis at Canon (former Océ).

Arianna Valentini Ms. Valentini is a Product Marketing Manager (PMM) specializing in product messaging within GMC Software Technology. As a Product Marketing Manager, Arianna assists with client-facing PMM work, including, but not limited to, roadmaps, whitepapers, and thought leadership sessions. Prior to joining GMC, Arianna spent three years as a Research Analyst holding positions at top industry firms, IDC and InfoTrends.

APPLICATION ARTICLE

Connecting Customer Communication Management to Customer Experience You may have been hired to manage “customer communications”; but if it doesn’t already, your job description will soon include “customer experience” ( or “CX”). That’s not the only change coming.

Have you noticed how your CIO has been methodically moving core systems to the cloud? He probably started with your CRM software, then moved on to the marketing department, but in the next year or so he’ll be looking to replace your on-premise CCM software with a SaaS solution. Bet on it.

Are you and your department ready?

In Q1 2017, Forrester surveyed nearly 300 marketing, line of business and technology leaders and asked them to rank their priorities for 2017. Guess what the top three responses were? Redesign the user experience across touchpoints Build and deliver contextually relevant, personalized customer experience Add or improve digital customer service Do you see CCM mentioned? If not, then read those points again, because all three have to do with CCM. CCM is all about touchpoints (you call it multi-channel). You personalize customer communications every day, don’t you? And digital transformation is what you’ve been working on for years (maybe you called it “print suppression” or “preference management”).

What if you could go to your C-suite with a solution in hand before they ask you for one?

Tell them you want to move to a cloud-based CCM solution, one that was built to share content, data and context with the rest of your digital experience architecture. Tell them you can help redesign your user experience to make it more consistent across touchpoints and make the customer experience more contextual, personalized and relevant. Don’t forget to mention that you can also improve digital customer service, including offering new digital self-service capabilities. When they ask you how, tell them this: INTOUCH®.

They’ll want to hear more. Let your CMO know that you can integrate INTOUCH with her marketing automation software to share content and track customer engagement. Look your CIO right in the eye and say that INTOUCH isn’t just a native cloud solution, it’s a collection of containerized content services hosted on AWS, complete with an API gateway and a RESTful services registry. Then tell your boss that INTOUCH can be managed entirely by business users, so you’ll be more agile and better able to respond to the market.

If you tell them all that, then that new job description might just come with a promotion.

To learn more, go to topdownsystems.com/intouch

1-800-361-1211 info@topdownsystems.com www.topdownsystems.com

EDITOR’S VIEW

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IRL: FANTASY OR REALITY? @DOCUMENTmedia

by Allison Lloyd

hat is disruption?

Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma defined innovative disruption as a “process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors.” A byproduct of innovative disruption is the creation of a new group of consumers previously unable to access these products or services. Mr. Christensen points to personal computers and cellphones as examples of such a theory. While he posits that the term “disruption” is used much too loosely, it’s obvious that many organizations face a new competitive landscape due to such disruption.

However, just because the playing field is leveled in terms of accessibility and innovation doesn’t mean that all organizations are ready to transform their traditional business models and processes as quickly as their consumers are in adopting these innovations. According to Victor Milligan, Chief Marketing Officer at Forrester, “The speed of technology outpaces the speed of organizations.” Perhaps, both forces have incubated the rise of customer experience (CX), putting the consumer front and center rather than organizational needs.

No matter how many times we might talk about CX strategies, quantifying the success of these initiatives is a lot harder than anyone might be willing to admit. In fact, InfoTrends Director David Stabel reports that “only about one-third of US enterprise respondents surveyed in our research use CX as a measure for management reporting. Respondents also indicated that the ability to pair CX with business outcomes is a key challenge.” Tying specific CX metrics to actual competitive differentiation has been difficult to calculate, and key performance indicators (KPIs) will vary according to individual organizations. Moreover, organizations are apt to make assumptions about their customers. “This not only risks jeopardizing the ability to provide good customer experiences (CX), but it also creates tunnel vision within the organization when it

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comes to evolving CX strategies,” says Arianna Valentini, Product Marketing Manager at GMC Software. The problem is that CX must confront the human element—a variable many ignore.

This is not an isolated challenge. We’ve talked continuously about how executing on a strategy requires people, process, and technology. Yet, as writer Russell Stalters states, “people and process have not received the same attention as technology.” To coordinate effective customer experiences, we need to break down the barriers and siloes that exist in today’s organizations. Over the last decade, we have witnessed the growth of overlapping priorities within customer communications, marketing, information technology, and, now, cybersecurity. In order to deliver real business outcomes, we will need all stakeholders to take a seat the table. Disruption will continue to impact organizations. It will be up to these enterprises whether CX strategies become a reality instead of simply the dream of what could be.

I invite you to take a seat at the table at our annual event, the DOCUMENT Strategy Forum, this May 1-3, in Chicago—a place where customer communications, information management, and customer experience professionals can begin these important conversations.

Until next time,

APPLICATION ARTICLE

xc rd s fo r E

nage men

Aw a

A leading Global Bank garnered the 2016 WfMC Global Excellence in Case Management Award for its new “Banking Correspondence Management System” (BCMS) built on Papyrus Adaptive Case Management and its high-productivity enterprise communication platform.

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Business Empowered Document Design and Maintenance Delivers Productivity and High Performance. and production of customized, individual online correspondence, as well as mass batch document production, and applies fully customizable and adaptive change management that involves the right people for the right work at the right time.

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Document design projects are managed through predefined steps and related With presence in more than 70 countries data to enable, manage and align ad-hoc and over 180,000 employees, the Bank el s changes and case re-opening in reaction to is a Eurozone leader and prominent le n a ce in C changes in business requirements, while internationally in Corporate & Institutional ensuring compliance-checking via ACM. Banking as well as Retail Banking & Services.

