Customer Communications Management (CCM) is subject to changing market conditions driven by digitalization, the Internet, a rich choice of media types, and changing regulations. Under these market conditions, organizations are advised to take a closer look into their customer communications practices. Nevertheless, in-depth research by InfoTrends revealed that most organizations struggle with getting CCM to work. This document discusses the challenges associated with this and presents a grow path for CCM to help organizations improve their customer communications, reduce the cost associated with these communications, and to deepen their customer relationships.

1. White
Paper
October
2014
Are
You
in
Control
of
Your
Customer
Communications?
Written
for
Prospects
and
Customers
of
Scriptura
Engage
(an
Inventive
Designers
Solution)

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Table
of
Contents
Executive Summary .................................................................................................................3
Key Findings.........................................................................................................................3
Introduction .............................................................................................................................4
Customer Communications Management...........................................................................4
Solutions to Challenges in Modern CCM.................................................................................5
Get Everybody Involved.......................................................................................................5
Reduce Your IT Cost and Increase Your Business Agility...................................................6
Understand Your Cost of Communications.........................................................................7
Become Truly “Omnichannel” .............................................................................................8
Taking a Strategic Approach to CCM ......................................................................................9
The CCM Evolution..............................................................................................................9
A Centralized Communications Hub...................................................................................10
About Inventive Designers.......................................................................................................10
Background ..........................................................................................................................10
Portfolio................................................................................................................................11
Scriptura Engage Communication Center...........................................................................12
Scheduling Communications...............................................................................................13
InfoTrends’ Opinion.................................................................................................................14
About the Author .....................................................................................................................15
List
of
Figures
Figure 1: Process steps of modern CCM solutions ..................................................................5
Figure 2: True Cost of Printed Business Communications.....................................................8
Figure 3: How is/will your company’s total communications spending be distributed
by the various communication types you use?........................................................................9
Figure 4: The CCM Evolution ..................................................................................................10
Figure 5: Managing Communications with Communication Center......................................12
Figure 6: Example of a Scheduled Communication................................................................14

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Executive
Summary
Customer Communications Management (CCM) is subject to changing market
conditions driven by digitalization, the Internet, a rich choice of media types, and
changing regulations. Under these market conditions, organizations are advised to
take a closer look into their customer communications practices.
Nevertheless, in-depth research by InfoTrends1 revealed that most organizations
struggle with getting CCM to work. This document discusses the challenges associated
with this and presents a grow path for CCM to help organizations improve their
customer communications, reduce the cost associated with these communications,
and to deepen their customer relationships.
Key
Findings
CCM best practices require a combination of technology, organizational change, and
cross-departmental alignment at a strategic and operational level. InfoTrends
observes an evolutionary approach among organizations in adapting centralized CCM
practices. Organizations seeking to get to the next level in this CCM evolution process
are advised to consider the following aspects:
• Get everybody involved. Organizations should invest in a central authority
body that oversees customer communications for the entire organization and
coordinates communications across all stakeholders involved within the
organization.
• Reduce your IT cost and increase business agility. A CCM solution should
enable business users to control and manage communications independently
from IT.
• Understand your cost of communications. There is a lack of understanding
in regards to the costs associated with electronic communications and the end-to-
end cost for all customer communications. Modern CCM solutions help
organizations by making this cost transparent.
• Become truly “omnichannel.” Change in the customers’ preferences for
communications is one of the key drivers in the CCM transformation process.
Modern CCM solutions must not only support multiple channels, they must also
orchestrate the communications among them.
• Implement a centralized communications hub. CCM is affecting all
customer touch points of an organization. Implementing and operating CCM can,
therefore, only be done successfully when it is institutionalized in a central
manner and managed by a so-called centralized communications hub.
1 Overcoming Implementation Challenges of CCM Solutions in Enterprises; InfoTrends, 2013.

