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From Data to Dialogue: Integrated Forms Automation for Unified Customer Journeys

Posted on by SmartComm

By Smart Communications

In today's hyper-connected world, seamless customer interactions are an absolute necessity. With people more digitally plugged in than ever before, brands are under pressure to get customers and employees from point A to point B quickly—particularly during significant events like a home flooding or a new car purchase. To meet those expectations, every interaction along the customer journey ties together seamlessly—with minimal effort from the customer. 

In an ideal world, this would mean every time data is collected—whether it’s through a call center, company website, or somewhere else—it would seamlessly transform into a personalized conversation where data flows effortlessly to core systems and automatically triggers reviews, approvals, or any number of next steps. This is the promise of integrated forms automation—a game-changer in modern customer communication processes. Can you confidently say this describes your brand? If not, keep reading. 

The Need for Integration

Legacy communication management strategies fall short in meeting the demands of today's complex customer journeys. Siloed systems create bottlenecks, leading to disjointed experiences and frustrated customers. Your customers and employees deserve smarter tools and processes that help bridge this gap—with integrated solutions that unite cross-channel customer communications and the data collection processes that surround them.  Not only does this streamline key interactions from start to finish, but it also reduces customer burden and fosters a sense of trust in your brand. 

An integrated approach helps achieve this by ensuring that every step of the customer journey is connected. From the moment a customer or employee first begins to enter information to the follow-up communication they receive, there are no gaps or disconnects. This cohesion creates a sense of continuity and reliability, making customers feel valued and understood. When customers experience this level of attentiveness and care, they are more likely to develop a strong connection with your brand, leading to increased loyalty and advocacy. Ultimately, by prioritizing integration, businesses can cultivate meaningful relationships. 

Forms Automation in Enterprise Ecosystems

Picture this: a customer submits a request to make a change to their account, and in an instant, they receive a personalized response tailored to their request, maybe with additional information requirements that they can access and complete directly from an email. Integrated forms solutions create this experience by not only collecting customer data but by leveraging it for personalized communications and additional processes that may need to be completed.  From onboarding to servicing, integration ensures a relevant, valuable experience throughout the communication journey. 

Integrated forms automation solutions are also a tool companies can use to address manual entry and the inconsistent, incorrect data streams associated with forms. With information seamlessly flowing from a digital “form” to a communication platform, there's no need for tedious data entry or downstream cleanup. This saves time for your employees and ensures that customer information is structured and consistent across all lines of business. 

And, looking at this from a slightly different perspective, customer communications technology can leverage collected data to personalize future interactions. By analyzing customer preferences, past interactions, and demographic information, your business can tailor communications to resonate with each individual. Whether it's sending reminders, information on related products, or proactive support messages, personalized communication fosters a deeper connection with customers and drives engagement. 

Let's consider a real-world scenario. Imagine yourself as a policyholder and your car insurance company uses an integrated forms automation solution. You notice your premium has increased, so you log in to the website and submit a digital form requesting a review of your bill and policy. You receive a text confirming the request and, a few minutes later, receive an email—your good driver discount expired. To renew, click on the link and submit your mileage log and a copy of your driver’s license. You do this (your policy information is all prefilled for you), upload your documentation, and submit. About an hour later, you receive a notification that the discount has been reapplied and will be reflected on your next bill. Behind the scenes, your information was updated in the customer database, ensuring an agent can follow up with you if necessary. This seamless integration of data collection and personalized communication not only resolves your issue but does so quickly and with very little effort on your part. 

All this to say integrated digital forms solutions bridge the gap between automated customer data collection and personalized communication, creating a smoother and more engaging experience for customers. Integration will allow your brand to deliver exceptional customer experiences that set you apart from the competition and foster long-term loyalty. 

Key Features and Advantages

Integrated forms automation isn't just about efficiency and faster outcomes—it's about transforming the entire journey for customers and the employees that support them. By digitizing form experiences, every interaction adds meaningful value and downstream communications are relevant and personalized. This contributes to key experience metrics like customer experience, agent onboarding experience, customer effort, and more. 

Access to data and approval workflows remove many internal, manual steps and allow employees to spend time on more strategic initiatives. By automating data flows and approvals, time spent on tedious tasks decreases, allowing you to allocate your resources to revenue generating tasks.  

At the same time, digital solutions include security measures that paper processes lack.  

Every company, including yours, prioritizes the protection of customer data, especially those operating in highly regulated industries. With evolving technology and regulatory requirements, enterprises face the ongoing challenge of compliance and securing vast amounts of data across platforms and geographic regions. Compliance with data protection regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is difficult when relying on manual processes. 

And there are extensive benefits of low-code, cloud-based digital forms solutions. A drag and drop interface means changes can be made, tested, and implemented and minutes, bypassing the lengthy timelines of older technologies operated by IT. Furthermore, this is a centralized technology that—once implemented—requires no maintenance or build out. 

Empowering Businesses for Success with SmartIQ™ and SmartCOMM™

When it comes to managing your processes effectively, it's all about empowerment. SmartIQ and SmartCOMM are here to make sure you're not just managing but thriving. With user-friendly interfaces and low-code solutions, we put the power back in your hands. Your teams can design, maintain, and control your forms processes with ease instead of waiting on a bogged down IT team.  

Empowerment isn't just about you—it's about your customers, too. With enterprise forms automation and customer communications technology integrated with one another, you enhance the customer experience by providing personalized form experiences, device compatibility, and real-time data validation to ensure you’re offering the very best customer experience. Say goodbye to generic interactions and hello to meaningful connections that keep your customers coming back for more. 