All approved document design is released The Bank’s customer communication, using into the central correspondence library for 2,500 different document templates with approximately 20-25 new document templates each month, was use by authorized business users, who select from and create planned to be significantly enhanced to double-batch production diverse elements while freely communicating through integrated and increase online production by 20x to 400K documents daily. commenting and chat. Finished document templates are verified in a document compare view before approval for release.

The Challenge: With customers moving to digital, the Bank wanted to speed up production and time to market for new bank The BCMS common working environment maximizes productive collaboration between Business and IT and links different products through full digitalization and paper-free processes. department working environments to facilitate cooperation and The business had been creating document specifications in teamwork between all knowledge workers. Business teams work Microsoft Word for the IT document developers - with both in different user roles, supported by multiple GUIs with full teams working in isolation and duplicating efforts. Heavy e-mail capabilities to flexibly design correspondence and complete communication and handling thousands of templates in different the document development process. IT assists where required languages through the standard file management system and addresses technical configurations for more sophisticated prevented linkage between templates and language variants and document elements, such as interfaces for business data input, versions. To accelerate time to production, the communication complex business rules or dynamic tables. development approach needed a complete makeover.

Benefits achieved with BCMS demonstrate the shift to The Solution: Focusing on simplification and flexibility of productivity, agility and visibility with an ACM approach: document management processes, the Bank selected Papyrus 95% created & maintained by the business, IT only delivers data Business Correspondence Solution to enable business users 50% time reduction in the templates development phase to directly participate in document development and reduce 90% time reduction in the release phase overhead. Leveraging the Papyrus integrated framework solution Flexible document release process enabled by cross-department change management approach, the Bank could then fit the entire document design and development solution directly into the Papyrus Adaptive Consistency paired with efficiency through large-scale reusability Case Management (ACM) framework to maximize flexibility and Reporting and auditing transparency transparency in handling the document lifecycle.

2016

The new Banking Correspondence Management System (BCMS) provides professional document design functions and empowers business users to flexibly create and maintain a huge number of document templates, maintaining design consistency and content compliance. BCMS supports design, sign-off, deployment

info@isis-papyrus.com 817.416.2345

Spring 2017

Features

What’s New Is a Large ECM Suite Really That Sweet?

5 Reasons to Consider a SaaS Solution for IG

By Dave Giordano http://documentmedia.com/article2611-Is-a-Large-ECM-Suite-ReallyThat-Sweet.html

By Brett Claffee http://documentmedia.com/article2616-5-Reasons-to-Consider-a-SaaSSolution-for-IG.html

How a Customer Communications Solution Can Fuel Engagement

By Daniel Schmidt http://documentmedia.com/article-2620-How-aCustomer-Communications-Solution-Can-FuelEngagement.html

Demonetization: A Path to a Cashless Society?

By Richard Rosen http://documentmedia.com/article-2601Demonetization-A-Path-to-a-CashlessSociety.html

How to Compete in the Age of Analytics

The Real Meaning of Content Analytics

By Marko Sillanpaa http://documentmedia.com/article-2614-TheReal-Meaning-of-Content-Analytics.html

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By Andrew Roman Wells & Kathy Williams Chiang http://documentmedia.com/article2610-How-to-Compete-in-the-Ageof-Analytics.html

Big Search: The Amazing Opportunity in Video

By Joao Penha-Lopes http://documentmedia.com/article2613-Big-Search-The-AmazingOpportunity-in-Video.html

APPLICATION ARTICLE

Reinventing Productivity in Your Process Management You don’t know what you’re missing until you take another look at “the way it’s always been.” That’s exactly what Cornerstone Family Ministries found out when they started looking into process automation.

When the OnTask team first discussed a workflow automation solution with Cornerstone, the organization had several questions about efficient processes. “We discovered that we needed to document our processes and procedures at every stage,” explained Cathy Stone, Executive Director at Cornerstone.

Cornerstone works to provide preschool children with access to healthy meals through the Child Care Food Program. “With the responsibility of over 160 early learning centers serving nearly 20 million children in five counties, we have a need to mitigate liability that can occur when our processes fail,” reports Stone.

“When we break down the sources of those liabilities, it comes down to tasks that must be initiated and completed by various people both inside and outside of our ministry. Any break in the process can create consequences that would negatively impact children living below the poverty level.”

When they realized that no one on their team could articulate all of the steps involved in onboarding for their child nutrition program, they knew it was time to reevaluate their business processes. “We also discovered all of the overlap and interdependencies between teams,” Stone added.

Different employees were responsible for various tasks, including enrolling each child and following up. What they found was that they weren’t starting and ending the process in the same order, and that some tasks were happening twice.

While that caused inevitable setbacks, the team realized that future missteps were preventable.

“There are many tasks that can be completed by a clerk-level position to give customer care specialists the time to focus on improving compliance,” Stone said. After that discovery, Cornerstone decided to bring two clerks on board to begin putting that plan into action.

After reorganizing their process and defining a workflow route, Cornerstone already sees improvements in the way they work.

“We didn’t have automation to track where we were in the process and which tasks were outstanding. Each time we needed to know this information, it was handled on a caseby-case basis by asking each person in the process where the task was in the pipeline. It was not ideal, to say the least.”

Now that Cornerstone has mapped out its improved processes, they are ready for automation. “OnTask will provide a way for us to automate all of our tasks and manage them. It will also help us to find the areas where our processes are getting bogged down so that we can address those in the future,” says Stone.

In addition to process improvement, the organization also expects they’ll be able to retain more children in the program and reduce drop-off rates. Since they are aware of each stage in their workflow, they will be able to manage their organization’s outreach accurately. To learn more about OnTask, visit www.ontask.io.

info@ontask.io

DSF SPEAKER 2 017

THE PATH TO DIGITAL

TRANSFORMATION Who’s leading the way?

By Bob Larrivee

W

e hear a lot these days about the “digital transformation” of business processes and the need to eliminate paper, to automate as much as possible, and to focus on business insight and customer engagement. While we know that there

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are technologies and services out there to help make this transition, the question is, “Who’s really driving these initiatives?”

