Part three of three
Transactional documents have moved beyond print and require sophisticated workflows that can present information in a variety of ways, while keeping data secure.
Some of the biggest opportunities for the transactional space in the next few years come from production color inkjet—both cutsheet and continuous, inline finishing solutions, and improved workflow tools that support file optimization and automation.
“There is a huge opportunity to increase your competitiveness in the transactional market space by implementing technology that allows you to build more offerings into the system beyond just print and mail,” suggests Ryan Semanchik, president, Transformations, Inc.
For example, adding the ability to do online payments to your offering is a great way to build additional revenue and foster more growth from current customers. Also, added value, such as stronger compliance solutions with extensive dashboarding, reporting, tracking, auditing features and business intelligence providing full transparency throughout the document life cycle can really help you excel against your competition rather than playing catch up.
Bryan Ten Broek, VP, business development, Nordis Technologies, adds that seamlessly integrating customer communications with payments to improve consumer convenience and ease of use and to strengthen cashflow and reduce missed and late payments. “Sending a payment reminder by text with an embedded link to a payment portal is a proven way to prompt immediate payment,” he offers.
Brad Turner, VP, Transformation, BelWo, Inc., says the opportunity is in becoming a full-service provider and doing everything you possibly can for a customer. “To grow your business, find out what else you can do in addition to the transactional work for the customers you have. The more you are able to help support a customer’s business, the more you foster “customer stickiness” meaning they are more likely to stay with you for a long time.”
There is also the opportunity to help your customers make those printed communications work a little harder for them, thereby making your role more valuable. “Taking advantage of those communications for cross-sell and upsell opportunities or including value-added content can make them a powerful vehicle to strengthen your customers’ relationship with their customers,” comments Patrick Kehoe, EVP, product management, Messagepoint.
Andrew Gunn, global director production value proposition and product lifecycle; Billy Stojanovski, global product marketing manager, global brand, and strategy; and Moisha Clark, production lifecycle, iGen and Baltoro HF Inkjet presses; Xerox, believe the transition from B&W to color printing offers the biggest opportunities. “Our customers tell us they actually get paid back quicker or on time because their customers read color statements faster. In fact, color statements can increase payment response by up to 30 percent.
Print to digital conversions using quick response codes is one opportunity for the coming years, says Avi Greenfield, VP, of product management, CXM, Quadeint. Another is totally and completely shutting down legacy and home-grown platforms as organizations see the substantial organizational threats of limited staff to keep aging technology operational. “Many large organizations are one to two employee retirements from being unable to keep mission-critical technology operational.”
For corporates and service providers, Matt Mahoney, EVP sales and marketing, Racami, believes that perfecting multi-channel communications to create good customer experiences in cost effective ways will make a big difference, customer communication management platforms and cloud-based software as a service models will help. “Simplification of technology environments to reduce operating costs. Consolidate tools and integrate remaining ones.”
Kehoe stresses the importance of print, noting that while transactional documents might be declining in volume, they aren’t going away any time soon. “We see a huge opportunity for both in-house operations and service providers to step up and provide electronic distribution services. Organizations have looked to these operations to provide the necessary control and governance that are so important for these kinds of communications. This doesn’t go away just because the communications are electronic, there is still a need for that kind of expertise, and we see many organizations that are well suited to bring those capabilities together.”
“With the right technology and channels in place, companies can shift focus to optimizing their omni-channel communications to find the right mix by segment and by individual to deliver a superior personalized customer experience that drives engagement and loyalty. Artificial intelligence (AI)-driven data analytics will play an important role in identifying that right mix and timing,” predicts Ten Broek.
“We believe the use of AI in providing data insights for the creation of personalized, relevant communications will be a significant opportunity for communication providers,” says Ernie Crawford, president/CEO, Crawford Technologies.
Tools of Transactional
Be prepared for a new generation of automation, which is hitting the print market from both printers and print finishing suppliers, shares Johan Laurent, director of business operations, Standard Finishing Systems. “Trade shows from Horizon’s Think Smart Factory to PRINTING United to Hunkeler’s Innovationdays have all showcased end-to-end solutions that require little-to-no operator intervention even when producing variable applications. This is an opportunity for shops of all sizes to address market challenges, even if they do their finishing off-line or near-line.”
Here we highlight solutions offerings from vendors that participated in this article.
BelWo
BelWo offer services from the input of data to the presentment of the end product.
“We use .Net to develop solutions for our customers. We use state of the art document composition platforms from companies like Quadient and OpenText,” offers Turner.