 

When it comes to remaining agile, processing time is no longer a barrier. Our combined capabilities reduce abandonment rates and incomplete data submissions through pre-built connectors and sophisticated data routing that ensure everything flows seamlessly. This eliminates bottlenecks, enhances efficiency, and protects your revenue opportunities. 

Our cloud-native architecture doesn't just improve efficiency—it revolutionizes it. With reduced infrastructure costs/tech debt and improved agility, you can scale your business without worrying about limitations. 

Conclusion

Combining an enterprise forms automation solution, like SmartIQ, with your customer communications platform has the potential to revolutionize customer conversations and deliver significant internal efficiencies. By seamlessly integrating data collection processes and communications, these solutions intersect to maximize the value of every interaction, personalize communications, and build loyalty with customers and employees.  

For more detailed information on the features and benefits of SmartIQ and SmartCOMM, we invite you to download the data sheet or request a demo. Explore the combined capabilities of these solutions in depth and discover how they can drive success for your business. 

How to Better Engage with Customers in the Evolving Digital Landscape

Posted on by SmartComm

By Smart Communications 

As we continue to examine the seismic shifts in consumer and business interactions, it’s critical to address the factors that are influencing these changes. In large part, the transformation is being shaped by the ebb and flow of generational preferences which demand a recalibration of traditional communication strategies.  

For your company to truly excel in providing an exceptional customer communications experience, you’ll not only need to adapt, but proactively position yourself on the very channels and platforms your customers use.   

In this article, you'll find insights from our latest report, ‘5 Trends Shaping Customer Conversations in 2024’, which is rich with expert guidance from top thought leaders across the financial services, healthcare, and insurance industries. 

Unlocking Customer Engagement in the Evolving Digital Landscape: A Deep Dive into Modern Strategies 

In ‘5 Trends Shaping Customer Conversations in 2024’, Marci Maddox, Research Vice President for Digital Experience Strategies at IDC, says companies must understand and adapt to changing generational interactions, particularly among Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials, adding, “I anticipate the impact of social apps on consumer behavior will create a significant disruption in communication formats — particularly with the rise of video content — which shifts how content is delivered and formatted beyond traditional text based content and interactions.”  

This shift goes beyond traditional text-based content and interactions. Many businesses are expanding their customer engagement strategies to include new social media and messaging platforms. The adoption of communication solutions facilitates seamless expansion to new channels without starting from scratch, according to Aspire Founder and CEO, Kaspar Roos. Utilizing AI to repurpose content for different channels enhances the likelihood of achieving the desired action. 

IDC callout from Smart Communications' 2024 Trends Report 

Meet Your Customers’ Preferences When It Comes to Data Collection, Customer Communications 

Your consumers are increasingly choosing new channels to submit their personal data and seek out answers or support. For instance, our recent Benchmark study indicates that 43% of healthcare customers prefer direct online submission for personal data to healthcare companies. That same report found that while 73% of businesses think their customer communications are improving, only 29% of consumers agreed with this sentiment. Optimistically speaking, 33% of the same consumers polled shared that they do feel like their options for interacting with those companies are improving. 

Sameer Hajarnis, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Digital Agreements at OneSpan, highlights the importance of immediate gratification in critical data collection processes such as loan disbursement or account access. Social media and messaging platforms, like WhatsApp, paired with AI, provide the instant gratification factor, a key differentiator in modern customer interactions. 

Aspire CEO Kaspar Roos' quote from Smart Communications' 2024 Trends Report. 

When expanding across diverse channels, remember to remain consistent. With cloud technology powering your customer communications and data collection strategies, this becomes less of a feat than attempting to do so with legacy technology. Cloud-based CCM solutions offer a centralized, scalable infrastructure that allows you to enable seamless engagement across multiple channels. This consistency is essential for building and maintaining customer trust, especially when dealing with sensitive data such as personal health or financial information.  

The scalability of cloud solutions will allow your business to adapt to changing customer preferences without the limitations associated with on-premise systems. This adaptability ensures that updates or changes to communications and digital forms processes can be implemented uniformly across all channels, preventing discrepancies or disruptions in the customer experience.  

According to Ernie Crawford, President and CEO at Crawford Technologies, businesses must implement robust and adaptable communication strategies to ensure a consistent customer experience across all channels. 

Modernize Your Ecosystem for Richer Customer Experience 

It's important to recognize the shifting power dynamics between industries and consumers, emphasizing the greater need to adopt customer-centric innovation and modern cloud-based solutions. Outdated, disparate, and siloed systems impede your organization’s ability to meet modern demands, particularly when you’re expanding to new channels. 

According to the IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Future of Customer Experience 2024 predictions, by 2026, organizations like yours will shift 35% of their customer communications to support dynamic updates to meet expectations and provide context continuity. 

Naren Sivakumar, Vice President of ValueMomentum, emphasizes that organizations may face obstacles due to limitations of legacy technologies when implementing digital capabilities. These limitations include: 

  • Outdated functionality 
  • Limited scalability and flexibility 
  • Integration challenges 
  • Security vulnerabilities 
  • Slow performance 
  • Duplicated efforts and operational inefficiency  
  • High maintenance costs 
  • ​​​​​​​Incompatibility with modern tools 

Where innovation is concerned, moving too slowly means your organization risks losing business to emerging competitors. What’s more is that using outdated systems and inefficient processes will reduce cost savings and productivity, both in the long and short term. 

Conclusion

Digital leaders in the retail, ecommerce, and technology sectors have set high standards for customer expectations. If your company can’t, or won’t, meet these expectations, it may lead customers to switch to more trusted brands that are. To capitalize on this opportunity, you need adaptable and robust customer engagement strategies powered by a modern technology ecosystem. 