It may be instinctive to say that information technology (IT) drives digital transformation, and according to the AIIM Industry Watch report titled “2017 State of Information Management: Are

Businesses Digitally Transforming or Stuck in Neutral?” 39% of respondents did, in fact, indicate that IT and IT services push for digital transformation.

However, 31% of respondents report that corporate executives are driving it.

We also find that 53% of those surveyed are more forward-thinking with

Who’s really driving digital transformation?

1% 3%

3%

4%

39%

%

IT and IT Services

2%

Corporate/Executives

1% 1% 2%

Other Records/Information Management Legal

10%

Customer Support Customer Service

3%

Operations Finance

31%

Marketing Sales Research and Development

a “trailblazer” mindset—a focus on improved information sharing and collaboration—with an additional 22% citing enhanced innovation capabilities as one of their top two drivers. On the other hand, 55% of the respondents appear to take a much more “average” focus, which is on par with their peers, with

traditional cost-cutting and productivity acting as main drivers.

There is still a substantial amount of chaos within these organizations regarding how multi-channel inbound information is governed and managed, indicating these organizations are likely in a more reactive mode than strategic outlook for the future. Organizations who lean toward being “trailblazers” are taking a proactive position to eliminate chaotic environments by implementing new systems, processes, and mobile/ remote access capabilities.

While many organizations have similar issues, each is unique unto itself and must look for a starting point that will serve to move the organization forward and engage the user community.

The first step of the digital transformation journey should be to identify an opportunity to improve a process fraught with manual activity and

burdened with paper. The goal should be to eliminate paper as early in the process as possible and to automate activities, wherever possible.

The journey to transformation should be a team effort when choosing the destination, planning the route, assessing the needed tools, and moving the organization forward in a unified manner. Executives, IT, records/information managers, and a cross-section of the user community should be involved to establish a unified vision, determine the goals (mile markers along the journey’s path), and eliminate the barriers along the way. O

BOB LARRIVEE is Vice President and Chief Analyst of AIIM Market Intelligence. Don’t miss his special workshop on automating business processes for digital transformation on May 3 at the DOCUMENT Strategy Forum in Chicago.

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AUTOMATING THE CONTENT MANAGEMENT PROCESS WHY A CENTRALIZED APPROACH REDUCES RISK

BY NICK ROMANO

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I

t doesn’t really matter what industry you are in—as a document professional, you continue to see new challenges that seem to crop up every day. If you are responsible for producing documents for Medicare plan providers, you are most likely not only facing those same challenges but also an evolving set of requirements, processes, mandates, and compliance obligations.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is the centralized governing agency that annually publishes all requirements and benefit language, which must be followed by Medicare plan providers. Depending on how the insurer implements model language across its plans, managing these annual updates can be a complex and labor-intensive process.

Most insurers we’ve talked to cite model document change management as a significant barrier for getting the required communications to market each year—and the stakes are high.

The insurer’s “Star Rating” can be negatively affected if there are inaccuracies in the information sent. Moreover, missing the required delivery dates for specific communications such as the Annual Notice of Change (ANOC) and Evidence of Coverage (EOC), which are mandated by the CMS, can result in hefty financial penalties. For these reasons, improving the organization’s ability to make quick updates, which are 100% accurate, is critical.

Understanding that these challenges will continue to present themselves year-after-year with new CMS requirements, it’s not hard to make a compelling case for automating the content management process. Finding a solution for centralizing the content creation and change management process is a good start. Cloud-based, software-asa-service (SaaS) content management solutions continue to be one option worth considering. They enable a provider to deploy a user management system that provides centralized access to master plan language through an easyto-use interface while also controlling

individual and group rights for changing content through business rules.

One benefit with an integrated SaaS workflow system is the ability to control all the required steps for creation, edits, and approvals of content changes.

Collaboration among internal and external stakeholders is then automated, controlled, and auditable to ensure governance and compliance with required regulations. Additionally, real-time testing and proofing headaches are eliminated through the user interface without the need for information technology (IT) involvement, improving time to market and accuracy of information.

Many providers have found that adopting a centralized content management system enables additional efficiencies through the ability to propagate content updates across all applicable contracts or plan-based material versions.

Change approvals can then be made globally or at the version level, which are all controlled by rules to ensure that only approved content is used in production.

A centralized approach of this kind goes a long way toward reducing the risk of managing complex content assembly documents. Greater benefits can also be found by applying the same concepts to letter correspondence, ID cards, monthly and annual health statements, and other member services communications.

Medicare plan providers that employ cloud-based content management technologies are simplifying the process of producing CMS-mandated plan communications, as well as streamlining the production of other documents in the member life cycle. In realizing this level of efficiency, the risk of penalties and operating costs are lowered, and the opportunity to differentiate from the competition and enhance the customer experience is increased. O

NICK ROMANO is Co-Founder and CEO of Messagepoint and is an expert in the customer communications management space. Contact him at nickr@messagepoint.com.

THE HURDLES WITH MANUAL PROCESSES 2

1 Penalties for non-compliance • $25,000 per incident

Cost of rejection • If prepared versions are rejected by the CMS or internal subject matter expert review, the manual process must start all over again

3 Manual effort can be intensive and expensive • Determining the necessary changes across all versions takes significant time • Implementing manual changes across versions extends time to market and increases the risk of error • Mitigating risk from manual efforts requires resources, time, and money

WHAT’S IN YOUR

VOCABULARY? An introduction to taxonomy and classification for SharePoint

By Charmaine Brooks

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Building Classification Schemes They are specific to each organization and provide a consistent and standard way of communicating across organizational units that share the same information for interrelated functions.

I

ndividuals and organizations alike are experiencing one of the paradoxes of the information age: As we gain access to more and more data, it is becoming harder to find the information we need. Metaphorically speaking, we are drowning in data yet thirsting for information.

Vocabulary control improves the effectiveness of information storage and retrieval in web navigation systems and other environments, which seek to both identify and locate desired content via some sort of descriptive language. Developing a master classification or taxonomy schema for these content filing systems allows an organization to apply consistent vocabulary control for all content across the enterprise.

