DOCUMENT Strategy Winter 2017-2018

SPECIAL TRENDS & FORECAST ISSUE

DOCUMENTmedia.com | winter.18

TOP 10

TECHNOLOGY

TRENDS FOR

20188

CONNECTING PEOPLE, DEVICES, CONTENT, AND SERVICES PAGE 20

CX TRENDS TO WATCH

RECORDS MANAGEMENT RESOLUTIONS SELECTING A DIGITAL EXPERIENCE PLATFORM

SHOULD WE

STILL CARE ABOUT CCM IN 2018?

Migrating to ink-jet printers has many benefits – and plenty of risks.

Companies worldwide are converting to ink-jet printers and a white paper work-flow. Eliminating costs associated with production, stocking, and handling pre-printed document “shells” is a primary advantage to this transition. Ironically, detecting errors with traditional quality control methods can be tougher in ink-jet environments.

Paloma can help.

> Complete document quality assurance > Fully automated document testing > Fast, easy document comparison > Improved document work-flow > Save on labor time and expense > Impeccable customer service Learn more at palomaprintproducts.com or by calling us at 262.618.4125 © 2017 Paloma Print Products

volume 24 issue 4

Winter.18

DOCUMENTmedia.com

Features We Still Care 24 Should About CCM in 2018?

Understanding the convergence of CX and CCM

By Kaspar Roos

to Select a Digital 26 How Experience Platform Putting the “experience” back into your digital experience technology

By Tony Byrne

Top 10 Technology Trends for 2018 20 Gartner’s Connecting people, devices, content, and services

Departments

Columns

05 Masthead 05 Most Social 06 Editor’s Picks 08 Editor’s View 10 Contributors 34 Think About It

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Connect twitter.com/ DOCUMENTmedia linkedin.com/ company/document-media youtube.com/ channel/documentmedia

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Is Your Data Helping or Hurting Your Communications Strategy

By Elizabeth Dailing

to Go Digital 14 5inSteps the New Year

By Ted Dezvane

Office 16 Unwrapping 365: Are We Getting the Benefits We Need?

By Bob Larrivee

18

Are Your Electronic Records a Ticking Time Bomb?

By Cindy Zuvich & George Dunn

to Tackle 28 Resolve Records Management in the New Year

Why you should keep this resolution

By Marko Sillanpaa

Customer Experience 30 4Trends to Watch Connecting the digital strategy

By Catherine Sbeglia

Digital Content 32 Building Workflows Isn’t as Easy as It Looks

Smart and optimized workflows are about the intersection of these three things

By John Horodyski

president

Chad Griepentrog

publisher

Ken Waddell

editor contributing editor editorial intern contributors

advertising

audience development manager creative director

Allison Lloyd

[ allison.l@rbpub.com ]

Amanda Armendariz Kristyn Sommers Tony Byrne Elizabeth Dailing Ted Dezvane George Dunn John Horodyski Bob Larrivee Kaspar Roos Catherine Sbeglia Marko Sillanpaa Cindy Zuvich 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 © 2018 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.

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MOST SOCIAL ARTICLES

MOST READ ON TWITTER & DOCUMENTMEDIA.COM

Content Services Are Evolving: Will Documentum? http://documentmedia.com/article-2752Content-Services-Are-Evolving-WillDocumentum.html

MOST SHARED ON FACEBOOK

How to Understand Your Document Management Problem http://documentmedia.com/article2750-How-to-Understand-YourDocument-Management-Problem.html

MOST VIEWED ON YOUTUBE

The State of Digital Transformation

http://documentmedia.com/ videos-36-The-State-of-DigitalTransformation.html

MOST READ ON LINKEDIN

Gartner Pushes Content Services in 2017 Magic Quadrant, Changing ECM Forever http://documentmedia.com/article-2732-Gartner-PushesContent-Services-in-2017-Magic-Quadrant-Changing-ECMForever.html

DOCUMENTmedia.com winter.2018

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Winter 2018

Features

Editor’s Picks 4 Ways to Prevent System Failure

By Bud Porter-Roth http://documentmedia.com/article-1510-4-Ways-toPrevent-System-Failure.html

The Importance of IT Strategic Planning and How to Approach It

Measuring Customer Experience: Key Performance Indicators for Customer Communications Management

By Michael Q. Cannon http://documentmedia.com/article-2401-TheImportance-of-IT-Strategic-Planning-and-How-toApproach-It.html

Six Considerations in Selecting a Scanner

By Abe Niedzwiecki

http://documentmedia.com/article-411-Six-Considerationsin-Selecting-a-Scanner.html

By David Stabel

What’s the Difference Between Structured and Unstructured Data?

http://documentmedia.com/article-1970-Measuring-Customer-Experience-KeyPerformance-Indicators-for-Customer-Communications-Management.html

By Jeff Tujetsch http://documentmedia.com/article-1573-Whats-theDifference-Between-Structured-and-UnstructuredData.html

What Is an Electronic Document Management Life Cycle?

By Bob Larrivee http://documentmedia. com/article-1304-What-Isan-Electronic-DocumentManagement-Life-Cycle.html

Cleaning Up Your Shared Drives: Begin with the Decision Tree

By Jim Just http://documentmedia.com/article-2339-Cleaning-Up-Your-Shared-DrivesBegin-with-the-Decision-Tree.html

Innovation and Artificial Intelligence in Document Management

By Christina Robbins http://documentmedia.com/article-2541-Innovation-and-ArtificialIntelligence-in-Document-Management.html

The Top Communication Trends for 2018

By Scott Draeger http://documentmedia.com/article-2663-The-Top-Communication-Trendsfor-2018.html

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Machine Learning vs. Traditional Automation in Document Processing

By Greg Council http://documentmedia.com/article-2508-Machine-Learning-vs-TraditionalAutomation-in-Document-Processing.html

Napersoft CCM is designed to handle all of your needs!

