Reprint from Output Links: The third of a six-part series on customer communications management and optimizing the mailstream

Special Interests: Customer Communication Management Series
Unlock the profitability in your mailstream.

14 July 2006

Revenue and Relevance through
Intelligence in the Mailstream

Part Three: Turning Data into Customer Intelligence

By John Schloff
Vice President of Strategy, Product Management and Marketing
Pitney Bowes Document Messaging Technologies

We all know customer data has value.  But data are only bits and bytes unless we systematically transform data into valuable customer intelligence. As we add customer communications management (CCM) intelligence to the mailstream, there are dozens of opportunities to optimize customer communications and lower costs.  Gaining this view across the entire mailstream is not as challenging a prospect with the right tools.

Today, customer data often sits in silos. Mail operations may store in one silo, marketing has theirs, while customer service stores somewhere else.  Access is cumbersome.   Distribution moves slowly. Data manipulation and application are difficult.

Through CCM, all customer data resides on a single, open, enterprise-wide platform.  Customer data is aligned with critical business processes to allow end-to-end access and application of data for maximum effect.  This is how Group 1™ Software, a Pitney Bowes company, designs, develops and implements its customer data solutions.

The following CCM data processes integrate and add intelligence to customer information to deliver more timely, relevant and personalized communications.

Making data more accessible, flexible and versatile
Centralized customer data can be made accessible to all appropriate users -- from IT, to mail operations, to marketing, to call centers, to anywhere. From a single data repository, users across the enterprise can rapidly access, connect, integrate and analyze data from a wide array of applications, databases and data files. Because there’s no need to write custom extraction programs, solutions can be quickly implemented.  Integrated data is more flexible because it’s easier to transform, merge, parse, consolidate, enhance, append and update.  Data would become more versatile because it can be transformed into formats that are most useful to each functional area.

Globally delivering communications to the right customer, at the right address, at the right time
CCM solutions can be deployed to ensure that the right communications reach the right customers at the right addresses, at the right time. Customer data is validated, cleansed and standardized.  Business intelligence is enriched.  Data is standardized for compliance with USPS requirements.

You can now pinpoint customers’ precise locations, household characteristics and behaviors to provide building blocks for predictive analysis to create offers and campaigns. Additionally, we cut printing and mailing costs and eliminate expensive and embarrassing duplicates across multiple files.

In addition, a comprehensive suite of business geographics solutions can help organizations perform deeper address-level geographic analysis and enhancement. By enriching corporate data with valuable geographic, demographic and lifestyle information, and identifying and merging duplicate records, this technology helps enterprises know who their customers are, how they live, and where they are. With its modular architecture, organizations can incorporate additional geospatial analysis technologies into strategic processes as business needs evolve.

Increasing the creation and effectiveness of documents
Once customer data has been updated and addresses cleansed, it is ready for inclusion in customer documents.  For letters, full-color mailers, statement inserts or messages directly on statements, a document creation solution makes it faster, easier and more effective. Functioning within the CCM environment, you can quickly develop documents, collaborate with other users, reuse content and maintain consistency across functional areas.

Advanced document composition solutions support documents in print or electronic formats to be delivered across multiple channels — Web, fax, email and physical mail. Correspondence can be highly customized for industries such as insurance, healthcare, government, financial services, telecommunications, etc. Document composition solutions also help simplify ongoing maintenance by allowing updates and revisions on the fly, as well as distribution via the Web for pre-production proofing.

Maximizing postal discounts
Adding intelligence to make mailing processes more efficient can support bottom line performance.  This includes applications that optimize compliance with USPS® postal standards such as the Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS™ certification), Presort Accuracy Validation and Evaluation (PAVE™ certification), national change of address NCOA^Link™, move update solutions and more.

Mail efficiency solutions can be implemented to support all United States Postal Service® mail classes: First-Class® and standard mail, periodicals and package services. Within these mail classes, it’s important to cover all mail types: letters, postcards (single and double), flats, parcels (First-Class, machinable and irregular) and bound printed matter. The objective is to gain every penny of postal discounts from every mail piece.
 

Distributing documents securely from a central repository
With scalable, high-performance data distribution (like those offered by Emtex®, a Pitney Bowes company) you maintain all customer data and documents in a single, secure place. You can rapidly store and compress millions of documents and instantly retrieve data, regardless of age or size, from across the enterprise.

It’s critical that this shared repository is integrated with all appropriate business systems. Your archive should also be modular to allow fast deployment of enterprise output management (EOM), call center, customer self-care, electronic statement presentment (ESP) and e-billing applications.

To meet today's strict privacy and security laws -- such as SEC regulations, Sarbanes- Oxley and PATRIOT Act -- many companies are upgrading their records management systems.  Any archive should fully comply with all rules governing archiving and retrieval.

Keeping everyone informed, 24/7
In the CCM intelligence framework I just described, your organization would have the ability to merge data from, and connect to, virtually any source while displaying results in real time. This means authorized users can access information from multiple sources to generate and distribute reports to the entire enterprise. Payments histories and accounts receivable can be automatically tracked and updated for tighter control and streamlined management. At every step, customer communications can be connected to critical business processes to keep all users informed.

What does transforming data into intelligence mean to the customer?
Customer intelligence improves the ability to deliver more timely and relevant communications, enhancing the value of every relationship.  Here are a few examples:

• Keener knowledge of customer buying habits, payments and service histories, etc., provides data that can improve the timing and content of cross-selling offers
• Improved security of customer data maintains compliance with government regulations and provides peace of mind to customers 
• Knowing the up-to-the-minute status of a customer accounts at the call center helps minimize and quickly resolve disputes over payments, etc. 
• Customers feel more closely in touch with your enterprise, bolstering overall customer satisfaction and retention

About the author
John Schloff is Vice President of Strategy, Product Management and Marketing for Pitney Bowes Document Messaging Technologies.  He has provided thought leadership to small businesses to Fortune 100® firms on how Customer Communications Management optimizes the mailstream to create cost savings and increased revenues.

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