Ready to dive deeper into what’s shaping customer conversations? Download your complimentary copy of the 2024 Trends report today. 

4 Steps to Prepare for a Pain-Free Legacy CCM Migration Process

Posted on by Chris Murphy

By: Chris Murphy, VP Product Marketing at Smart Communications

Adapting to the always-connected customer has become a catalyst for digital transformation – especially now as we adjust to the new norms brought forth by COVID-19. When it comes to customer communications management software (CCM), more organizations are finding that their legacy print system models and applications are turning into roadblocks and preventing agility. These fragmented systems are unable to communicate efficiently across business units and company divisions. Nor can they easily integrate with marketing, eCommerce, and CRM systems to coordinate data and messaging, which leads to a disjointed customer experience.

The good news is, you don’t have to become victim to an outdated legacy system. Here are four key steps to follow to prepare for a seamless CCM migration and ensure you are well-equipped to digitally transform your customer communications.

1. Understand the Goal of The CCM Migration

Gaining consensus on the why of your CCM platform migration is crucial, but sometimes overlooked part of obtaining organizational buy-in and the successful fruition of any digital transformation project. Is the impetus of considering a new customer communications management strategy driven by compliance reasons, core system modernization, to reduce risk, to centralize communications across lines of business, to reduce costs, to instill more agility into communications strategy, to better empower business users, or maybe to provide an overall better customer experience?

While all these may be realized benefits of moving to a modern CCM solution, the primary driving reason will help to dictate not only the core buying and evaluation group that you’ll need to work with but also the key performance indicators and success metrics that you’ll use to quantify the success of the project.

Explore these real-world success stories of organizations that are mastering CCM migrations with Smart Communications. 

2. Determine Which Deployment Option is Best

As more organizations begin to adopt and develop a cloud-first strategy, it’s likely that your organization has already discussed the option of leveraging an enterprise application in the cloud. Before jumping head-first into a migration, it’s important to ensure everyone has a basic understanding of not only the options available but also the benefits of each approach in order to determine on the best approach for your company.

  • Software as a Service (SaaS): A method of software delivery in which software is licensed and then accessed online via a subscription, rather than being purchased for installation.
  • Platform as a Service (PaaS): A cloud computing model in which a provider delivers hardware and software (typically those needed for application development). The provider hosts the hardware and software on its own infrastructure, rather than requiring users to install in-house.
  • Cloud: Simply put, cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the internet. These services are offered as either public or private cloud. With public clouds, all hardware, software, and other supporting infrastructure are owned and operated by a third-party service provider and users share those resources with other organizations or “tenants”. With a private cloud, resources are exclusively used by one organization either via an on-site data center, or a hosted data center. Either way, the services, and infrastructure are on a private network with hardware and software dedicated solely to one organization.
  • Hybrid Cloud: A combination of on-premise and public/private cloud, each performing distinct functions, with orchestration between the platforms.
  • Managed Service: A deployment model in which a third party manages a customer’s IT infrastructure and/ or end-user systems remotely, requiring hosting, management, and staffing costs.

3. Assess Your Digital Readiness

This might be your most important step in the process because it will show you exactly how ready your organization is to make the leap to a more modern, cloud-based service. As part of any CCM migration process, it’s important to consider whether or not to add digital channel production to your existing print operations. First, you’ll want to evaluate your print operations to see which document types can most easily be digitized. Begin by measuring print volume by department, categorizing types of printed collateral, and identifying types of customers receiving print documents. Start creating a content inventory list that covers basic metrics surrounding the total number of communication documents and templates you have, the total number or percentage of reusable content, volumes by document, and which department owns the content. It’s also important to start thinking about the complexity of the documents – are they easily converted to digital channels or are they very complex – these may up end up being prioritized later in the migration process. This process allows you to trace and quantify your current reliance on printed collateral while recognizing any knowledge gaps that exist so you can perform a CCM migration efficiently and effectively.

4. Know Your Existing Cost Model

Cost is always one of the biggest issues when it comes to justifying a migration strategy business case. When starting the cost evaluation process, most businesses realize they know a lot less about their full cost model than they thought they did. Depending on how many communication documents, forms, and templates need to migrate, and how they’re currently being generated, it can be confusing to put a figure on it. If you don’t have a comprehensive view of the current cost model, it can be hard to make a migration strategy business case look positive to key stakeholders.

While some of us are lucky to have a corporate decision that’s driving migration out to the cloud, having a clear picture of your all-in costs (don’t forget on-premise maintenance and operational costs, print and mail delivery costs, etc.) will only benefit you in the long run by setting realistic expectations upfront. Working with a vendor to establish a solid ROI calculation or looking at similar total cost of ownership (TCO) studies can also be an invaluable input into any evaluation decision criteria.

Let’s face it, change is hard. But, remember that your customers’ lives are changing, so to stay ahead of the game, your organization must be willing to change too.

Are you ready for a more simplified, pain-free legacy migration? Discover how our CCM migration solutions reduces cost, time, and complexity.

How Enterprise Risk Management Helps Enterprises Safeguard Their Reputation

Posted on by SmartComm

Connection network in dark servers data center room storage systems 3D rendering

By Chris Murphy, Vice President of Product Marketing, Smart Communications 

In today’s digital world, regulatory oversight is on the rise, and it’s not necessarily a negative thing. From consumer protections to privacy safeguards to accessibility guidelines, constantly evolving regulations affect nearly every industry—particularly those that handle sensitive information, such as insurance, financial services and healthcare. This fact is great when we consider that much of the regulatory oversight was put in place to help protect consumers in marginalized or vulnerable groups. While compliance has traditionally been viewed as a business necessity that creates more work, in today’s enterprise landscape it actually presents an opportunity for organizations to show their customers that they care, earning trust and safeguarding the business’s reputation. Though it may be seen as a business challenge, it allows companies to be responsible in their actions and held accountable by developing a strong process for enterprise risk management and compliance. 