SharePoint vocabulary control is metadata-driven—metadata that is required to describe context, content, and structure of records. With SharePoint, a classification scheme serves as a master set of controls for terms within managed metadata. Careful planning is required before using managed metadata, however. The amount of planning

Developers of taxonomies or classification schemes need to ensure the following points are observed.

The scheme derives its terminology from the business functions and activities, not from names of organizational units.

depends on how formal your taxonomy or classification structure requirements are and the need for controlled metadata (which is highly recommended).

An informal plan allows users to add keywords to content and then organize these keywords into term sets, as necessary. This can lead to inconsistencies in how similar content is categorized and makes it very difficult to apply business rules to manage content through its life cycle.

If you look at shared drive structures (i.e., taxonomies), which organically develop over time and mostly without pre-planning, you can see the variety of ways that content is organized and managed. Metadata will help tremendously, but its effectiveness is limited if inconsistently applied.

Organizations that want better control over their records and content will need to develop managed term sets for a more formal taxonomy with agreed-upon terms.

There are three main types of metadata in SharePoint. Both “Intrinsic” and “Derived” are system-generated and can be leveraged to minimize the burden on users to classify content. However, “Declared” metadata will need to be managed to ensure consistency.

The managed metadata features in SharePoint enable the ability to control

They are hierarchical, moving from the most general to the most specific.

They consist of unambiguous terms reflecting organizational usage.

how users add metadata to content.

When the same terms are used consistently across sites, it is easier to build robust processes or solutions that rely on metadata. Additionally, it is faster and easier for site users to apply consistent metadata to their content.

When metadata navigation is set up for a list or library, the SharePoint site displays a tree-view control on the lefthand side of the page. Site users can use the navigation tree to browse a list or library by folder or by metadata. When users select a managed metadata term in the navigation tree, the view displays only content that is tagged with that term or its descendant terms. To filter for a particular term without its descendant child terms, users can select the content again. Metadata navigation works together with other filters for lists, such as views and column filters.

Harmonization is required for ensuring consistency across metadata sets.

This happens when you create and maintain only one set of metadata and map it to any number of related metadata sets. The use of harmonization vastly simplifies the development, implementation, and deployment of related metadata through the use of common terminology, methods, and processes. O

CHARMAINE BROOKS, CRM, is a Partner with IMERGE Consulting, Inc., with over 25 years of experience in records and information governance. Contact her at cbrooks@imergeconsult.com.

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THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF CUSTOMER COMMUNICATIONS

THE ULTIMATE CHECKLIST

BY JAMES WATSON, JR., PHD, AND TOM ROBERTS

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here are many changes in the customer communications marketplace today. As a result, many are left with some big questions: What trends will affect organizations most significantly? What are the capabilities that will have an impact on customer communications, and how will they change the way you communicate with your customers? What are the prerequisites for putting these capabilities in place, and what should you be doing to improve the customer experience?

As a preview of this year’s DOCUMENT Strategy Forum, let’s look at the most significant changes, which we break down into a couple of areas, including user experience and expectations, content strategy, diversity support, and deployment options.

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DSF SPEAKER 2 017

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1

Changes in Market Demand: User Experience & Expectations

INCREASED MOBILITY & UBIQUITOUS ACCESS We’ve been adapting to these demands for several years now, and we see more of the same. Content will need to become even more modular and responsive. Some may want to encode content so that it adapts to the communication channel/device as well.

IN-APP NOTIFICATIONS & REAL-TIME DELIVERY These notifications refer to the messages that pop up on our smartphones.

Certainly, the battleground for most marketers today is enabling these notifications when consumers install an application. With changing demographics

and the declining use of email communications by younger generations, the “in-app” notification capabilities become critical. Abuse them, and you risk being uninstalled. Neglect them, and you are missing a huge opportunity.

PERSONALIZATION The increased need for personalization is driven by richer and richer content—thanks to profiling. We see many examples of this in marketing communications, but there is more opportunity for improvement with service-based communications as well. With geolocation, wearables, and the emergence of the Internet of things, the ability to tailor communications increases exponentially.

2

Changes in Market Demand: Content Strategy

USER-CONTRIBUTED CONTENT Over the next several years, we see user-contributed content continuing to grow. It’s certainly a driving factor in consumer products and the travel industry, but it is also growing in areas like utilities (e.g., sharing ideas for energy savings) and financial services (e.g., tips on how to settle an estate upon the death of a parent).

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & CHATBOTS All the data collected in our interactions (primarily web and mobile apps) is being streamed into analytic tools, which use artificial intelligence to serve up new content. We use the term “chatbots:” robots that determine the next message or interaction.

SYNDICATION Increasingly, organizations are consuming and distributing published content for their customers and trading partners. We see this growing, whether it be via social media or more formal channels (e.g., news outlets, public relations, etc.).

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3

Changes in Market Demand: Diversity Support

4

Changes in Market Demand:

Deployment Options

CLOUD & SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE (SAAS) Organizations of all sizes and across most industries are pursuing cloudfirst strategies. While we haven’t seen much offered to date in the customer communications management (CCM) space, it seems the tide is changing.

Several suppliers are offering composition and publishing tools in the cloud.

Think ExactTarget (now SalesForce) for paper, email, SMS, etc.

MULTI-LINGUAL SUPPORT Clearly, there is a growing need to support additional languages, but the ability to communicate clearly and concisely goes beyond basic translation services. Think Spanish first, but imagine Chinese soon.

SECURITY & PRIVACY Personal information of all flavors is embedded in communications,

requiring a level of supervision and security that increases every day. Organizations in all sectors need to monitor the collection, use, and disposition of personal information very deliberately.

AGILE METHODOLOGIES The last trend we see impacting communications is the use of agile methodologies—mostly in information technology (IT) organizations but also within the business functions. Rapid deployment has never been a characteristic of template development in most organizations, and now, turnaround expectations are even higher. Can the industry adapt?

Given these changes, what are the implications for organizations, and how can you prepare? Here is our guidance for those looking to adapt to this changing landscape.