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EDITOR’S VIEW

WILL THE GAMBLE ON ROBOTICS, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AND THE INTERNET OF THINGS PAY OFF? @DOCUMENTmedia

by Allison Lloyd

he digital revolution continues to weak havoc on the competitive landscape for businesses, as disruptive upstarts enthusiastically embrace the new age of work. The news isn’t so great for established players, who are still lumbering toward their digital transformation goals. According to Dimension Data’s recent “Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report,” less than 10% of respondents said they had an “optimized strategy” for the digital business.

Overwhelmingly, the top driver for digital transformation at organizations is to improve customer experiences (CX). The correlation between enhanced CX and revenue gains, along with increased cost savings, seduces many organizations to blindly grab at these opportunities, without a coordinated effort to connect all their digital touchpoints. In fact, according to a Forbes Insights and Hitachi survey of 573 executives worldwide, only a third of the respondents polled considered themselves CX leaders as a result of their digital transformation efforts.

Simply embarking on your digital journey will not make you a CX leader by any stretch of the imagination. The arrival of robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and the expanding application of the Internet of things (IoT) only further muddies the conversation. To realize the value of emerging technologies like these, organizations will need to target certain tasks for a particular business result. We can’t just place technology on top of broken or disjointed processes and siloed functions and expect different results. “Just because you can automate a function doesn’t mean that you should,” says John Horodyski of Optimity Advisors.

When we build digital solutions for our customers or employees, companies need to mix design thinking principles, accountability at every stage, and the human element. At the heart of digitalization is understanding and “leveraging the strengths of [our] employees, placing them in roles that play to those strengths and then automating processes to complement those capabilities and to fill gaps, according to Ted Dezvane, Senior Vice President at Xerox.

From design to deployment to performance, delivering complex digital experiences requires a new skillset from employees—knowledge they might not yet possess. Whether it’s skirting established processes or avoiding the

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newly implemented technology, organizations will need to focus on transitioning users to a new way of working and empowering them to solve bottlenecks in the process rather than becoming the bottleneck itself. Digital transformation also relies on finding new talent in the workforce to deliver results and capabilities more quickly. We are talking about a business outcome here, and this is where disruptive technologies can be applied to achieve a specific purpose. For example, organizations can leverage AI technologies (chat bots, virtual customer assistants, intelligent things) to supplement gaps or apply solutions like conversational platforms and virtual reality to facilitate user productivity and training.

Within the pages of this edition, we’ve compiled some of the most interesting stories on how to assemble the many moving parts of a successful digital strategy, including selecting a digital experience platform, digital content workflows, and the top technology trends for 2018. As you can see, our Winter issue is focused on the emerging trends for the new year.

Sometimes, trends and predictions get a bad rap, often not living up to their hype. However, it’s not the buzz we should be paying attention to. Whether it’s new technology, strategies, or an emerging market, we should be focused on what business outcome we’re chasing and educating our workforce to meet these challenges head on.

I encourage you to look for opportunities to learn from the pages of our magazine, our annual peer-to-peer conference, DSF ’18, each other, and yourself.

Until next time,

CONTENT. COMMUNICATION. STRATEGY.

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Content. Collaboration. Technology. Governance.

Contributors Tony Byrne Mr. Byrne is Founder of Real Story Group, an independent analyst firm that evaluates digital workplace and marketing technologies for enterprise customers. He is the original author of Real Story Group’s web content management research, a former journalist, and a 20-year technology industry veteran. Prior to 2001, he managed an engineering team at a systems integration firm. In 2017, he co-authored the book, “The Right Way to Select Technology: Get the Real Story on Finding the Best Fit.”

John Horodyski Mr. Horodyski is a Partner at Optimity Advisors and has executive management strategy experience in information management, with a focus on digital asset management, metadata and taxonomy design, information governance, and content management strategy. He regularly speaks at industry events and conducts workshops on digital transformation, digital asset management, and metadata.

He is also the author of the book, “Inform, Transform & Outperform: Digital Content Strategies to Optimize Your Business for Growth.”

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Kaspar Roos Mr. Roos is the Founder and CEO of Aspire Customer Communications Services, an international technology advisory firm specializing in customer communications transformation and customer engagement optimization. Before starting Aspire, he ran InfoTrends’ global production workflow and customer communications advisory service, where he helped leading technology vendors and service providers by providing market research, insights, and strategic consulting services.

Marko Sillanpaa Mr. Sillanpaa is Co-founder of the blog Big Men On Content and the Founder of BMO Consulting, a company that helps bring new enterprise content management technologies and ideas together with customers and partners that can use them. He has been working in enterprise content management for over 18 years for vendors like Documentum, EMC, Hyland, and SDL Trados and systems integrators like CSC and Accenture.

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g n i p l e H a t a D r r u u o o Y Y Is urting ing l i a D eth b or H a z i

By E l

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O

ne of the biggest challenges in developing a personalized customer communications strategy may not be the lack of customer data but whether the data you have is supporting those efforts—or hurting them.

Most likely, your organization has customer data locked away in its marketing, sales, customer service, and financial or accounting departments—the lingering problem of isolated data silos. Each department may use the data differently and develop its own methods for data collection and storage. As a result, data around a single customer may conflict with information stored in other silos, be outdated, or simply be incorrect.

The result can be frustrating for a customer who calls in with a question and is asked several times for his/her name, address, and possibly an account number before reaching the correct representative who can provide relevant information.

This is a bright red flag indicating that your c u s t o m e r- f a c i n g teams don’t have access to relevant database systems and/or don’t have a multi-dimensional view of your customers.