Crawford Technologies
Among its offerings, Crawford Technologies offers Crawford PRO Transforms, which presents customers with high-speed, accurate, robust data transforms; Go Mobile, a comprehensive, easy-to-use solution leverages its AI technology to transform composed transactional customer communications to responsive HTML; Operations Express, advanced post-composition solution to re-engineer, enhance, and modernize communications, as well as optimize processing and ensure integrity and compliance; PRO Conductor, a hyper-automation workflow solution to streamline processing and provide tracking, auditing through interactive dashboards; PRO Lockdown data security solution that encrypts files at rest and for transfer at the document and page level; eDelivery Now Preference Manager, which aligns customers’ preferred communication channels, capturing, storing, and managing preferences for digital output, accessible documents, and traditional print to provide a seamless multi-channel experience that leverages automation and AI; AccessibilityNow, a comprehensive platform that manages accessible documents; and Flexible deployment options, including on-premise plus cloud and SaaS, such as PRO DocNow.
Crawford Technologies is a leading CCM workflow provider, offering solutions from ETL, data transforms, post-composition, archival, retrieval, multi/omni-channel delivery, workflow and print management tools, as well as the leading provider of accessible communication solutions.
Madison Advisors
Madison Advisors offers benchmarking and operational assessments, including cost comparisons and CCM/CXM strategies. “Specific tools we utilize are operational best practices assessments for both printed and electronic delivery of transactional documents,” says Kemal Carr, president, Madison Advisors.
Carr says that is preferred that Madison Advisors is engaged early in the process, in strategic pre-planning of the lifecycle roadmap.
Messagepoint
Messagepoint is a SaaS-based AI-powered content hub for customer communications that enables organizations to efficiently manage the content, composition, production and tracking of personalized communications across all channels. Messagepoint supports both traditional print and electronically distributed composed communications, as well as providing headless CCM capabilities to enable the same rich, data-driven content to be leveraged in personalized and responsive digital experiences. By managing content in a central hub, organizations eliminate the redundant content management and operational silos that come with creating transactional communications for multiple channels. Management capabilities dramatically reduce time to market, simplify change management and ensure consistency and compliance across your library of communications.
Nordis
Nordis Technologies offers a complete solution for managing the entire cycle of consumer billing and other transactional communications through payments.
It offers its flagship cloud CCM platform, Expresso, for composing, updating, tracking, archiving and reporting on omnichannel communications, including print/mail, email and text messaging. Customers also can opt for ExpressoCertified®, which automates Certified Mail, including capturing electronic signatures.
Expresso integrates with Nordis Technologies’ digital and print/mail production and distribution services. Clients use Expresso to develop and distribute email, text messaging with Nordis’ partner Solutions by Text and for print production and mailing services from one of two full-service production facilities. All print communications managed using Expresso are produced by Nordis for a seamless end-to-end service.
Nordis Technologies offers a range of advanced mailing services, including automated return mail with the USPS Address Correction Service as well as skip tracing services. The company also provides digital payment solutions for accounts receivable and accounts payable. For accounts receivable, Nordis provides an electronic bill presentment and payments system, ExpressoPay, that integrates with Expresso for bill presentment. ExpressoPay clients receive branded payment portals, integrate with interactive voice response systems and customer service representative portals to take payments, keep merchant relationships, designate payment options including ACH, debit, and/or credit card payments via mobile, IVR/CSR and online, and offer one-time, automated recurring and payment plan options.
Quadient
Quadient helps customers design, produce, deliver, and track omnichannel communications, for print, email, SMS, WhatsApp, push notifications, rich push notifications, archive, and retrieval. It offers online interfaces to allow more ownership of communications templates and content by business users and deep personalization of individual communications by front office and line of business personnel (for example, customer support, sales, claims, etc.).
Quadient offers powerful software which can be deployed and managed flexibly on any premise (on premise, private/dedicated cloud, or hybrid). This includes Quadient Inspire Designer, Scaler, Interactive, Automation, and Archive & Retrieval.
Quadient also has mature, capable SaaS offerings for mapping and understanding customer journeys (Quadient Inspire Journey), delivering and tracking digital delivery (Quadient Messenger), providing delivery for mobile push notifications and rich HTML5 content to web and mobile devices (Quadient Digital Services), and providing an assured delivery capability for cross-channel delivery scenarios (Quadient Omnicannel Orchestration).
Racami
Racami offers Alchem-e CCM platform, Alchem-e Proof, Alchem-e Pay, Alchem-e Books, Alchem-e FORMS, and Alchem-e Doc Writer.
“Beginning to end with our Alchem-e CCM platform, document composition, storefront, data processing, proofing, print management, equipment tracking, mail tracking, email, sms, and automation engine. Integrates existing systems into a master system. Includes consumer identity management important for communicating with consumers in ways they prefer or request,” says Mahoney.
RISO
RISO manufacturer’s cut sheet inkjet printers. It partners with EFI and Tag G Alphastream for its DFEs and software companies like Solimar Systems and Transformations for pre and post composition. Further, Pitney Bowes is a reseller that keeps the comapany firmly planted in the print to mail environment.
“We also partner with finishing manufacturer’s like SDD while also developing our own accessories. In short we provide solutions throughout the document lifecycle,” says Margaret Curry, national manager, PPS and Strategic Accounts, RISO.
RISO’s DFE’s and printers support job definition format (JDF). Through our partners we support electronic document and print file creation, multi format file optimization, transforms, indexing, Secure IPP, and PDF UA.