To stay aligned with ever-changing requirements, enterprises need an agile and scalable technology stack that makes it easy to keep up. Cloud-based solutions provide many of these benefits. For example, cloud-based solutions offer open APIs that make it easier to connect to core systems and use known data to deliver more transparent and personalized client experience. Modern Customer Communications Management (CCM) solutions can provide instant visibility into the content and language being used across the entire library of forms and communications so businesses can easily find and update even the smallest details. 

Shifting Regulations Present New Opportunities for Risk Management and Compliance Management 

In recent years, digitization has led to increased data privacy and consumer protection regulations. To stay compliant with regular updates, enterprises need to take a closer look at how they interact with customers. Cloud-native solutions offer the agility and speed that's required to meet these regulatory requirements while also offering an opportunity to better serve customers. This is especially true for the industries that are subject to the most scrutiny. Some examples: 

Insurance: Evolving requirements 

The global pandemic accelerated digitization in the insurance industry, impacting compliance requirements and other key areas such as data security and consumer privacy. In the US, 21 states have adopted the NAIC Insurance Data Security Model Law. On a global level, Insurance Capital Standard (ICS) development continues, with ICS 2.0, in a five-year monitoring period that began in 2020, while also being reviewed for compatibility in the US. As digitization grows, insurers will need to balance an increasingly long list of regulatory issues, making visibility into organization-wide documents and communications a top priority. 

Financial Services: Under the microscope 

The rise of open banking, growth of digital-first fintechs, and rising defaults and customer vulnerability coming out of the COVID pandemic have all sparked a new wave of regulations and penalties in financial services. Regulators like the FCA in the UK; the European Commission; and the CFPB, SEC and FINRA in the US are focusing on transparency and data usage. Keeping up with changing demands is difficult for even the most well-resourced compliance teams. Lending businesses are focusing especially on refining their default and collections business processes, while wealth and asset management firms are focusing on suitability and client reporting, all with an eye on making sure customers know more about costs and risks. Sophisticated, cloud-based systems are critical to staying one step ahead of both regulations and threats—which is critical to protecting the reputation of any financial services organization.  Having a full audit trail that shows who, when and how changes were made to forms or document templates is an absolute must.  

Healthcare: Privacy law updates 

The healthcare sector in the U.S. has long been subject to strict consumer privacy laws including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Some states are implementing even more stringent regulations. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CSPA) along with new laws in Colorado, Connecticut, Utah and Virginia, collectively known as “2023 Privacy Laws,” will affect the extent to which entities maintain patient information and lay out complex exemption standards that vary by state and law. Healthcare organizations in affected states need to prepare to update data management processes and also to present relevant privacy policies to consumers. Legacy systems simply aren’t up to the task. 

WCAG Driving Change Across Enterprises 

Until recently, accessibility was considered a “nice to have” element in terms of digital presence and communications for most enterprises. But with European Union Directive and the Department of Justice’s recent assertion that websites (or outbound communications and other digital experiences) fall under “public places of accommodation” in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Title III, certain accessibility standards are now required. While specific requirements vary by country, the most recent Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which are the international standard for accessibility, focus on four principles: perceivability, operability, understandability and robustness. WCAG also lays out three levels of conformity with most organizations striving for the middle, Level AA. Failure to meet WCAG standards can lead to costly litigation – not to mention loss of reputation.  

Making websites and communications accessible helps enterprises reach a wider audience and also builds trust, because consumers today care about doing business with ethical companies. Digital forms and other customer communications should also meet accessibility standards. Some accessibility requirements are fairly straightforward — for example, including alt text on all images and transcribing audio files. But incorporating accessibility into the entire digital ecosystem at the enterprise level is complex. Updating things like font size and color, background color contrast, and screen reader accessibility require a sophisticated approach. Relying on outdated systems or manual updates runs the risk of error, costly fines and litigation. Modern solutions allow enterprises greater visibility into and control over digital assets at scale.  

Reducing Risk for Highly Regulated Industries 

For the most closely regulated industries and the public sector, the risks of failure to comply are costly. Healthcare organizations can face minimum penalties ranging from $100 to $50,000 per HIPAA violation, with a maximum of $1.8M for top tier violations. Failure to meet Service Organization Control (SOC) 1 and 2 requirements relating to data confidentiality can result in total lack of public trust. For businesses operating in the cloud, SOC 2 compliance has become table stakes. Similarly, the international standard for managing information security, ISO/IEC 27001, brings hefty fines for failure to comply. In the U.S., the SEC has leveled huge fines on asset managers who failed to deliver Customer Relationship Summary forms to clients, part of the Reg BI standards that call for brokers to act in their clients’ best interest. For this reason, prioritizing compliance has become a strategic imperative across the healthcare, insurance and banking industries. 

Protecting customer data and reducing errors are also critical to safeguarding a company’s reputation and should be at the core of any enterprise’s risk management and compliance efforts. Failing to show good faith in securing data or making content accessible can reduce an enterprise’s competitive edge and likely lead to revenue loss as well. Moving to the cloud gives organizations the visibility and agility that’s needed to maintain compliance and minimize risk, without driving up costs. Rather than manually searching forms and communications one-by-one to find what needs to be updated, modern-architected solutions compartmentalize the building blocks of communications into component parts. This creates a seamless process for searching entire communications libraries for language fragments that are used across communications and make instant updates across the board. Even things like font size and color can be updated centrally, making it easy to keep up with changing regulatory requirements. 