At this point, it’s wise to ask, “How much work are you placing on the customer versus the amount of work you’re doing to maintain their data?”

When that balance of responsibility shifts toward the customer, you’ll likely see a break in the relationship.

Data quality issues can ultimately damage the customer relationship your company is working so hard to nurture. To help reach your customer experience goals, every department should be asking, “Are we using outdated information?” If your organization is using incorrect addresses or names of customers, you risk the chance that these communications simply won’t arrive— meaning the relationship is severed.

to ask, “Are we making too much contact?” With increasing penalties from regulators for “spamming” individuals, businesses need to be sure they are only contacting customers when necessary. Ensuring that each customer is unique—instead of multiple versions of the same individual—is vital to accomplishing this.

Finding the gaps in your customer communications allows you to discover valuable metrics. Do you see a logjam at some point? Are other assets underused?

What are the barriers? By answering these questions, you’ve found the starting point for devising a more effective, company-wide communications strategy.

The greatest benefit to consolidating all the data you have on customers is the insight it gives into their experiences, their preferences, and how you can subsequently best serve them. We all know that customer retention costs significantly less than finding new customers.

Building a single customer view with data that is meaningful and accurate can help ensure that retention. O

“Data quality issues can ultimately damage the customer relationship your company is working so hard to nurture.”

Even if that message is still received, using outdated information may harm a relationship. On the other hand, if customer data is accurate, we must have enough of it to make the right decisions. If we don’t, then targeted communications, which rely on these factors, face a real risk of being embarrassingly inaccurate.

Incorrect data that can’t be used (e.g., an incomplete home address) might seem like it’s only an inconvenience for the business. However, this lack of usable data is likely to prevent businesses from reaching the right customer, at the right time, with the right message. Finally, it’s important

ELIZABETH DAILING is Senior Director of Portfolio Marketing for Quadient, formerly GMC Software. Her background includes strategic marketing, enterprise software sales, and marketing management in multiple data domains, including security, movement, integration, and data quality. For more information, visit www.quadient.com.

DOCUMENTmedia.com winter.2018

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STEPS TO GO DIGITAL IN THE NEW YEAR

By Ted Dezvane

With the new year upon us, leaders should take stock of their digital journey and craft plans for attacking their digitalization goals for the year to come. For most, our digital scorecards will reveal good progress and even greater opportunities.

According to a recent report titled “Digitalization at Work,� less than 50% of information technology (IT) decision-makers indicate that their processes are mostly or fully digitalized, and only 10% say they are digitized across the board.

Yet, in the same study, 71% of respondents have identified processes within their organizations that would benefit from automation. In addition, almost two-thirds of the individuals polled expect to work in a digital enterprise by the end of 2018. That puts a lot of pressure on the year ahead. To help meet your digital milestones, here are five steps to turn your goals into a reality.

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STEPS

1

Look at paper workflows from a bird’s-eye view.

According to research, 55% of organizations have not analyzed the current state of their paper processes. Using print assessment tools, IT leaders can get an informative bird’s-eye view of how current workflows are running. They can then apply these insights to address issues and strengthen their document management foundation.

2

Dive into the data.

A crucial step to achieving the real benefits of digitalization is getting an accurate look at your company’s data through the use of analytics.

Auditing, tracking, measuring, and analyzing how documents are used allows an organization to identify where they would benefit most from digitalization. These insights will help foster a greater understanding of the vulnerabilities in your document management landscape.

3

Build buy-in across the business.

Once you have assessed the current state of your document processes and have embarked on your digital journey, it is more important than ever to share real-time updates on your progress with the organization. Your leadership team will be on the lookout for payoffs in cost, security, and agility. By installing checkpoints that track progress against these goals, you can quantify the results when reporting back to the leadership team.

4

Scale out with automation.

As companies add more tools to their digital arsenal, one of the greatest benefits of digitalization is the capability to scale more efficiently. By reallocating a portion of the existing work to new automated processes, valuable employee time is freed up, allowing the team to take on more projects, invest more in innovation, and expand the capacity of the IT department as a whole.

5

Play to your strengths.

While workflow automation is a key element of digitalization, it certainly isn’t synonymous with a reduction of the workforce. Instead, companies should leverage the strengths of their employees, placing them in roles that play to those strengths, and then automate processes to complement those capabilities and to fill gaps. The goal is to end up in a place where employees and automated technologies work together seamlessly, driving positive change for the organization and its customers. O

TED DEZVANE is the Senior Vice President of Managed Document Services at Xerox. Prior to this, Ted held numerous roles within the company, such as Chief Strategy Officer, Vice President of Strategy & Portfolio (for Xerox Services, now Conduent, Inc.), and Director of Corporate Business Strategy. For more information, visit www.xerox.com/en-us/services.

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By Bob Larrivee

UNWRAPPING

OFFICE 365

O

Over the years, we’ve heard a lot of talk about how businesses are moving to the cloud, switching to Microsoft’s

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Are we getting the benefits we need?

Office 365, and creating and collaborating around content, but what is really happening out there? Are organizations

really taking the initiative to connect and optimize their Office 365 and SharePoint environments in ways to gain maximum benefit? Or have they simply installed yet another application for the user community, only to let it fall to the wayside when the next shiny object comes along?

for some time. This same study finds that better than half (59%) are using Office 365 for collaboration and file sharing, while 46% use Skype for live conferencing. So, it appears that businesses are turning to Office 365 for more than just content creation but also as a means to share and interact with other members of their organization and/or clients.

their day-to-day activities. However, it is up to decision-makers to realize this potential as they assess what, when, and how they move forward with their planned implementations.

There are always benefits to be found where technology is concerned, and there is a lot to be gained by using Office 365. Will it deliver 100% out-of-the-box functionality? This will depend on what you are trying to accomplish. In some cases, you will need to enhance it with add-on or auxiliary products. The key is to know what business problem you are trying to solve with Office 365 and to define the goal you have in relation to how it will be used by the organization and each department.