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Introduction
Digitalization and the Internet are empowering customers that want to be more in
control of how and when to engage with organizations, as well as allowing customers
to be more knowledgeable about prices and conditions. In addition, the rich choice of
communication channels and blurring borders of time and space in this respect has
resulted in customers being more sensitive to the way organizations communicate
and engage with them. Information must increasingly be more relevant to the
individual customer. Deepening customer relationships is now more crucial than ever
for organizations to maintain and grow their customer base and to increase the
lifetime value of their customers. In addition to that, especially after the 2008-2009
financial crisis, a raft of new regulations have put burdens on many businesses,
forcing them to act with agility to meet new regulatory requirements or minimize
risks.
Under these market conditions, organizations are well advised to take a closer look at
their customer communications practices. Modern CCM solutions are able to address
the aspects mentioned above, thus providing organizations with the right means to
equip themselves against these challenging market conditions.
Customer
Communications
Management
CCM relates to strategies and technologies that enable the creation, administration,
production, and fulfillment of data-driven, multichannel communications.
Communications can be produced in a scheduled or structural way (e.g., monthly
invoices and annual statements), on-demand triggered by sales agents or customer
service representatives (e.g., welcome kits, insurance proposals, and claim
processing), or interactively by the client filling out and submitting a request for
quotation form through the web or via a mobile device.
CCM solutions originate from the transactional printing market, and have undergone
tremendous development since then. Modern CCM solutions outpace their
predecessors by far and offer communications management well beyond print only.
Such solutions typically are part of a wider eco-system that includes archiving
systems, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, enterprise content
management (ECM) systems, and legacy information systems (e.g., mainframes). The
figure below illustrates the four main process steps of each modern CCM solution.

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Figure 1: Process steps of modern CCM solutions
In the first step, existing customer data is analyzed, segmented, and structured to
better identify and understand customer behaviors. Effective and relevant customer
communications depend on these behavioral insights, creating customized and
personalized communications in the second step. The multichannel production step
ensures that each customer communication is delivered through the customer’s
preferred communication channel. This can be via print, e-mail, social networks,
SMS/MMS, or other electronic forms. In the final step, the response of the customer
is measured and analyzed. This establishes not only the effectiveness of the
communication, but also improves the existing customer data available so that even
more targeted customized communications can be delivered to individual customers
or specific customer segments in the future.
Solutions
to
Challenges
in
Modern
CCM
In-depth research done by InfoTrends2 revealed that most organizations struggle with
getting CCM to work. CCM best practices require a combination of technology,
organizational change, and cross-departmental alignment at a strategic and
operational level. This section will discuss best practices in implementing CCM
solutions to help organizations improve their customer communications, reduce the
cost associated with it, and deepen their customer relationships to improve their
customer lifetime values.
Get
Everybody
Involved
Organizations send out a staggering amount of communications that are managed
and produced by a wide range of people, systems, and resources. Coordination
between these assets is vitally important, but most organizations have a very
decentralized management structure of these resources. As a result, organizations
primarily see customer communications as an activity initiated and managed by each
individual line of business (LOB). Without some degree of central coordination or
executive authority over customer communications, organizations are susceptible to
2 Overcoming Implementation Challenges of CCM Solutions in Enterprises; InfoTrends, 2013.
• Output%across%all%
channels%
• Capturing%/%data%
mining%
• Data%integra6on%
• Customer%
segmenta6on%and%
analysis%
• Channel%listening%and%
monitoring%
• Feedback%analysis%
• Trigger%for%addi6onal%
ac6ons%or%on=demand%
communica6ons%
• Content%op6miza6on%
• Archiving%and%retrieval%
• QR=codes%or%
augmented%reality%
for%addi6onal%
interac6vity%
• Structured,%on=demand,%
and%interac6ve%
• On=statement%messaging%
can%be%embedded%in%
electronic%content%
Data$
Capture$&$
Analy/cs$
Customer$
Communi5
ca/ons$
Mul/5
Channel$
Produc/on$
Channel$
Listening$&$
Response$
Mgt.$ • Business%process%
linkages%such%as%e=
billing%and%mobile%
payment%