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Implications & Guidance: User Experience & Expectations

MODULAR & ADAPTIVE CONTENT AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT (ADA) SUPPORT Supporting customers with disabilities demonstrates an organization’s interest in a broad spectrum of users. With the aging population, the increasing number of customers that are visually and hearing impaired will require ADA support.

Based on the need to deliver personalized content in a wide variety of channels and formats, we need to re-architect the way content is structured. Modular components assembled into “documents” has been an objective for many organizations for some time. Yet, these demands are increasing again. Adaptable content

takes the notion of responsive design (a screen or webpage that changes layout based on the viewing device) and applies the principle to the content itself. For example, a fraud alert might be 50 words when viewed on a computer but just 10 when viewed on a phone. Adding this level of intelligence to communications can be complicated, but it will certainly be a requirement moving forward.

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INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

CONTENT & DATA

Given that content will be used in many different contexts, having metadata and a very deliberate set of naming conventions is key. We describe the collection of techniques to “organize” content as information architecture.

This must be prescriptive and not open to user interpretation. While this discipline is difficult to justify initially, given the extra time it takes, the dividends will be tremendous.

Content alone is no longer enough.

We need to know statistics on how content is used, where, when, how often, and by whom. This data becomes critical to many of the rules and decision tools that serve different content to different users.

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Implications & Guidance: Diversity Support

NEW SKILLS

Implications & Guidance: Content Strategy

The changes highlighted throughout this article certainly up the ante for skills within an enterprise.

Understanding new languages, the tone in which we want to communicate with younger generations, and a willingness to go toe-to-toe with the folks in compliance and legal over concepts such as “brevity” and “clarity” call for some new blood in the communications department.

LIBRARY SERVICES At the foundation of a solid customer communications program is a repository that manages the modular content securely. This is critical, since most organizations have a multitude of repositories and delay consolidation and retooling. However, “kicking this can down the road” has hidden costs and will only further constrain the organization’s ability to manage content effectively.

CURATION How does The New York Times continue to have compelling and relevant content for readers?

Curation—a team of editors who decide on headlines, breaking news, etc. So, too, must an enterprise work with its customers. Again, we see this more often as it relates to marketing content, but we need the same competency on the service side.

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COLLABORATION Inherent to several competencies we’ve highlighted (i.e., curation and user-contributed content) is the need for multi-party collaboration. In far too many organizations, email remains the workflow tool and the poor man’s version control, which consists of a cryptic numbering scheme that compliance, legal, or marketing may, or may not, have adopted. Most organizations have at their disposal some form of collaborative tools, such as SharePoint or something more high-powered. Why not use these tools to manage the customer communications publishing processes as well?

FLEXIBLE CONTRACTING In addition to recruiting some new talent, its highly likely that organizations will need a bevy of contractors with specific skills they can call upon periodically. Proactively setting these relationships is key. Far too often, we see organizations forced to make compromises and use preferred staffing firms that lack specialization. From our experience, many of the most talented communications professionals are independent. Buying 16 hours a month is the best value ever—if the mechanics are in place to do so, but knowledge transfer is the key. Make sure you have a solid plan to transfer skills and knowledge from the specialist to your internal staff.

GOVERNANCE USER EXPERIENCE & EXPECTATIONS

DIVERSITY SUPPORT

Customer Communications Is on the Move

CONTENT STRATEGY

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This is a word that gets thrown around a lot today, but in the context of customer communications, it means the set of “guardrails” we use to manage communications: Who is responsible for which tasks (author, approve)? What metrics do we monitor to determine success or failure? Who has the “D” when compliance and the business disagree on language? What are our expectations for internal IT, and are they explicit? Creating and following governance disciplines doesn’t have a direct expense; thus, we don’t need to ask for funding, so why not give governance its due?

DEPLOYMENT OPTIONS

Implications & Guidance: Deployment Options

NEW SUPPLIERS Given the move to the cloud and SaaS, we see organizations needing to investigate a new array of suppliers, as well as vetting some current ones that are bringing new offerings to the market.

However, the process should be different than the last time you scanned the market (perhaps for a composition tool). Variable pricing models, agile development, and intellectual property are all very different today compared to 10 years ago, and we see a huge opportunity for improvement to unit costs and service-level agreements.

the antithesis of agile. Historically, we’ve set up five-year contracts (software, services, etc.) with little means to modify, short of a full-blown request for proposal (RFP). Now, we will need to contract for some limited services initially, expand later, and negotiate pricing as services are added. The good news is that many of the offerings are turnkey, onesize-fits-all, with published pricing.

With so many changes impacting the communications industry, the big “aha” is the realization that CCM is just one facet of customer experience. As such, there is renewed interest in doing a better job of communicating now that customer experience is in the limelight. We look forward to discussing these trends and guidelines with you at the DOCUMENT Strategy Forum in May. O

SOURCING

JAMES WATSON, JR., PHD, is the President of Doculabs, a consultancy specializing in content-based applications. Don’t miss James’s session on the future of CCM on Tuesday, May 2 at the DOCUMENT Strategy Forum in Chicago.

Not to be overly critical, but sourcing organizations within enterprises are

TOM ROBERTS is a Principal Consultant at Doculabs.

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The Problem with

PERSONAS Good customer experience knows no age 26

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By Arianna Valentini

arketing is becoming more complex with an increasing number of channels, varied experiences, and immense volumes of data. In response, a strategy that organizations have adopted is to develop customer personas.

Often, these personas are segmented into age groups, parsing out the interests of each: “Millennials love X, but Boomers hate X.” However, the trouble with age-based personas is that we, as marketers, end up generalizing about age groups based more on our assumptions than actual consumer behaviors.

This not only risks jeopardizing the ability to provide good customer experiences (CX), but it also creates tunnel vision within the organization when it comes to evolving CX strategies.

For these reasons, care should be taken when assessing generational differences to improve CX for multiple demographics. Moreover, it is equally important to look at commonalities across age groups. The human element of CX is not going away anytime soon—customer service still matters, regardless of age.