Then, you have to educate, train, and help transition the user community to that new way of working in order for it to take hold. Don’t be afraid to unwrap Office 365 and look at each element it has to offer. You may find that implementing it in phases is the best approach, delivering small presents at different intervals rather than one big gift that overwhelms. O

“The key is to know what business problem you are trying to solve with Office 365 and to define the goal you have in relation to how it will be used by the organization.”

According to a recent AIIM report titled “Information Management: Connecting and Optimizing Office 365,” 74% of respondents indicate that Office 365 is their tool of choice for content creation. This isn’t really surprising, since most people relate the term “Office” to Microsoft’s productivity tools and have

While there is clear evidence that Office 365 is becoming a platform of choice for many businesses, there are still similar challenges around user adoption, as with many other technologies of the past. In the AIIM survey, 55% of respondents agree that their biggest ongoing issue is getting users to manage and share their content in Office 365 alone, while 46% feel that a lack of expertise is their biggest issue.

There has to be purpose, education, training, and a clear transition to the new way of working—even with Office 365. Enhancements will be made that will help in this transition, enabling the user community to be more productive and see grater value from Office 365 in

BOB LARRIVEE is Vice President and Chief Analyst of Market Intelligence at AIIM and an internationally recognized subject matter expert and thought leader with over 30 years of experience in the fields of information management and process management. Contact Bob by emailing him at blarrivee@aiim.org, visiting www.aiim.org, or follow him on Twitter @BobLarrivee.

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ARE YOUR ELECTRONIC RECORDS A TICKING TIME BOMB?

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By Cindy Zuvich & George Dunn

S

ecurity breaches, privacy violations, and lawsuits are in the news every day. Today, it is a matter of when, not if, it will happen.

When hackers breach your security, what will they do with your internal emails and electronic documents? Hold them hostage for ransom, leak them into the public domain, or delete them?

Alternatively, what about lawsuits?

Organizations need to appropriately dispose of, retain, and manage their electronic records and information, which could be stored in shared network drives, emails, and data systems. If they don’t, there could be significant court and civil penalties, sanctions, adverse judgments, and punitive damages on the horizon.

So, what can organizations do to better understand and minimize the risks associated with electronic records?

Today, automated tools can help organizations search, inventory, assess, and categorize their electronic records. For example, auto-classification software provides powerful search engines that can scan and crawl through electronic records stored within many different repositories of an enterprise, such as email, file shares, enterprise content management (ECM) systems, cloud storage, collaborative sites, backup tapes, hard drives, portable devices, offline storage media, mobile devices, social media, data warehouses, and data repositories. These tools can provide a real-time dashboard to visualize, analyze, and classify an organization’s inventory of electronic records for risk assessment.

Next, it is important to assess the potential risk for the organization. Use the information gathered from your electronic records inventory to identify records that contain sensitive content, such as personally identifiable information (PII), including social security numbers, protected health information (PHI), confidential, or other

sensitive data, that will pose a risk if security is compromised.

Beyond building an inventory of your electronic records, it is also necessary to identify the number and type of electronic record systems in use. Begin by assessing the level of security/encryption provided and other functional capabilities, such as indexing, tagging, version control, permissions, search, retention, and disposition. Determine if these systems prevent electronic records from being intentionally or accidentally deleted, or kept longer than required, as compared to your organization’s retention schedule.

as well. Identify redundant, obsolete, and trivial (ROT) electronic records.

You should develop a strategy to delete redundant documents (i.e., exact duplicates), obsolete documents (that can be deleted in accordance with an organization’s retention/disposition policies and schedules), and trivial documents (transitory or temporary information).

Lastly, reach out to industry experts to assist you, as required. These resources can help with the development of a strategic electronic records plan; evaluations of auto-classification software tools; assembling and understanding electronic records inventory findings; updating records management (or information governance) policies, procedures, and schedules; evaluating electronic records management, email, and ECM systems in use; assessing new technologies available in the marketplace; and eliminating ROT. O

“It is important to assess the potential risk for the organization. Use the information gathered from your electronic records inventory to identify records that contain sensitive content.”

It is always a good idea to develop a strategy for managing and protecting those records that pose the highest risk to an organization. We recommend moving these high-risk records stored in email or shared network drives to an ECM system to improve search, security, and appropriate management of retention/disposition.

Make sure that your organization’s retention/disposition schedules are up to date and reflect current regulatory, industry, and organizational requirements.

Remember to eliminate electronic records that don’t need to be retained

CINDY ZUVICH, CRM, is the Principal of Unigrated Global, an information governance consultancy and records management services company based in White Plains, New York. Contact Cindy at cindy.zuvich@unigrated.com.

GEORGE DUNN is President of CRE8 Independent Consultants, an information governance and technology planning company located in Seattle, Washington. Contact him at consulting@cre8inc.com.

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GARTNER’S

TOP

10 TECHNOLOGY TRENDS FOR

2018

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Connecting people, devices, content & services

EDITOR’S NOTE The disruptive nature of the digital business cannot be overstated. As technology continues to get SMARTER and SMARTER, what separates the digital world from the physical one will be harder and harder to differentiate. The growing interconnectivity between people, devices, and content is giving rise to a new way of working. These changes will set off DEEP and PROFOUND reverberations for your current business models. Every year, Gartner releases their list of top technology trends expected to have a broad impact. While many of the technologies related to these trends won’t reach full maturity until 2022, enterprise leaders can prepare by understanding the DISRUPTIVE FORCES at work.