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lower customer satisfaction (e.g., different experiences between communication
channels), higher cost (e.g., redundancy in systems and procedures), missed revenue
opportunities (e.g., lack of up/cross-selling), breaches in regulatory and security
compliance (e.g., when LOBs have different interpretations about compliance rules),
and other brand and operational issues. Ideally, organizations should invest in a
central authority body that oversees customer communications for the entire
organization and that coordinates communications across all involved stakeholders
within the organization. Any modern CCM solution should support each stakeholder
in the CCM process. InfoTrends’ research identified the following key roles within an
organization involved in CCM:
• Project manager or CCM lead: The project manager or CCM lead is the
central point of contact and oversees all customer communications activities
within the organization.
• Legal: The legal department provides a layer of assurance over all
communications when it comes to protection of the organization and ensures the
company is meeting the required regulations.
• Marketing: CCM is becoming a key element for successful marketing campaigns
executed across multiple communications channels that are also highly
personalized to provide relevant information to the individual customer or
specific customer segments.
• LOB or product manager: LOBs or product managers play a key role in the
look and feel of their communications set. They may not be the primary source of
the design, but they are heavily involved in what features, functions, channels it is
delivered through, and the information that is included on the communications.
• IT: IT’s responsibility ranges from managing IT infrastructure to having a role in
direct CCM-related functions, such as document composition and the
programming of templates that are composed through the CCM solution.
• Procurement: Procurement is often responsible for the approval and funding of
software and technology purchases, including CCM solutions.
• Print operation: The print operation is often tasked with the responsibility to
address concerns with communications, research new software technologies for
multichannel distribution, and developing a strategy around CCM.
Reduce
Your
IT
Cost
and
Increase
Your
Business
Agility
For a traditional customer communication, typically an art group within the LOB or a
more central group directed by the LOB designs a document. This document design
mock-up is then sent to the IT department to program it into a template that can be
processed by the document composition tool in place. This process can be quite time-
consuming, relying on IT’s availability and placing an additional strain when
regulatory or legal departments require even minor edits to these documents.
The response to this challenge has been a demand for empowering business users
with tools and technology that enable them to have more control over customer
communications documents. Business users can be direct employees (e.g., help desk

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employees or product managers) as well as agents or businesses that act on behalf of
the organization. The benefit of CCM solutions that empower business users is the
decreased strain on IT resources facilitated by the increase in automation and the lack
of relying on IT to make minor tweaks to templates when the LOB, marketing, or legal
would like changes.
Modern CCM solutions should support this scenario of business user empowerment.
The key for such solutions is to ensure compatibility with standardized file formats
(e.g., XML) to easily integrate with existing office environments and minimize the
learning curve of the business user. There is also a desire to deploy CCM functionality
through a web interface or thin client to minimize installation, updates, and
troubleshooting efforts by IT.
Understand
Your
Cost
of
Communications
Cost measurement and understanding is important for any organization. If an
organization is unaware of the true cost of anything, it can impact recognized
revenues. For printed communications, it is important to understand the cost of
production — particularly as organizations evaluate whether or not it is more cost
effective to maintain an in-plant or outsource. InfoTrends’ research3 for the true cost
associated with printed business communications reveals that changes in the ratio of
print versus non-print related cost over time (see Figure below) reflect the adaptation
level of workflow and process automation — as well as the increase in productivity
levels.
For electronic communications, it is also important to understand the cost associated
with it. Nevertheless, due to the lack of physical costs — such as paper, ink, and
postage — these costs are not transparent for most organizations. As a result, such
costs typically have lower priority for organizations, although these costs are not
necessarily lower than printed communications.
3 The True Cost of Business Communications, InfoTrends 2012.