Choose the Right Solution Partner to Enhance Compliance and Regulatory Risk Management Capabilities 

Choosing the right cloud solution provider can help enterprises greatly reduce oversight-related risks by simplifying, and in some cases automating, compliance. Choosing a vendor-hosted SaaS solution with an established data security framework and built-in safeguards can help enterprises meet privacy requirements, prevent breaches and automate reporting. A cloud-based solution also provides deep visibility into nuanced vertical requirements and the agility to quickly update language, formatting and other content when regulations change—which they always do.

Discover how The Conversation Cloud makes it easy for highly regulated industries to maintain compliance and mitigate risk. 

About the Author
Chris Murphy is Vice President of Product Marketing for Smart Communications, the only provider of a customer conversations management platform specializing in helping enterprises – many in the world’s most highly regulated industries – to deliver smarter conversations across the entire customer lifecycle. Chris is currently responsible for the go-to-market strategy for its flagship product SmartCOMM™, a customer communications management solution. A frequent speaker at customer and industry events, Chris has over 18 years of industry experience and has held various positions at leading organizations including SalesLoft, IBM, and Silverpop.

Drive Efficiencies and Cost-Savings: Migrate and Consolidate CCM Solutions

Posted on by SmartComm

This is an image: female worker is in a cloud server room, looking at a large tablet

By: Chris Murphy, Vice President of Product Marketing at Smart Communications

During times of economic uncertainty, the only constant is change—which is why businesses need to be agile and always looking ahead. With markets shifting, inflation rising and jobs fluctuating, it’s a good time to focus on building a technology ecosystem that allows enterprises to meet both the near- and long-term needs of the business; not to mention, it also helps to future-proof in the face of unknown business needs. When it comes to customer communications management (CCM), legacy systems slow down operations, provide little to no business user control and can be quite costly. If this is a key challenge for businesses, CCM migration and consolidation should be a priority.

As enterprises around the world are being tasked with cutting costs and doing more with less, employees need the right solutions to support existing customers while also attracting new customers. The right systems and solutions enable better processes and more consistency. A consolidated tech ecosystem allows enterprises to increase operational efficiency and reduce overall costs—a critical focus in a down economy. Automating and digitizing processes reduces the burden on IT, further lowering costs while allowing for internal innovation. To achieve an improved CX and meet business goals, enterprises must consolidate technology and adopt a modern, pure-cloud CCM solution.  

Business Drivers for CCM Migration from Legacy to Cloud

There’s no shortage of reasons for CCM migration from legacy systems to a sophisticated, pure-cloud customer communications management platform. But the best way to start is by assessing existing communications processes and technology. 

If you’re currently using a multitude of applications to generate customer communications, consolidating into a single enterprise system will help streamline internal processes and workflows. Ultimately, the level of speed and agility a cloud solution offers simply can’t be matched by legacy systems. Connecting all mission-critical technologies into a single, flexible ecosystem allows teams to take advantage of new technology faster and accelerate response times for customers. 

Migrating to a modern customer communications management solution that integrates seamlessly with existing core systems offers further operational benefits by allowing disparate systems to communicate and diminishing the number of integrations that must be managed. With a sophisticated solution, automation and personalization make interactions more dynamic and productive. Best of all, moving to an enterprise CCM would make change management and future upgrades simpler.  

In keeping with widespread digital transformation initiatives, many organizations have implemented an enterprise-wide cloud strategy aimed at driving operational efficiency and competitive advantage. Moving to a cloud-native solution allows businesses to align customer communications with corporate strategy to reduce overall costs, reprioritize IT resources and maintain security and compliance. At the same time, modern customer communications solutions allow businesses to support enterprise-wide efforts to improve CX—meeting CSAT goals and building loyalty.  

RELATED READING TO DOWNLOAD | ‘A CCM Migration Roadmap’ 

Cost-Savings and Operational Benefits of Consolidating Legacy Customer Communications Technologies 

According to a recent Qualtrics XM Institute study, 60% of IT leaders are focused on increasing operational efficiency in their IT organization—and 89% say agility is extremely or very important for responding better to unexpected events. A modern CCM solution delivers speed, agility and scalability that powers efficiency at every touchpoint – and enables enterprises to keep up with evolving customer expectations and weather the unknown by building flexibility into processes and responding to change rapidly.  

For example, let’s say a large financial services institution needed to automatically turn on access for hundreds of new end users in order to account for an influx of customer inquiries. With instant-on provisioning —made possible through cloud technology — providers can make this happen within minutes instead of lengthy implementations and/or upgrades that would be required with legacy platforms. 

By making investments in improving operational efficiencies, enterprises in turn boost profits and drive overall growth, reducing the burden on costly call centers with a digital solution that supports self-service via guided digital interactions. A consolidated CCM reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) compared with multiple disparate systems and reduces the amount of time and money spent on maintenance, updates and operations.  

Improving the customer experience and meeting customers where they are with an omnichannel approach helps to prevent churn. Not only does this bolster revenue, it reduces costs up front—because it’s significantly more expensive to win new customers than it is to hang on to existing ones. This makes enhanced CX a strategic imperative, especially when budgets are tight. To support growth, invest in the customers you already have.   

As customer preferences and business needs continue to shift, an enterprise CCM solution enables enterprises to pivot on demand without investing in new technology. Key benefits include: 

  • Updating customer communications strategies to keep pace with market shifts, changing regulations, and evolving customer needs, without relying on IT
  • Empowering business users, customers, and the business at large by consolidating the tech stack and migrating to a single, powerful enterprise solution. 