Solimar Systems
The Solimar Chemistry platform offers modular and configurable solutions that take the guesswork out of running a production print/mail and edelivery factory. Our software solutions are able to help printers convert print file formats, standardize on PDF, optimize, impose, re-engineer, track, report, and manage work coming into the production environment from onboarding to delivery.
The Solimar Chemistry platform sits after composition, MIS, and data management and takes the output of those systems to eliminate the guesswork in production of both print and electronic delivery. The Chemistry platform harmonizes disparate processes into an optimized and efficient workflow. “Our case studies show that customers regularly gain hours and days back in time while securing additional ROI savings, often near or over $100,000,” says Mary Ann Rowan, chief experience officer, Solimar Systems.
Standard Finishing
Standard offers many solutions to support the modern transactional market. For example, the Standard Hunkeler Roll-to-Stack-to-Booklet system supports conventional offset stack production, or it can deliver sheets directly to the Horizon StitchLiner Mark V Saddlestitcher for variable sheet-count booklets to be produced with sheet-level and set-level integrity. This productive combination solution handles a wide range of coated and uncoated stock, from 27 lb. text to 12-point card stock, and it features advanced automation, high speed capabilities (up to 590 fpm), and web width support up to 22.5”. This system’s automated setup allows the same operators who are running the printer to easily manage post-press functions, improving efficiency, and reducing labor burdens.
The Hunkeler DP8 Dynamic Perforating module can be run in-line with continuous feed printers – at speeds up to 800 fpm – and allows for dynamic perforation, scoring, and punching of payment forms, tear-off coupons, mailings, and security applications. The DP8 can be equipped with up to 3 cross perforation cylinders and up to 12 longitudinal perforations, as well as cross and longitudinal scoring tools and file hole punching tools.
The Hunkeler DocuTrim Digital Sheet Finishing System can be run in-line with cut-sheet printers or offline. It’s a modular, multifunctional sheet processing system that can trim, cut, perforate, and stack sheets up to 20.50 x 29.50 inches (input format). Vertical and horizontal perforations are possible on the DocuTrim, and up to 6 vertical and 6 horizontal perforating tools can be used to produce a wide variety of perf patterns that can be static or dynamically triggered by a data matrix.
Transformations
“As the workforce grows more mobile, a customer communications management solution needs to include methods for securely delivering communications via multiple channels. Transformations’ breakthrough security solutions, uSecure and Smart Delivery, address industry-critical issues specific to data security,” says Semanchik.
uSecure offers intelligent protection that travels with the file, keeping data encrypted throughout the entire workflow and Smart Delivery the only standalone security software on the market today that can safely email data-sensitive, compliant communications and provide proof of delivery to the intended recipient exclusively, proof of access and a built-in real-time audit trail.
Uluro offers uPayments, a standalone real-time payment solution that lets you send electronic bills or payment notices to customers through their preferred channel and securely receives payments on their behalf. It integrates with your current customer communications software to add EBPP, eBill, EIPP, or payment processing. Additionally, organizations can easily pass certain controls on to business users with the deployment of Uluro’s uCampaign. This solution offers an intuitive, easy-to-use collaboration platform that allows customers to have approved control over content management. uCampaign also provides a streamlined workflow to quickly deliver personalized, relevant campaigns through the preferred channel of choice.
“We are a front-to finish solution, as Transformation’s Uluro hits every spot in the document lifecycle from data input and management to document composition to ADF workflow to electronic and print delivery to security—even feedback, tracking. Uluro’s suite of solutions incorporates all processes of the document production workflow into a single platform, allowing clients to realize several key benefits around operational efficiencies and quality assurance while also providing modules focused on additional revenue channels and compliance, such as multi-channel delivery, online document management, electronic presentment and payment, and securing/protecting confidential data. Uluro provides a higher level of automation that unifies a host of CCM processes to eliminate manual steps in the operational workflow, provide faster implementation and maximize ongoing process efficiency,” shares Semanchik.
Xerox
The Xerox Baltoro HF Inkjet Press recently introduced an option to add the Videk DocuVision Edge Solution. “When printing millions of documents, it’s hard to keep track of each page. For customers printing transactional documents protecting their personal information is critically important. A front-to-back mismatch that exposes the wrong person’s information can have negative implications. DocuVision Edge systems replace manual, time-consuming human inspection processes with powerful, productivity-driving automation so they can meet each of your SLAs with confidence,” say Gunn, Stojanovski, and Clark.
Workflow for print or epresentment, printing, validation, and finishing are Xerox’s areas of concentration.
Considerations for Transactional
Transactional communications make up a major part of the printing landscape, particularly in the digital sector. However, increasingly it is essential that the data centers creating these documents—whether in-house or outsourced—have a handle on compliance and security from a print and electronic perspective.
Read part one, E-Delivery Considerations
Read part two, Print and Finishing
Jun2023, DPS Magazine