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Figure 2: True Cost of Printed Business Communications4
Source: The True Cost of Business Communications; InfoTrends, 2012
Modern CCM solutions make this cost of customer communications transparent to
the organization by measuring and tracking the involved activities and the ability to
process and present this data in an aggregated form based on the audience (e.g., a
LOB manager typically is more interested in the overall costs, while a print operation
manager typically is more interested in cost associated with each type of
communication channel).
Become
Truly
“Omnichannel”
Digitalization is disrupting the traditional media landscape at an unprecedented rate.
In practical terms, it means that the customer is given more media choices, but also
more time to engage with brands. The Figure below shows the trend in
communications spending of enterprises in the United States. While print
communications still accounts for the biggest amount of spending, the gap with
online/web communications is closing. InfoTrends observes that CCM is subject to a
major transformation process and changes in the customers’ preferences for customer
communications is one of the key drivers in this process. Next to mobile, e-
presentment, digital mailboxes, e-mail, video, and social media are important
communication channels.
Modern CCM solutions not only support these different communication channels,
they also orchestrate the communications among them to synchronize the message
sent to the customer. This way, the customer communications become accessible
across all mediums (“omnichannel”), which is an important aspect for ensuring a
delighted customer engagement.
4 Assumptions: 500 copies of 1) Manual (200 letter pages, 4/4 cover, 1/1 text); 2) Brochure (8 letter pages,
4/4); 3) Sell-sheet (2 letter pages, 4/1); 4) Presentation slides (20 letter pages, 4/4), included cost are 1)
Creative cost; 2) Editorial cost; 3) Project mmanagement cost; 4) Printing cost; 5) Warehousing and
archiving cost; 6) Cost due to obscolensce; 7) Shipping and distribution cost.
100%
0%
20%
60%
40%
80%
20062001 2009 2012
50.0%
86.0%
35.0%
46.0%
14.0%
50.0%
54.0%
65.0%
Non-Print related cost
Print related cost

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Figure 3: How is/will your company’s total communications spending be
distributed by the various communication types you use?
N=1,026 enterprises
Source: Vertical Market Study; InfoTrends, 2012
Taking
a
Strategic
Approach
to
CCM
It should have become clear by now that CCM is affecting all customer touchpoints of
an organization — whether this concerns customer service, IT, marketing, legal,
corporate communications, or procurement. Implementing and operating CCM can,
therefore, only be done successfully when it is institutionalized in a central manner
and managed by what InfoTrends refers to as “a center of CCM excellence.” This
center of CCM excellence should not only manage day-to-day activities and individual
projects that are required by LOBs, they should also manage the overarching
processes and workflow for producing customer communications.
The
CCM
Evolution
InfoTrends observes an evolutionary approach among organizations in adapting
centralized CCM practices (see Figure below). It was stated above that CCM originates
from within the IT departments and was purely concerned with the production of
transactional communications, such as bank statements and billing information. In
this first stage of the CCM evolution, digital printing continuous to take over
conventional printing by eliminating the production of preprinted forms (white paper
printing) and by its capability to support marketing campaign needs (e.g., variable
data/color printing, white space marketing, print-to-web features).
In a second step, multiple output channels are introduced. As discussed above, print
will be one element of a broader communication mix and synchronization among the
different communication channels will become a business issue. Focusing customer
communications in a centralized communication hub makes great sense as a means
to deal with this!
80%
40%
100%
0%
60%
20%
Next
2
YearsLast
12
Months
16.2%
29.9%34.1%
27.8%
25.3%
16.7%
11.2%11.7%
12.0%10.2%
Other
Video
Audio
Print
Mobile
Online/Web