KEEP READING | ‘Building a Business Case for Change: How to Secure Stakeholder Buy-In When Purchasing Enterprise Customer Communications Management (CCM) Software’ 

The Purpose-Built Enterprise CCM Solution for Today’s Needs 

Moving to a pure cloud CMM solution helps businesses increase operational efficiency and decrease costs during times of economic uncertainty. While it may seem like a time- and resource-consuming undertaking, it doesn’t have to be. Migrating to a modern, purpose-built platform reduces TCO and accelerates ROI. At the same time, it allows enterprises to consolidate data, streamline processes and enhance the customer experience.  

The goal of any forward-looking enterprise should be to do more with less and use automation and data-driven insights to optimize every interaction. On the point of doing more with less, consolidation has several key benefits that can help businesses future-proof, such as:  

  • Maintenance is less burdensome and costly. With CCM Migration, there are fewer places to update things when changes are necessary. This, coupled with depreciating disparate solutions, organizations will save money and time.  
  • Reliance on IT is diminished. Consolidating means organizations don’t have to worry about battling separate IT upgrade schedules. And, working with a single cloud vendor who manages updates will often mean there’s no onus on the end-user to manage upgrades. 
  • End-user empowerment. A center of excellence and shared knowledge/resources can be developed to help business users handle projects faster and train new users quicker. 

Smart Communications is uniquely positioned to help enterprises successfully migrate without disrupting customer communications and focus on elevating the customer experience to improve efficiency, retention and revenue. We offer a suite of purpose-built migration tools that use automation to reduce manual steps by up to 30-65%, saving resources and accelerating the process. Our Professional Services team has helped hundreds of companies migrate successfully. We’re here to offer expertise and support for even the most complex projects.  

If you’re ready to future proof your business with CCM migration and consolidation, get in touch with us to learn how a pure cloud, enterprise customer communications management system can help. 

About the Author
Chris Murphy is the Vice President of Product Marketing for Smart Communications, a customer communications management technology leader focused on helping businesses engage in more meaningful customer conversations. Chris spoke about CCM and operational agility at the DSF '23 in Charlotte, NC.

 

What Are Enterprise Forms and How Are They Different from Most Web Forms?

Posted on by SmartComm

By Smart Communications

In today's digital age, forms play a crucial role in capturing personal, first party data and facilitating processes that have the potential to create seamless customer interactions and provide faster resolution.  Basic web forms often fall short in meeting the complex requirements of enterprise organizations especially when it comes to versatility, security, true automation. This is where enterprise forms technology comes into play.

In this article, we will explore what enterprise forms are, highlight the challenges organizations face with form processes, discuss the key capabilities needed to enhance customer experience and operational efficiency, and go over what to look for in a vendor.

Why Most Web Form Tools Fall Short in Meeting Enterprises' Needs 

Most web form tools are designed to capture information as part of a one-directional interaction—things like completing a survey or job application. While this will work for situations where there is only one path an end user can take, they are missing the capabilities needed to support applications that have different outcomes based on the information someone provides—applications such as lending, onboarding, enrollment and claims.

Businesses around the world—specifically businesses in heavily regulated industries like healthcare, financial services, and insurance—deal with intricate approval processes, large volumes of highly personal data, and the need for seamless integration with their other existing systems. Basic web form tools simply do not offer the capabilities needed to meet these demands effectively. Let’s look at some other current challenges facing companies. 

Challenges that Enterprises Face with Paper Forms 

From the amount of effort required by customers and employees to physically fill out forms to the difficulties companies face extracting the data, storing the forms, and managing all of the additional documentation required, enterprises are incurring heavy costs and introducing severe risk as they try to manage these outdated methods 20 or more years after they were first introduced—when volumes were much lower and no other options existed. Additionally, concerns around data security, regulatory compliance, and the environmental impact of paper consumption and waste are adding to the sense of urgency to the need for change.  

Looking at these processes more through the lens of the employees involved in them, in an increasingly remote work environment, the limitations of physical forms hinder collaboration and productivity for distributed teams. Considering these obstacles, enterprises are seeking innovative solutions to streamline their form processes and overcome these challenges. 

  1. Time-consuming and labor-intensive: Manual and paper-based forms require significant time and effort to create, distribute, collect, and process. Employees and customers must physically fill out the forms, resulting in delays and reduced productivity. Moreover, manual data entry can be error-prone, leading to inaccuracies and the need for additional validation steps. Enterprise forms, on the other hand, can be completed within minutes. 

  1. Inefficient data storage and retrieval: Storing paper-based forms poses challenges in terms of organization, storage space, and retrieval. Enterprises often struggle with locating and accessing specific forms, resulting in wasted time and frustration. Additionally, paper forms are susceptible to damage, loss, or misplacement, leading to potential data loss. 

  1. Limited data security: Paper forms lack the security measures provided by digital systems. Sensitive information can be easily compromised if forms are mishandled, lost, or accessed by unauthorized individuals. Compliance with data protection regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), becomes more difficult when relying on manual processes. 

  1. Lack of real-time visibility: Paper forms are not conducive to real-time data tracking and visibility. Enterprises may face challenges in monitoring the progress of form submissions, identifying bottlenecks, or obtaining timely insights for decision-making. This lack of visibility can hinder effective workflow management and hinder responsiveness to changing business needs. 

  1. Higher costs and environmental impact: Manual and paper-based forms incur costs related to printing, storage, distribution, and disposal. These expenses can add up significantly, especially for large enterprises with extensive form requirements. Moreover, the environmental impact of paper consumption and waste contradicts sustainability initiatives, some of which are being mandated by state and local regulators. 