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AI FOUNDATION

o N1

While the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) seems boundless, according to a recent Gartner survey, 59% of respondents are still in the process of building out their AI strategies. Optimizing data-driven decision-making and enhancing customer experiences with AI technology are very attractive benefits for such an investment. However, enterprise leaders should focus on “narrow AI� that can deliver a particular business result. Narrow AI is defined as highly scoped machine-learning solutions that target a specific task. Gartner recommends targeting one or two business scenarios where AI can drive the highest level of value, and leave the other stuff to science fiction writers.

2 INTELLIGENT APPS & ANALYTICS The emergence of virtual customer assistants, virtual personal assistants, and chat bots are challenging the very notion of how we work today and the state of the modern workplace. Gartner predicts that almost every app, application, and service will use some level of AI technology. Certainly, there is no shortage of large technology vendors placing their bets on AI, with Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft all embedding advanced AI capabilities into their current solutions. For example, Microsoft is focused on enhancing Office 365 and building up their developer ecosystem. Gartner recommends examining how these vendors plan on using AI to deliver advanced analytics, intelligent processes, and new user experiences.

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3

INTELLIGENT THINGS

Gartner defines intelligent things as either semiautonomous or fully autonomous, meaning they can operate independently for a sustained period of time to complete a task. Some examples include robotic vacuum cleaners, autonomous vehicles, smart speakers (such as Amazon Echo), and autonomous drones and robots.

AI has opened the door to many new intelligent things, and as a result, these standalone devices could soon build interconnected networks with each other, working together to achieve a task.

#4

DIGITAL TWINS

Gartner estimates that by 2020, there will be more than 20 billion connected sensors and endpoints. As the Internet of things (IoT) continue to multiply, more interest is being paid to the concept of digital twins. This is when a software object or model is implemented to mirror a real-word object. Through this mechanism, it is easier to understand the state of the physical object, make adjustments as needed, and improve the decision-making process. While current application of digital twin assets focuses on an expanding IoT model, it’s certainly not limited to only things.

Gartner predicts that we will see the evolution of more sophisticated digital models, including those of humans with valuable medical data, business operating systems, and models of cities and buildings.

5

7

IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE

In the digital world, the user experience is being rewritten.

Technologies like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) are changing the way people perceive and interact with each other, “things,” and their increasingly immersive experiences. Pretty soon, spaces could come alive with the integration of VR and AR with mobile devices, wearable IoT, and conversational platforms. However, the market is nascent. Gartner recommends examining real-life scenarios to make employees more productive using these technologies, such as improving employee training or providing hands-free information.

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BLOCKCHAIN

Last year, we wrote about how “blockchain will revolutionize trust.

Since blockchains are distributed, immutable ledgers, all parties can trust them.” Therefore, it is fast-evolving into a platform for digital transformation. While the potential to optimize business operations is very real, this technology is still immature and unproven in critical business environments. When considering this technology, it is very important to define what blockchain means for your use case, as the terminology is in flux.

CLOUD TO THE EDGE The distributed nature of IoT systems is also renewing interest in edge computing. The concept of edge content delivery has been around for some time, where processing and collection of information occurs closer to the user or “thing” to avoid delays in transferring data.

Cloud and edge computing can be seen as complementary approaches, where cloud facilitates a service-oriented model and edge computing delivers the ability to execute on the distributed aspects of the cloud.

Some examples of vendors delivering such functionality to the edge include Microsoft Office 365 and AWS Greengrass. Gartner predicts that we will see more solutions like Office 365 on the horizon.

CONVERSATIONAL PLATFORMS By 2019, Gartner predicts that 20% of our interactions with smartphones will be through virtual personal assistants (VPAs). Common examples of VPAs are Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, and Microsoft’s Cortana. All of these assistants leverage conversational platforms, where the system takes a request from a user with natural language and then performs an action, delivers content, or asks for further information. While these systems are still limited to very simple interactions and structured modes of communication, their usefulness and integration with third-party services will supersede any headaches along the way.

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EVENT-DRIVEN MODEL

As a digital business, information technology (IT) leaders must be sensitive to the opportunities that await them. These event-driven moments rely on many different parts of an organization. The more intuitive our response is, the more value we can extract from this information. In fact, Gartner reports that such “real-time situational awareness” will be required for 80% of digital solutions. As a result, we will see more event-driven products, like Salesforce’s Platform Events and SAP Event Stream Processor.

CONTINUOUS ADAPTIVE RISK & TRUST

10

While all the technologies listed here offer transformative business approaches, they also introduce real, unmitigated risk. The “hacker” reality can’t be met with the sameold “perimeter defense” of yesterday.

Rather, security and risk management leaders need to focus on detecting and responding to threats continuously as well as protecting access to the digital business as systems and information become more open.

In this environment, trust and risk must be assessed in real time as the interaction is occurring. With this model, companies will need to adopt people-centric security, empowering developers to take personal responsibility for security capabilities, and compensating with continuous monitoring and a “trust and verify” mindset. O

Should We Still

By Kaspar Roos

CARE ABOUT CCM IN 2018?

Understanding the convergence of CX and CCM

C

ustomer communications management (CCM) is an industry in transition. Last year, we witnessed further convergence of CCM with customer experience (CX) and saw new approaches in configuration and deployment gaining wider adoption.

Yet, a popular question remains: Is CCM still relevant today?

One of the key challenges with this term is its ambiguity. Some think of CCM as a means to describe outbound transactional print communications, and others use it as a synonym for document composition. Still, many people—myself included—take a broader perspective, viewing CCM as the creation, management, and fulfilment of any personalized, omni-channel customer interaction at scale. This is irrespective of the channel, communication type, or touchpoint. Therefore, the domain of CCM could extend to anything from promotional marketing

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emails, personalized web experiences, inbound scans, mobile forms, printed statements, and even call center communications, which can be transcribed, analyzed, and optimized using virtual customer assistant (VCA) technology.