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Figure 4: The CCM Evolution
Source: Overcoming Implementation Challenges of CCM solutions in Enterprises; InfoTrends, 2013
A
Centralized
Communications
Hub
The value of a centralized communications hub is that each initiative can have
dedicated resources assigned to customer communications projects to ensure the
project hits its project goals. The CCM project team can coordinate with marketing on
guidelines for corporate style, branding, messaging, and be the point of area for
compliance requirements. Ideally, the centralized communications hub should be
closely aligned with the IT department or have IT budget themselves so they can
integrate the various communication systems to provide corporate-wide insights in
what has been communicated and help synchronize communications across all
channels. Clearly, such a centralized communications hub brings additional overhead,
bureaucracy, and cost to the communications process — but this will pay off in the
long run!
About
Inventive
Designers
Background
Inventive Designers N.V. (Inventive Designers) is a privately held family business
headquartered in Antwerp, Belgium. Guy Dehond and Patrick Morren founded the
company in 1994. In 2012, Joke Dehond and Klaas Bals took over the management of
the company. Guy Dehond is still involved in the company as the president of the
Board of Directors.
Inventive Designers mainly targets financial institutes, such as banks and pension
funds, as well as insurances, governments, telecoms, and utilities. The majority of
Inventive Designers’ customer base is located in Western Europe, followed by North
America and Australia. Customers in these regions are served through direct sales or
through partner-channels. Inventive Designers is an active member in a variety of
Conven&onal)Print)
to)Digital)Print)
Single)to)Mul&)
Channel)
Mul&4Channel)
Synchronicity)
Centralized)
Communica&ons)
Hub)
Implementa)on+Complexity+
Customer+Engagement+
Customer+
Engagement+
Strategy+
Majority of
businesses
Current
Leaders
Relevant, consistent
and appropriate
content delivered via
the customers’
preferred channels
Authentic, purposeful and engaging
communications that optimize the lifetime
value of the customer

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leading industry associations, such as W3C5, AIIM6, Xplor7, and the AFP
Consortium8.
It also received several industry awards throughout recent years, such as the Prize for
Digital Communications in 2012, the 2012 eGov Award for the most innovative
project in e-Government, and the Document & Content Management Award 2011 by
DocumentWereld (a Dutch Magazine for the document industry). It has also been
named one of nine most ambitious companies in the Benelux by Deloitte’s
Technology Fast 50 in 2011.
Portfolio
Inventive Designers’ CCM platform is called Scriptura Engage. The latest version is
version 8.0, which will be generally available by the end of 2014. Scriptura Engage is a
CCM solution to create and deliver personalized correspondence for print, email,
online, mobile, archive, social media or other channels. Scriptura Engage is typically
used in complex customer environments with huge volumes of transactional or high
value output, and in organizations that want to communicate more using digital
channels. The platform offers a central solution that can produce and deliver output
for all business applications within a company. It is a so-called digital first solution,
with a focus on and optimized for digital delivery channels
Scriptura Engage consists of different components. Document Design and
Generation is done using a visual design environment that allows users to enjoy
WYSIWYG9 capabilities. This makes it possible to design output templates without
programming. This visual design environment is also used to design Electronic
Forms for web and mobile. The actual communication workflow itself (where is the
data coming from, which output format to produce and to which channel to deliver) is
also designed within this visual environment. The Interactive Document
Assembly component enables users to personalize documents, like contract and
proposals, before they are being sent to the customer. This component offers a web-
based interface to manage text blocks and compose documents on the fly. The
Multichannel component supports e-mail, online, print, social, mobile, and archive.
In addition, specific channel functionalities are offered like e-mail testing and push
notifications.
From an architecture point of view, Scriptura Engage offers a cloud-enabled model
based on open standards with easy integration and configuration capabilities. From a
security point of view, organizations can manage users, groups, roles, and
permissions.
5 The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World
Wide Web. See also www.w3c.org.
6 The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) is a non-profit organization of
information professionals. See also www.aiim.org.
7 Xplor (www.xplor.org) is the worldwide association of users and suppliers of products and services that
create, modify, and deliver customized information using a variety of document technologies.
8 The Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) Consortium brings together voices from across the print
industry to improve AFP and to take this industry tot he next level in high-volume variable data –and
transactional printing. See also www.afpcinc.org.
9 What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG).