According to eMarketer, 45% of consumers across all generations will no longer shop at a general retail environment due to a poor customer service experience.

Additionally, one might assume that it is “Boomers” (55+) who will contact customer service multiple times, but it is actually younger generations (35 and younger) that are more likely to repeatedly contact customer service.

Looking to improve CX across generations will require open discussions with those in charge of the human element in customer service. It will also require actively monitoring sentiment throughout the customer journey. Customer journey mapping is a great way for CX professionals to connect live and offline experiences to the consumer’s overall

journey and to more effectively develop the next stage or CX-based action.

As the bar for CX standards is raised, the number of channels to manage increases as well. One channel that continues to dominate across generations is mobile. According to Pew Research, 77% of US adults will have a smartphone in 2017—a jump in ownership that is greater than 35% from six years ago. When it comes to mobility, I often hear organizations emphasize mobile communications that are geared toward the millennial generation (18 to 35) and younger. For this group, the customer

Over time, the intolerance for incomplete or inconsistent CX will rise—this is especially true for those who skew younger. “Generation Z” (those born around 1995 to the early 2000s) has grown up surrounded by social media and tech culture, so they expect faster, personalized communication delivery.

However, this expectation is growing for all generations. Many marketers are likely to invest in tools that will help them deploy communications faster and to more channels in 2017. Why? Because the intergenerational marketplace demands it.

With rapid changes in customer acquisition to reach a more diverse audience than ever before, it is easy to forget about customer communications management (CCM) activities. However, when it comes to customer retention, CCM plays such an important role in the overall experience throughout the customer life cycle. This is especially true in regulated industries where digital competition is increasing and customer statements might be the only touchpoint a consumer will have with an organization.

Consumers of all ages want to feel that organizations are listening to them, their channel preferences, and paying attention to their behaviors. It is up to those organizations to create initiatives for a cross-departmental strategy, which ensures that customers receive the best CX possible—no matter their age. O

The human element of CX is not going away anytime soon— customer service still matters, regardless of age. journey often begins, is maintained, and ends on a mobile device. While boomers have been slower to adopt mobile, this fact does not mean that the technology is completely foreign to them. Just like their younger counterparts, older consumers have started to expect optimized mobile communications, even if the entire journey is not on a mobile device.

For organizations, this means investing in technology that can easily take a oneto-many channel approach. Dynamic communications that automatically format to the right device upon delivery are key to providing the best mobile experience possible, while also avoiding the need to recreate each communication for the specific channel.

Arianna Valentini is a Product Marketing Manager at GMC Software, specializing in product messaging. Don’t miss her session on expanding an organization’s internal skillset for the digital age on Tuesday, May 2 at the DOCUMENT Strategy Forum in Chicago.

How to Select

A DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT VENDOR

S

electing a document management vendor is challenging work, but with the right steps, you can make the best choice at the right price. Before you begin, it’s important to understand your document management issues, working across the applicable departments, and to develop the needed requirements.

After you’ve done your homework, the first step is to assemble your requirements document. By doing so, you will be forced to review and reduce the collected information into a concise and readable document. In addition, you will be able to verify all the data, revisit possible weak

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By Bud Porter-Roth

areas, and summarize the finer points to not only yourself but to the larger team that will be part of the project.

Depending on your company, and whether you are public or private, you may be required to write a formal request for proposal (RFP) or simply an informal requirements document will do. Either way, you must provide prospective vendors all the required information for the project.

If you don’t, there will be an endless round of questions from the vendors until they feel sufficiently comfortable in estimating a price for your system and the amount of time it will take to implement it.

guidelines to follow

1

Be prepared to have a longer-than-anticipated selection process. Selecting a vendor is a challenging job. Not only will you have multiple vendors, all with different levels of needs, but you will also have five to 10 (or more) people in your selection committee—all of whom have different agendas, wants, and needs. The first step is to develop a project schedule, beginning with writing the RFP and ending with selecting the vendor.

2

Vendor pricing is an estimate. Your RFP requirements must be good enough to get a price estimate from vendors but not good enough to settle on a “best and final” price. Once you narrow down the list of vendors and invite them in for a demonstration, they will be better able to reassess their pricing. Even then, the price will change, mostly because once you see what is being built, you will begin to ask for additional services. There are many, many variables at work in pricing a system.

The Document Management Series

How to Hire a Document Management Consultant http://bit.ly/2mFNJ6N

3

Treat the vendors as potential partners, one of whom will be with you for a long time. Keep them current with frequent updates, respond to questions quickly, provide any relevant information that is requested, and, if necessary, have a one-on-one session with the vendor to clarify any issues. However, do not provide or disclose information that would give one vendor an advantage over another—unless you provide that information to all vendors.

Choosing a Document Management System: Who’s Who http://bit.ly/2kMxO6W

4

When receiving proposals, develop some type of scoring sheet for all members of the evaluation team to use. Reading up to 1,000 pages can be hard work, and evaluators must have some method for scoring each proposal as it is read. For example, I use a 1 (=bad) to 5 (=good) scale for each major requirement. I also ask for general comments, like, “Was it easy to read? Did the vendor follow instructions? Did the vendor write unique answers, or was it full of boilerplate? Was the proposal put together well, or was it sloppy?”

Questions Your Document Management Consultant Will Ask http://bit.ly/2kZUXhy DOCUMENTmedia.com spring.2017

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5

Scoring and evaluating each proposal is only the first step. This scoring process allows vendors to move to the next phase, which involves a full day of presentations and demonstrations. Plan to have a short list of two or three vendors and invite them in to provide a presentation and demonstration of their proposal. For example, you could set the below agenda for this review: Presentation: Ask vendors to talk about how their proposal responds to the business aspect of the RFP. This is to show that the vendor understands the business reasons for the RFP and to explain how their software will satisfy this business issue. Demonstration: Ask vendors to demonstrate such things as setting up a document library, searching for documents, developing a workflow, and reviewing their records management capabilities. Prior to the demonstration, collect a list of the most important functions you want to see from your evaluation team. Generally, you can narrow this down to a “Top 10” list that the vendor must incorporate into their demonstration. Pricing Review: Ask vendors to go through each line item in their pricing proposal and explain its purpose and how they quantified and priced it. We often find that vendors have added software that is not needed or have misestimated (e.g., the number of seat licenses needed).