This definition places CCM right in the center of the customer experience management (CXM) space. This is a natural evolution of how enterprises are managing their customer communications and interactions, which is the result of advancements in information technology (IT), consumer behavior, and enterprise IT deployment models.

For the foreseeable future, CCM will remain relevant, but it is distinctively different from CXM, even though both share objectives around leveraging customer interactions to improve CX, leading to increased loyalty or other business objectives. There are two reasons why CCM will remain a distinct subset of CXM. First, many CXM tools have been

Stand-alone Mainframes

197O • Transactional print • Monolithic systems

1980

• WYSIWYG d • Separation and logic

developed with a marketer in mind and struggle to support more complex use cases, including regulated communications. Second, the CXM technology landscape is very fragmented. There are many niche or point solutions in CXM that operate within functional silos.

Thus, the continued distinction of CCM technology provides clarity within the wider CXM ecosystem that may share this purpose or vision.

Remember that the nirvana in CX/CCM is a horizontal, end-to-end communications capability that manages and optimizes customer interactions across all touchpoints under a single control. For enterprise architects, chief information officers, or CX professionals scoping out or building enterprise-wide communications systems, understanding that CCM technology is a subset of CX is very helpful. Within this realigned lens of CCM, buyers should focus on four categories of evaluation, including omni-channel, orchestration, interactive/collaboration, and process/content automation.

The continuing convergence of CCM with CX will be one of the biggest trends in the new year. Companies will need to digitally transform their communication processes, become more agile, and link their communications to acquisition and

retention strategies. If they do not start to do this, they will increasingly feel the pain from competitors or even new startups and innovators who are disrupting established industries.

In 2018, we can expect to see more interest in cloud solutions, loosely coupled architectures based on APIs and microservices, cloud-to-cloud integrations, content automation, machine learning and analytics, mobile messaging networks and chat bots, and tools to help business stakeholders orchestrate messaging to meet the evolving needs of their customers as well as the business.

Further, we will also see a strong interest in connecting customer communications with customer experience economics.

Enterprises should not delay in digitally transforming their businesses.

The industry is changing rapidly, and inaction is often the biggest inhibitor to innovation. O

KASPAR ROOS is the Founder and CEO of Aspire Customer Communications Services, an international advisory firm specializing in CX and CCM. Before starting Aspire, he ran InfoTrends’ Global Production Workflow and Customer Communications advisory service.

Follow him on Twitter @kasparroos.

THE EVOLUTION OF CUSTOMER COMMUNICATIONS Cloud Social, Mobility, Big Data

Distributed Client-Server

1990

document design of content, data,

2000 • Electronic presentment • Portals • Interactive • Dynamics • Promotional

2010

Ambient IoT, AI

2020 • Mobile • Omni-channel/conversational • Customer journeys • Business user enablement

2025 • Artificial intelligence • Chat bots • Speech recognition • Robotic process automation

HOW TO SELECT A DIGITAL EXPERIENCE PLATFORM Putting the “experience” back into your digital experience technology

BY TONY BYRNE

A

critical precondition for any digital transformation strategy is selecting the right technology.

Yet, industry surveys suggest that more than half of all projects fail to identify the best solution for the customer’s needs. There’s a reason for this: Too often, enterprise teams follow a “waterfall” method when selecting their technology solutions, often involving long lists of feature requirements but not enough human involvement or

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time spent testing the system. Instead, companies should follow a more agile process that incorporates the latest principles of design thinking.

Digital experience (DX) platforms come in many flavors. Most commonly, an enterprise will need to address key services around social media engagement, marketing automation, web content and experience management (WCM), and digital and media asset management (DAM), though there are many other tools that typically make up

a DX technical architecture. Perhaps the biggest irony here is that many organizations leave out the whole experience component of the solution in their own vetting efforts. Companies should be asking: How will customers and prospects interact with the platform? How will employees effectively manage and exploit it?

At the heart and soul of any selection process, the key is to create story-based user journeys. By testing vendors through an iterative and adaptive

AGILE VETTING WE ARE HERE

“Longish” short list (10-12)

Short list to RFP recipients (6-8)

Vendor demos (3-4) Bake-off POC (1-2)

SELECTION (1)

process, you will more practically hone in on the solution that best fits you and your goals.

Most often, you will first begin your search by exploring the broader solutions marketplace. At this stage, you should carefully research the type of technology that will satisfy your needs and the selection criteria for the long list of plausible suppliers. It’s important to cast a wide net during this step and not rely on a single source of information. Along the way, you may discover

key bidders who weren’t among your initial list of usual suspects.

Explicitly or not, different tools target different use cases. Any technology platform or product wants to behave a certain way. The key is to match a vendor’s prime use case with your specific needs. The way to do this is through a scenario analysis. Think of a scenario as a high-level business use case, like peer-based customer support for customer relationship management (CRM) systems or short-form videos for DAM technology. When determining your initial short list of vendors to evaluate, it’s important to understand how a product’s fundamental scenario aligns with your intended use case. This will allow you to see the relative strengths and weaknesses for your particular circumstances.

As you narrow your search for possible vendors, demos will serve as a kind of bridge between a narrative proposal and the subsequent hands-on prototyping. Rather than discuss what a solution theoretically could do, the bidder has to show your team. If planned and structured meticulously, demo sessions can be highly revealing about the technology and the vendor, as well as the true relevance of your scenarios.

The key is to return to your original set of relevant user stories, spending enough time on them to allow bidders to demonstrate meaningful differences.

The last stage in the selection process is when you put a technology (and vendor) through some very practical, hands-on tests, sometimes called a proof of concept (PoC). In these competitive “bake-offs,” vendor finalists are asked to mimic a real implementation, showing how to use some parts of their proposed solution. The key is that it’s totally customized to your requirements (with your content and data, participating employees, and your real environment)—though typically, you’ll employ the vendor’s kitchen (a.k.a., cloud environment).