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Scriptura
Engage
Communication
Center
With its new version 8.0, the Scriptura Engage platform includes a new component
called Communication Center. The objective of Communication Center is to act as a
central communications hub for customer correspondence. It is a management
platform for executing complex multichannel communication strategies in a
standardized manner and can be configured, extended, or customized to meet
strategic communication objectives of the organizations.
The different Scriptura Engage components (from template design and resource
management to output production and delivery) can be managed from
Communication Center; a 360° view of all communications is available. Its user
interface can be branded to the corporate communications guidelines of customers
allowing white label versions. The Figure below shows some screenshots of
Communication Center.
Figure 5: Managing Communications with Communication Center
Source: Inventive Designers 2014

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Communication Center is designed around the four phases that each communication
process goes through.
• Design phase: In the design phase, users can manage communications projects,
templates, and related resources.
• Compose phase: In the compose phase, data is retrieved and used to assemble
the actual correspondence. Users can see the status of each communication job,
the number of communications that has been sent, and more. Communication
Center also allows for the management of the jobs and communications: Release,
pause, and restart. Jobs can be bundled. Communications can be previewed,
approved, and rejected.
• Delivery phase: In the delivery phase, Communication Center supports various
delivery channels and formats. Channels are configurable and new channels can
easily be added. Communication Center also provides connectors for specific
channels, like the upcoming digital mailbox Doccle10.
• Analysis phase: All information that is retrieved during the process of
generating and delivering communications can be consulted via secure web
dashboards, which includes overviews of jobs, communications, and deliveries
with drilldown possibilities and statistics about the different channels and
reports.
Scheduling
Communications
Communication Center introduces the concept of communication schedules.
Communication schedules generate and deliver communications to multiple channels
in parallel, or execute fallback scenarios when a communication could not be
delivered via a specific channel. To be able to do this, communication schedules
processes the feedback from the different output channels.
For example, a communication schedule can be configured to send an e-mail to a
customer. In case of a bounce, it will automatically try to resend it. After a certain
number of retries and an elapsed timeframe, it can be configured to send the
communication automatically via the central print channel. This communication
schedule is illustrated in the Figure below.
10 Doccle is an online platform that acts as a personal central electronic archive for receiving electronic
documents from different organizations. See also www.doccle.be.

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Figure 6: Example of a Scheduled Communication
Source: Inventive Designers 2014
InfoTrends’
Opinion
Building customer loyalty and driving customer advocacy are now more important
than ever before for organizations engaging with their customers. CCM is a crucial
element in this process, and it is concerned with all customer touchpoints that an
organization has with its customers. Implementing and operating CCM can,
therefore, only be done successfully when it is institutionalized in a central manner.
The pace of IT innovations and digitalization is driving advances in the CCM solutions
market. Nevertheless, choosing a CCM solution within an existing organization with
existing processes and IT infrastructures is not an easy task to accomplish. It is a
change that needs to be managed carefully and must fit into the company’s overall
communications strategy.
Inventive Designers offers a comprehensive CCM solution to the market with its
Scriptura Engage platform. It supports organization in the typical modern CCM
challenges as outlined in this document. With the introduction of its Communication
Center, the Scriptura Engage platform equips customers to take the next level in their
CCM evolution process — creating a truly centralized communications hub.
This
material
is
prepared
specifically
for
clients
of
InfoTrends,
Inc.
The
opinions
expressed
represent
our
interpretation
and
analysis
of
information
generally
available
to
the
public
or
released
by
responsible
individuals
in
the
subject
companies.
We
believe
that
the
sources
of
information
on
which
our
material
is
based
are
reliable
and
we
have
applied
our
best
professional
judgment
to
the
data
obtained.

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About
the
Author
David Stabel
Associate Director
+49 176 8448 6057
Follow me on Twitter
Connect with me on LinkedIn
David Stabel is an Associate Director for InfoTrends’ Production Workflow &
Customized Communications Services. Mr. Stabel is responsible for conducting
market research, providing forecast analysis, consulting with clients, and creating
editorial content for product and market analysis reports. His primary focus area is
on the graphic communications industry, data processing and customer
communications management markets.
Comments or Questions?