  1. Reduced collaboration and remote work challenges: Physical forms restrict collaboration and pose challenges for remote teams. Sharing, reviewing, and collaborating on paper-based forms requires physical presence, hindering the ability to work remotely or in distributed teams and significantly impacting a remote workforce’s productivity. This limitation becomes more pronounced in today's globalized and digitally connected business environment, especially when work flexibility leads to greater happiness, according to one source, thus, higher job satisfaction.  

Not sure how your company can move forward with enterprise forms? Read our guide for more about the cost-savings and overall benefits of investing in a digital forms management solution. 

Impacts to Customer Effort and Experience 

Many enterprises still rely on manual processes and that include outdated technologies like fillable PDFs and non-intelligent forms. These older tools not only drive internal inefficiencies related to data accuracy and handling time but they also detract from the user experience. The manual data entry still required on the back end, lack of automation, and absence data integration and validation result in errors, delays, and frustration for customers and employees. And, as we mentioned earlier, there is a sense of undue effort felt by customers and employees that diminishes their overall customer experience.  

Let’s pretend you’re a prospective client at a bank and you want to apply for a new commercial loan. You’re asked to fill out a general commercial loan application, then another form related to the assets being used to back that loan—and half the information is the same information you just filled out on the first firm. Then you find out what additional documentation you need. So, home you go and, a week later, you’re back at the bank, documentation in hand, and…wait, what’s that? Another form? You brought the wrong tax document? . This increased frustration rate can lead to abandonment and less likelihood that you’ll recommend the financial institution to anyone else.  

Desired State – Creating a Better User Experience 

Enterprises can easily create a better user experience by streamlining their form processes—but it may not feel like it would be easy, with so many forms, so many technologies, and so many teams involved. They seek solutions that provide intuitive interfaces, automate repetitive tasks, ensure data accuracy, and integrate seamlessly with their existing systems. Enterprise forms are designed to address these requirements and provide a comprehensive solution for efficient form management. Customer experiences can vary based on anything from an individual customer’s expectations to their demographic and/or comfortability with tech solutions. Cloud solutions are typically more intuitive, allowing for ease of use across multiple demographics and user levels. This is especially true when it comes to creating an easy-to-navigate forms experience, a feat that enterprise forms can certainly help with.  

Key Capabilities Needed by Enterprises 

To effectively modernize and digitalize form processes, organizations are looking for innovative, sophisticated tools to help them reduce the amount of effort it takes for customers to do business with them. We’re here to help guide that process by offering a few key capabilities to look for, below: 

No More Manual PDFs 

Enterprise forms eradicate the necessity for manual PDFs by offering dynamic, web-based forms that are conveniently accessible and can be completed online. Users are relieved of the burdensome tasks of printing, scanning, or faxing forms, resulting in significant savings of time and resources. Moreover, enterprise forms provide the flexibility to modify and update forms effortlessly, eliminating the need to redistribute physical copies. This not only ensures a safer environment for managing and securely storing customer data but also contributes to minimizing paper waste and supporting your company's commitment to reducing its carbon footprint, thereby promoting sustainability and environmental consciousness.  

Low-Code Form Builder 

Enterprises require a low-code form builder that empowers non-technical users to create and customize forms without extensive programming knowledge. With a user-friendly interface and drag-and-drop functionality, employees from various departments can quickly design and deploy forms tailored to their specific needs. Because of the nature of low-code functionality, IT involvement is next to none, allowing the IT department to focus on more strategic and innovative projects.  

Read our latest blog to see how current events are guiding businesses to adopt enterprise forms automation. 

Integration with Legacy Systems / Disparate Systems 

Seamless integration with legacy systems is of utmost importance for enterprises. Enterprise forms must seamlessly integrate with pre-existing databases, core systems, CRM systems, and other applications, thereby guaranteeing the smooth flow of data and eliminating the need for manual data entry. By establishing connections between disparate systems, enterprise forms facilitate efficient information sharing, leading to enhanced operational efficiency across the organization. 

Field Validation to Improve Data Accuracy 

Data accuracy is paramount for enterprises. Enterprise forms should include robust field validation capabilities that verify the correctness and integrity of entered data from the point of entry. Automated validation rules, such as data type checks, range limits, and mandatory field validations, help reduce errors and ensure high-quality data collection. 

Workflow & Automation to Accelerate Back-End Processes 

Enterprises often deal with complex workflows involving multiple stakeholders and back-end processes. Enterprise forms offer workflow and automation capabilities that streamline these processes. By defining rules and triggers, forms can automatically route submissions to the appropriate departments, initiate approval workflows, and trigger backend actions, reducing manual intervention and accelerating process completion. 

SmartIQ offers a robust low-code form builder, seamless integration with existing systems, advanced field validation options, and powerful workflow automation features. 

There’s more to learn about the benefits of low-code functionality. Read more in this blog about how SmartIQ enhances customer experience, operational efficiency. 

Case Study: The Bancorp Delivers a Fast, Easy Digital Client Experience for Loan Origination 

Based in Delaware, The Bancorp is a payment services provider and specialized lender. It provides securities-backed lines of credit, insurance-backed lines of credit and advisor financing to the independent wealth management channel. With increased competition from banks in that space, they were looking to set themselves apart and set ambitious goals. Some of those include: 

  • Doubling their market share  

  • Quadruple the company’s assets and revenue  

  • Increase profits tenfold  

To do this, they knew they needed to create an exceptional client experience that made it simple and fast for clients to borrow from their portfolios.  

This meant they had to modernize and automate their manual legacy workflow processes which included a lot of paper, postage, and data entry. From start to finish, it took between 20 and 30 days on average to complete a loan approval process. 