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As part of the day’s discussion, the evaluation team will learn more about the vendor’s solution, and the vendor will learn more about your application needs. Based on this new data, ask vendors to revisit their proposal to add/remove/adjust their software and pricing. Generally speaking, this applies to software modules (e.g., full-text optical character recognition), training offered, number of seat licenses, or implementation time and schedule. We often see a reduction in pricing as a result of this interactive day.

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During the review, the evaluation team should ask the vendor questions and/or for clarifications.

Someone should be responsible for writing these questions down and reviewing them with the vendor at the end of the day. If there are still outstanding questions to be answered, the vendor should be given this list and be able to respond to them in a timely manner. In turn, the vendor might ask you questions that may need a follow-up response if it can’t be provided during the presentation. An example may be, “How many actual users will be on the manufacturing floor?” You may have to revisit this based on your new knowledge of how seat licensing

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is configured. Don’t depend on the vendor to accurately write down the questions that need to be answered.

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After you have agreed on a winning vendor, you may incorporate a visit to the vendor’s headquarters, meet with their senior management, and tour their facility. Meeting with the senior management team is not a simple meet and greet. You may want to review their future business and technical roadmap for the company and products, talk about their research and development activities, and tour their help desk area. Prior to the visit, it is a good idea to research the company (perhaps a Dunn & Bradstreet report). These visits often strengthen your ability to work with the vendor and have a personal relationship with their management team, not just with their sales representative. Remember, the document management industry is currently undergoing a consolidation and realignment.

Research your vendor to ensure it is stable and is not a candidate for a purchase/takeover/Chapter 7 filing.

As part of the RFP process, you should have asked for a list of three references to call. Now is a good time to call these references to discuss their project and how the vendor worked with them.

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It is highly possible that the presentation/demonstration day will help to define a clear winner.

When we do this, one vendor generally begins to stand out among the rest, and we begin to increase our focus on that provider.

Selecting a vendor can take up to, and sometimes more than, 12 months. Once selected, the initial implementation period can take up to six months. The remaining phases may go more quickly but could take six months per department. For a complete enterprise, including human resources, sales, marketing, accounting, etc., the process can take 24 months. It is entirely possible that as you implement the solution, you will begin to add additional workflows, document library settings, and other resources as you learn more about the document management solution capabilities. O

BUD PORTER-ROTH has over 20 years of experience as an enterprise content management (ECM) consultant, with a focus on cloud collaboration, electronic document management, records management, and paper document projects. He is also the author of Request for Proposal: A Guide for Effective RFP Development.

Follow him on Twitter @BudPR or contact him at info@erms.com.

By Russell Stalters

WHERE WORLDS COLLIDE Why cybersecurity pros should care about governance

C

ybersecurity is a strategic priority for most organizations. With recent high-profile breach incidents, including Home Depot, Target, and Sony, many companies are asking themselves, “Will I be next?” The answer is “yes,” based on the number of widespread and increasingly advanced attacks. Some of these data breaches are not only a result of internal malicious acts but also unintentional mistakes by employees.

Ultimately, the chief information security officer (CISO) needs to understand the information footprint across systems, determine the value/risk of loss, and protect against cyberattacks through the deployment of control activities, which

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are commensurate with the value/risk of these information systems. For the last several years, CISOs have focused almost exclusively on protecting the perimeter (even going as far as to use endpoint protection). If most agree that they will likely experience a data breach, then this attention to the perimeter only addresses a portion of the risk.

We’ve all heard for years that information technology (IT) and cybersecurity require people, process, and technology; however, over the years, “people” and “process” have not received the same attention as “technology.”

Cybersecurity in many organizations has been regarded as a technical problem, handled by technical people and buried in IT. With the widespread use of mobile

computing and the explosive growth of Internet of things (IoT) devices (growing from 6.4 billion connected devices to over 50 billion by 2020), a focus on people and process must move up in prominence to mount a coordinated defense and, eventually, an offense.

Employees are still to blame for many cyber incidents. Poor security awareness continues to be the greatest inhibitor to defending against cyber threats, followed closely by the massive volumes of data for IT security teams to analyze/protect. Cybersecurity professionals need to understand the information risks their organization faces and how to leverage information governance, along with technology, to get the biggest bang for their buck.

WHAT’S AT STAKE? INFORMATION RISK

DSF SPEAKER

TYPE OF ENTERPRISE RISK

IMPROPER HANDLING Financial, Business, OF SENSITIVE DATA/IP and Legal

Avoid loss of business and potential litigation to recover compromised data.

POOR LEGAL HOLD EFFECTIVENESS

Legal and, potentially, Financial

Improved preservation and compliance with Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, amended December 1, 2015.

INCREASED E-DISCOVERY COSTS

Legal and Financial

Using $510 to $2,500 per gigabyte with a volume of 1 terabyte, a 25% reduction of the data to collect, process, and review results in $130,000 to $640,000 savings.

POOR INFORMATION QUALITY

Operations, Safety, and Business

Improved decision quality and operational consistency.

EXCESSIVE ROT

Financial, Operations, and Legal

Reduced storage costs and potential savings of $40,000 per year on decommissioned applications.

DATA BREACH OF PII

Financial, Business, and Reputational

Avoid estimated cost of $170/record, potential fines, and lost business.

The US average number of records in a breach was 28,000 in 2015, which equates to a cost of $4.76 million.

2 017

According to Gartner, some companies have spent $81.6 billion on security technology in 2016—and still experience data breaches. As a result, companies are turning to cyber insurance. Certainly, insurers will be happy for the additional business, but they won’t be handing out claim payouts easily. Insurers will investigate each breach thoroughly, and if negligence or the controls and cyber prevention technologies do not match what was represented in the insurance application, they will not pay on the claim.