Remember, we’re talking about experience technology here. To pick the right tools, you should follow a proven, practical selection process. O

TONY BYRNE is the Founder of Real Story Group, an independent analyst firm that evaluates digital workplace and marketing technologies for enterprise customers. He is also the co-author of the book, “The Right Way to Select Technology: Get the Real Story on Finding the Best Fit.” For more information, contact Tony at www.realstorygroup.com.

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RESOLVE TO TACKLE RECORDS MANAGEMENT IN THE

NEW YEAR Why you should keep this resolution

By Marko Sillanpaa

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IF

there’s one resolution every organization should keep, it’s effectively managing their records. This resolve doesn’t just materialize every New Year, though, but usually after some significant document was lost or accidentally discovered. A team is quickly pulled together with the mission of implementing a records program in the next few months. More often than not, it ends in failure. So, how can we promise to do better in the future?

One of the big debates when implementing records management is whether to keep or destroy every document. While this might define your organization’s level of acceptable risk, and where that risk may lie, it often means little in the long run.

That’s because, no matter where you start, you quickly find exceptions to the rule.

Even if you plan on destroying everything, you still need to keep employment documents for “x” years, and if you plan on keeping everything, you’ll soon realize that financial documents take up a lot of space and are only needed for “y” years. Skip the debate. A good records management program will keep some documents while destroying others.

When you start looking at the retention rules for individual types of files (a.k.a., the file plan), it’s best to start with the easier ones first. The appropriate retention schedules for internal documents may be difficult to define, so it will be much easier to identify the criteria for certain external processes, such as the requirement to keep tax-related

documents for a specific number of years after filing or the condition to keep employee-related documents for a number of years after employment. Starting with these established policies can show progress in your program quickly.

Creating an enterprise-wide records management program is not an easy process, and so, it won’t happen all at once. Implementing these policies will require you to train users on identifying which documents are records and when to declare them as such. Often, it’s best to start with a department or two, especially if they support the records program. Instilling organizational change is much easier when a few departments are equally motivated to implement the solution.

With the help of these early adopters, it becomes easier to bring the rest of the organization on board.

Implementing records management is not an event but an organizational discipline. The lack of attention on this issue has made the problem bigger and bigger, and it’s not going away overnight. In the new year, resolve to begin managing your records before a crisis forces your hand. O

“Creating an enterprise-wide records management program is not an easy process, and so, it won’t happen all at once.”

MARKO SILLANPAA is Co-founder of the blog Big Men On Content and the Founder of BMO Consulting. He has been working in ECM for over 18 years for vendors like Documentum, EMC, Hyland, and SDL Trados and systems integrators like CSC and Accenture. Follow him on Twitter @MSillanpaaBMOC.

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4

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

D

TRENDS TO WATCH Connecting the digital strategy

By Catherine Sbeglia

Digitizing the customer experience (CX) no longer gives a company an edge, but instead, it’s the key to survival.

For almost a decade, organizations have been talking about how new digital channels not only improve customer interactions and ease of doing business but also offer consumers the power of choice—often, at their fingertips. Yet, there is a greater divide than ever before between those who have committed to the digital revolution and established market leaders who are falling behind. Why is this gap widening?

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To remain relevant with modern customers, it’s no longer about multiple channels but how those channels intersect and interact with one another.

According to Dimension Data’s expansive survey titled “Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report,” CX leaders should focus on four main trends to overcome the digital crisis, including a connected digital strategy, customer journeys, data analytics, and the growing robot (artificial intelligence) presence.

Findings in the report suggest that even though companies recognize the importance of a digital customer experience, not enough of them are making it a priority, which is evident in the fact that many still exhibit significant disparate management of CX. In fact, 36% of respondents surveyed said they didn’t have a single manager responsible for CX, and of those who do, only 36% are at the board level. Despite the ability to evidence high cost savings and increases in revenue attributed to their digitalization efforts, along with 81% of companies recognizing CX as a competitive differentiator, only 13% rated their CX delivery a nine out of 10 or better.

While CX is cited by many as the most important measurement of performance, only 10% considered their own digital business strategy to be optimized. This disconnect between what companies know about CX and what they’re doing to address it is ultimately causing established market leaders to falter.

These days, CX is multi-channeled, with the number of channels available to customers expected to rise to 11 by the end of 2018. This proliferating number of customer touchpoints and channels of communication are creating disjointed experiences, such as improving interactions in one channel but not another.

Instead of a fragmented approach to CX, organizations should be focused on the entire customer journey. This means “understanding user behaviors, patterns, and potential transaction value across each channel path.” Omni-channel solutions can’t be built on weak processes or siloed channel management.

“These days, customer experience is multi-channeled, with the number of channels available to customers expected to rise to 11 by the end of 2018.”

While 76% of companies have some customer channels connected, only eight percent reported that they had all channels connected, and only 22% claimed to have most connected. More importantly, companies aren’t gathering and analyzing data on customer journey patterns, and because of this, they are not optimizing them either. A shocking 72% failed to collect customer journey data for review. This means they are failing to identify customer problems and frustration points. Additionally, the report shows that 58% of companies still manage their channels in silos, with 42% of this data locked away from other teams in the organization.

It’s no surprise then that analytics is considered to be the driving force for transforming CX in the next five

years. Harnessing and analyzing mass data is credited with being the number one contributor (58%) to improving the customer journey. By leveraging the digital footprints left by customers, 42% of companies can now offer customized CX. However, the industry is still seeing a shortage in customer analytics systems—only 48% have them— and an overall lack of use of analytics to inform channel management strategy—only 29% claim to do so.

