Bernie Gracy, Vice President and General
Manager of Professional Services –
Pitney Bowes Document Messaging Technologies

Question: Tell us about how you became a leading professional in this industry. Answer: I joined Pitney Bowes in November 1997 after an 8-year stint with UPS and have been fortunate enough to hold a series of positions that have given me extensive experience and knowledge.

 

I created our System Engineering organization and defined practices that were integral to the success of our APS inserter series. As the Director of Software and Systems Engineering, I helped conceive and launch our DFWorks Document Factory Management platform

Just prior to my new position I was the Vice President of Enterprise Integration Solutions, where I got to lead the development of large-scale mission critical ADF and EAI solutions for many vertical markets and service bureaus. More importantly, I spent the last 18 months on the road talking to customers – understanding their needs and understanding their customer's needs. And by understanding the multi-channel dialogues that our customer's have with their customers, Pitney Bowes is well positioned to serve those needs.

I'm lucky to be surrounded by top-notch software, systems engineering, systems integration, and project management talent. We have a very exciting exchange of ideas that has delivered a great deal of value to Pitney Bowes, to our customers and to our shareholders.

In 2003 we've consolidated our professional services, docSense software development, business development and presales resources into one organization to enhance our effectiveness and leverage our processes and talent within these critical growth areas. It's very exciting and a great challenge and opportunity.

Question: What is meant by "engineering the flow of communications?"

Answer: Here's what it means – the volume of business communications – paper work, bills, messages, etc. – can be overwhelming. And because those communications can affect cash flow and customer relationships, they're absolutely critical to a company's success.

Pitney Bowes is a company whose sole focus is to simplify and manage the incredibly complex flow of mail and documents, both print and electronic. By engineering the flow of communications we create value for customers by making it possible for them to increase revenue, save time and money, improve the efficiency, accuracy, security, productivity and profitability of their mail and document management processes and strengthen customer loyalty that leads to long-term success.

Question: What would you say are some of the key trends with documents and high-volume computer output today, and how do those trends affect Pitney Bowes business?

Answer: The convergence of business processes across multiple functional organizations and lines of business with customer communications across multiple customer touch points. I saw a recent Forrester reference that seems to capture the sense of the opportunity: Over the next few years customer's will begin to shift from multi-channel infrastructure integration to continuous optimization of their customers and channel mix via closed-loop analytics. Our customers and we see physical and electronic messaging as critical to that multi-channel mix. Our customer's are just now looking at the totality of their customer touch points and recognizing they can get a higher ROI on their Customer Communications Infrastructure by linking mail and messaging to Marketing, Call Center, POS, and other customer touch points. Our unique closed-loop intelligent mail solutions have been recognized as having the capability of driving these analytics. This is one of the driving forces behind our multi-faceted strategic platform partnership with Siebel Systems.

Question: How does document output management begin to converge with CRM?

Answer: We have the ability to link output documents—and the unique customer touch point that it provides—with critical but previously isolated CRM activities and resources. Transactional mail—in both print and digital form—is a vital tool for increasing customer satisfaction when it's viewed as customer-rich data that can be leveraged to make intelligent decisions.

As a result, businesses can create and deliver 1:1 customized messages to virtually each and every customer through digital or print mail. Additionally, they can deliver those messages faster with less expense, and greater effectiveness than ever before. Results can be measured more easily by precise tracking of response rates and customer satisfaction levels.

We have the ability to manage mail and messaging as a closed-loop, integrated process that encompasses the creation, production, distribution, receipt and the ability to update your company's centralized customer data repository.

Inbound call center or customer service representatives (CSRs) can easily access an image of the actual ‘as-rendered statement' or bill as well as the status of the transaction in the mail stream. Call center agents are literally “on-the-same-page” as the customer while reviewing bill inquires. This personalized focus on the customer can substantially increase customer retention and loyalty. And there are great CRM benefits to using intelligent mail.

Question: Can you explain “intelligent mail” and how it can be used to achieve positive outcomes?

Answer: Uniquely identifying and tracking individual mail pieces and their contents – both inbound and outbound – and associating them with a customer though creation, production, distribution, and return is a capability that is fast becoming known as Intelligent Mail. Intelligent mail can deliver significant benefits back to the enterprise by linking output documents with call center operations, security tracking and marketing campaign management. Intelligent mail is the precision tracking of individual mail pieces and transactions through the USPS system via linking with the USPS Confirm system—and then tying that information back into your customer relationship databases through our value-added solutions.

Question: What value does the flexibly delivered document have for organizations?

Answer: There's a large benefit in communicating with customers in the way they want to be communicated with—one surprising statistic shows that many retirees prefer to view and pay bills online now. If the demand is flexibility, we'd better supply flexibility or we're not doing our jobs.

Question: What's your best advice for industry professionals?

Answer: Think strategically about those documents. Move beyond the act of just getting them out the door. Those documents not only fetch the revenue – they have a great deal to teach us about how to serve our customers better and increase their loyalty to us. In a sense, document professionals have are better positioned to have a positive impact on the organization.

Question: What one thing about document technology should organizations be aware of that they might not be?

Answer: I think there's a growing awareness about how isolated our businesses processes are and how much power there is in linking them through the document strategy.

Question: If you could read any headline in an industry magazine, what would it be?

Answer: That's a great question: probably something about the globalization of communications and commerce making the world a safer place for our kids to grow up in.

Question: Any final thoughts?

Answer: Great interview. Outputlinks.com is a terrific resource; I'm pleased to be a part of it.

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