Many insurers will help their clients by developing programs that drive better security hygiene and by offering incentives for better detection and incident response capabilities. It makes one wonder if these programs or incentives will

VALUE OF ADDRESSING RISK

resemble what health insurance providers are dong. Will this be the cyber insurance equivalent to Fitbit?

So, what can be done? Cybersecurity professionals need to partner with information governance/information management professionals to jointly develop what Gartner calls a “data security governance plan.” This cross-functional team can work together to leverage technology that protects the enterprise yet enables business agility, to ensure information risk is reduced through a combined effort of governance and technology, and to effectively address the people and process part of the cyber security equation.

In a Gartner Special Report titled, “Cybersecurity at the Speed of Digital

Business,” they call for the creation of a data risk officer. For this unique role to be filled effectively, organizations should cross-train their cybersecurity and information governance professionals. When cybersecurity technologists better understand governance and information risk and information governance practitioners better understand cybersecurity technologies, the more effective these two will be at protecting the organization. O

RUSSELL STALTERS is the Founder of Clear Path Solutions Inc. and is a recognized information and data management expert. Don’t miss his session on the future of information security on Tuesday, May 2 at the DOCUMENT Strategy Forum in Chicago.

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BY DAVID STABEL

DSF SPEAKER

MEASURING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PART 2 These are the industry KPIs to look for 34

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2 017

F

ocusing on customer experience (CX) has become the new normal for customer communicationintensive enterprises, such as banks, insurance providers, utilities, and others. This pivot toward improving CX will require management to look at different key performance indicators (KPIs) to help shape the overall customer journey.

Even though CX-oriented KPIs are increasingly popping up in management dashboards at all levels, progress is slow.

Only about one-third of US enterprise respondents surveyed in our 2016 “Customer Engagement Technologies State of the Market” research use CX as a measure for management reporting. Respondents also indicated that the ability to pair CX with business outcomes is a key challenge. Selecting the “right” CX KPI is crucial and should be carefully considered before acting on the strategic initiatives it implies.

As part of our annual research, InfoTrends examines the various types of KPIs used to track CX. In the Summer 2015 issue of DOCUMENT Strategy, we defined the three main categories as follows: quality improvement of customer experience, efficiency improvement, and customer equity improvement. Filtering our research through this framework allows us to analyze which CX KPI is preferred in various industries, including customer retention, number of website visits, customer profitability, and average order value.

Customer retention expresses the ability of a business to retain its customers over time. This is a relevant KPI for any organization, since even a relatively small improvement in retention can have a significant impact on the bottom line. Businesses depending on a large customer base will especially benefit from this KPI. Our research indicates that insurance and healthcare companies consider this KPI to be most important for managing CX. Customer retention requires businesses to maintain quality relationships with the customer and appropriately address customer complaints. Customer communications in these areas strongly influence customer loyalty.

Recording the number of individuals who viewed a website over a given period doesn’t necessarily reveal much about CX; however, it does measure a message’s reach. Governments in the midst of their digitization journey highly value this KPI. For them, reaching a broad number of citizens is crucial (if not mandatory). Customer communications technology can

help with managing information updates (e.g., changes in legislation) and present it in an appealing way. Both are important ingredients for a digital front desk.

Customer profitability is the difference between revenues from a customer minus the cost associated with keeping that customer over a specified period of time. Businesses that play in price-sensitive markets, such as telecommunications, should carefully watch this KPI, since a satisfied customer is not necessarily a profitable one. Customer communications influence both sides of the profitability equation. Through targeted and personalized promotional messaging, revenues per customer can be increased. On the other hand, customer communications technology that allows businesses to automate communication flows and increase customer loyalty through more relevant and contextual means—using preferred communication channel(s)—will reduce the cost per customer.

By definition, the average order size expresses the average value of an order. Beyond defining the average value of a given order, this KPI also measures the effectiveness of cross-selling and upselling initiatives. Businesses in financial services and utilities satisfy a basic need. For example, banks typically manage an account, fund, or portfolio for their customer, while utilities offer common services like energy or water. These businesses benefit from growing their share of the customer’s wallet beyond these basic needs. Cross-selling and upselling, as well as building customer loyalty, are critical strategies for these companies. Therefore, it is no surprise that survey respondents working in these industries rated this KPI as their most important.

Clearly, there is no single “right” CX KPI that businesses can employ to surmount all their customer experience challenges. Instead, a thorough understanding of the business model and target markets are prerequisites for selecting which KPI best supports CX improvement within your organization. O

DAVID STABEL is the Director of Customer Communications Advisory Services at InfoTrends, a division of Keypoint Intelligence. Don’t miss his session on self-service portals on Tuesday, May 2 at the DOCUMENT Strategy Forum in Chicago.

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Think About It “Ultimately, enterprise programs are successful because they are executed well.”

— LANE SEVERSON

“When we refer to ‘transformed’ workflows, we are talking about the fundamental redesign of content-centric business workflows enabled by digitization and the application of ‘3rd Platform’ technologies.”

“The customer journey mapping paradigm allows mobile, social, print, and other channels to align with customer experience initiatives that are outside the traditional CCM or document area.”

— SCOTT DRAEGER

— HOLLY MUSCOLINO

“According to IDC, 15% of the work week is spent recreating information that already exists, and 2.5 hours per week are spent searching for information.”

— JIM JUST

“As the needs for managing customer interactions grow more complex, we will see ‘demand bubbling’ for the public cloud.”

— ALLISON LLOYD

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“Privacy and information security hold out the possibility to solve the information management problem—once and for all.”

— JOE SHEPLEY

“By using technology to automate communication throughout the customer’s journey, companies build and increase brand loyalty and improve customer experience.”

“Generation and delivery of documents in real time has changed from a ‘nice to have’ option to a ‘must have’ in order to remain competitive and gain market share.”

— WASIM A. KHAN

— GINA FERRARA

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