Adding to this complexity is the arrival of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered channels of engagement.

According to the report, the top five channels of focus in the new year will be chat bots, instant messaging, mobile apps, video chat, and the Internet of things (connected devices that communicate with one another). With the introduction of new technology solutions, enterprise users will be left to wade through the maze of integration, new processes, and transaction complexity. These new digital systems must be supported from design to deployment, future-proofing not only the capabilities of the solution but also the agility of the workforce to ensure optimal performance.

Hyper-personalization, AI, and coordinated customer journeys will reshape the CX landscape in the next five years, but the lack of process control over all the communication channels available to customers will be its ultimate downfall. In the end, companies must do more to embrace digital transformation and not rest on their laurels. O

CATHERINE SBEGLIA is a staff writer at DOCUMENT Strategy. She covers information and document management technologies and the digital workplace.

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BUILDING DIGITAL CONTENT WORKFLOWS ISN’T AS EASY AS IT LOOKS Smart and optimized workflows are about the intersection of these three things

By John Horodyski

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THE 3 STAGES OF DIGITAL CONTENT WORKFLOWS

O

n the surface, designing digital content workflows sounds simple enough: create the assets; make them discoverable and accessible; and when they’re no longer relevant to the current business and production cycle, replace them with more current versions. However, today’s digital workflows are layered, complex, non-linear currents that keep the gears turning. When building a digital content workflow, you must consider how business policies, process requirements, human touchpoints, and technology tools all intersect to facilitate efficient workflows.

Each stage of your workflow development is vulnerable to many outside influences that require careful, constant consideration, such as access permissions, workflow ownership and user roles, version tracking and identification, and content categorization.

Business policies and process requirements should be used when defining the scope of your workflow design. Since the workflow exists to support the business, these cannot be ignored. During the development process, you also have an opportunity to learn from those who consume your digital content. As customers and employees interact with digital workflows, they establish expectations for how fast, easy, and intuitive it should be.

Those companies that learn from consumer practices by leveraging this data and applying those lessons to the next iteration of their digital workflows stand to lead their competitors.

The human element always adds the greatest complexity to any project, which is often the Achilles’ heel for

digital content workflows. Since most workflows evolve from existing manual processes, you will need to shift your attention from how a task is accomplished by people and instead consider what tasks you want people to accomplish. It is also important to protect your digital workflows against the very human impulse to find ways to work around ineffective processes. When frustrated by an inefficient workflow, many will resort to “workarounds” that may not be designed to accomplish the task, slowing the entire process down and placing the company at risk.

Finally, an element that can make or break your workflow logic and efficiency is the technology and the deployment methods used to facilitate those workflows. First and foremost, this means balancing the automation capabilities with the end goal in mind. Remember, just because you can automate a function doesn’t mean that you should.

Technology shouldn’t hinder people’s inherent creativity and their ability to discern the best way of completing a task in a particular context. Always consider what tools are appropriate to use, and avoid the danger of deploying technology to perform functions it is not well-engineered to do. It is always people and process first, then technology— never, ever the other way around.

There is more to digital content workflows than first meets the eye. Intricate and multilayered, a healthy, functioning workflow requires constant care and attention. It’s worth it, though. An efficient, logical, easy-to-execute workflow can pave the way to use and monetize digital content while mitigating the risks. O

1

WORK IN PROGRESS STATE This stage is where the team creates and revises their digital assets. These assets can be simple or complex. In this stage, the methods of storing and sharing assets are also identified. All assets are reviewed and either revised, rejected, or approved. Throughout the creation, storage, distribution, and review processes, it is critical to track the iterations of each asset.

2

FINAL STATE This is where the approved assets are sent out to be used. Search and retrieval parameters are defined, and content is distributed to the channels where it will ultimately serve its functional purpose.

Depending on the content, it may be distributed to more than one channel.

3

INACTIVE STATE OR ARCHIVAL STATE This stage recognizes that all content has limits on relevance, but it does not necessarily expire. Content should not be treated as if it has a shelf life. Many organizations find that archival content may need to be reactivated for reuse or be repurposed.

As in the “Final” state, this content will need to be located while inactive, and once found, it will re-enter an approval and routing process similar to the “Work in Progress” state. When it reaches the end of its relevance, the content will be archived before it is ultimately purged.

JOHN HORODYSKI is a Partner at Optimity Advisors and has executive management strategy experience in information management. He is also the author of the book, “Inform, Transform & Outperform: Digital Content Strategies to Optimize Your Business for Growth.” Contact him at optimityadvisors.com.

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Think About It — Best of 2017 “According to the Winterberry Group, US direct mail spending increased by 3.1% annually from 2013 to 2015, as some returned to printed communications versus electronic alternatives.”

— GILLES BISCOS

“The focus on individual rights, as well as transparency and accountability for the collection and handling of personal data, places EU residents and their rights at the heart of the GDPR.” — KATIE STEVENS

“To practitioners, ECM had become less about a single platform but more about standard principles. ECM is about the management of enterprise content.”

— MARKO SILLANPAA

“Because the back office has traditionally run on the nuanced activities and decision points of human individuals, RPA bots must be carefully configured to mimic those activities.”

“According to research conducted

by Deloitte, 76% of government agencies lag behind the private sector in digital adoption, and two-thirds of government agencies spend more than one-third of their time processing paper documents.”

— WASIM A. KHAN

— KEVIN TESCH & DAVE ZAMORSKI

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“There is an interaction continuum between brands and customers that requires enterprises to focus on seamless customer communications across all channels where people want to interact.”

“As we gain access to more and more data,

— DAVE SMITH

— CHARMAINE BROOKS

it is becoming harder to find the information we need. Metaphorically speaking, we are drowning in data yet thirsting for information.”

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