With SmartIQ, The Bancorp's loan origination forms are pre-populated with known customer data, and advisors can complete the form on behalf of their client online. Within 5-7 minutes, the loan package is automatically generated, personalized, and delivered via the customers’ preferred channel. The customer can quickly sign the loan package via eSignature to complete the process.  

As a result of this new lightning-fast process, The Bancorp has increased their loan volumes by 400%, and are projecting a 750% ROI. In addition, they have reduced “Not in Good Order” rates down to nearly zero, and have eliminated costs associated with document printing, postage and shipping.   

The Bancorp continues to add new lending lines and expand the use of SmartIQ across the enterprise.  

Read the full case study to learn how The Bancorp, a specialized lender in Delaware, transformed its loan origination process to achieve ambitious business goals using our SmartIQ.

Here’s What to Consider When Looking for an Enterprise Form Solution 

If you’re in the market for a new enterprise forms solution, here are some things you should consider before making the investment: 

Centralization
Ensure the solution you select can be applied across a variety of internal and customer-facing use cases across your entire business. Centralizing your forms processes unlocks a range of powerful benefits for organizations seeking to streamline their operations and ensure consistency across forms. With a centralized approach, making changes to forms in real-time becomes a breeze. Whether it’s updating a logo, modifying regulatory language, or implementing brand and theme changes, you can make the change only once and apply it across all forms in real-time. This eliminates the tedious and time-consuming process of updating each form individually, ensuring your organization maintains a unified and up-to-date brand image. Moreover, centralized content management allows for easy collaboration and governance, enabling teams to work together seamlessly and maintain control over the entire forms experience. 

User-Friendly Experience
Opt for a form builder with an intuitive interface that even users with limited coding knowledge can navigate effortlessly. This will save you time and resources during form creation and management. Solutions that offer drag-and-drop abilities, for instance, make it easier to personalize and customize forms. 

Customizations 
Look for an enterprise form builder that provides extensive customization options, allowing you to design forms that align with your branding without requiring you to have a coding degree. You should also have the flexibility to customize your form creation, management, and delivery based on unique customers' needs. 

Security and Compliance
Ensure that the form builder you choose prioritizes advanced security measures such as data encryption, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance. This guarantees the protection of sensitive information and helps you adhere to industry, federal, or local regulations. 

Robust Workflow & Automation Capabilities
By selecting an enterprise forms solution with robust workflow and automation, organizations can effectively manage complex workflows that involve multiple stakeholders and intricate processes. By leveraging the power of automation, enterprise forms enable the seamless routing of form submissions to the right departments, initiate automated approval workflows, and trigger backend actions based on predefined rules and triggers. This reduces the need for manual intervention, minimizes delays, and expedites process completion.  

Collaboration and Access Control
Leading enterprise form solutions facilitate teamwork by enabling multiple users to collaborate on forms from anywhere they are, share data in real time, and manage access-level controls. This is critical for hybrid or fully-remote workforces that need to offer flexibility to employees and efficiency/security to customers. 

Seamless Integrations
Look for a solution that has partnerships with leading software vendors, like Salesforce and industry core systems like Guidewire or Pega. This ensures smooth data transfer and boosts overall productivity. 

Conclusion 

Enterprise forms offer a superior alternative to traditional web form tools for meeting the unique needs of enterprises, giving customers the freedom seamlessly communicate across unique member journeys. By eliminating manual PDFs, providing low-code form builders, enabling integration with legacy systems, ensuring field validation, and offering workflow automation, enterprise forms help companies streamline processes, enhance data accuracy, and improve the user experience. Leveraging advanced solutions like SmartIQ™, enterprises can revolutionize their form management and drive operational excellence in today's digital era. 

If you’re interested in learning about the next steps to ensure the efficiency of your company’s form processes, reach out today. 

How Low-Code Automation from SmartIQ™ Enhances Customer Experiences

Posted on by SmartComm

By: Sally Schulte, Product Marketing Director at Smart Communications 

As enterprises around the world face unprecedented levels of disruption and ever-increasing customer expectations, business leaders are rethinking their customer experience strategies—and speed to market is critical. To meet demand, companies are exploring and implementing secure, low-code solutions that transform one-way, siloed interactions into secure, automated digital processes.  

Customers are interacting with large institutions such as those in financial services, insurance and healthcare at some of the most critical moments in their lives. Significant life events such as an accident, planning for a major life event or navigating an illness, are opportunities for businesses to create meaningful, simple and sensitive experiences.  

Unfortunately, impersonal, and time-consuming, paper-based or PDF forms processes have been the standard way to navigate through these life changes, negatively impacting how customers view the companies that are there to support them. In this post, we will dive into how low-code forms software like SmartIQ™ enables enterprises to exceed customer expectations while also creating more efficient internal processes. We’ll also share how some of the new tools available in SmartIQ empower businesses to work more intelligently, quickly and digitally with their customers.  

Low-Code Forms Solutions for Business Users 

In any industry, having the right software and systems can make a huge difference in the way internal users and external customers interact. Your employees — the people who will use these tools most often — can enhance the customer experience when they have greater ownership over how they communicate with customers.  

By implementing low-code forms solutions, employees across the enterprise can own their business processes directly — allowing them to better serve customers without relying on internal IT teams. With several pre-built, validated connectors and flexible architecture, SmartIQ is easily implemented and automatically updated, bi-weekly. This ensures business users can quickly take advantage of feature enhancements to deliver a seamless customer experience. This also means that previously resource-strained IT teams can focus on larger, more strategic initiatives instead of installing software updates.   

Some additional benefits of the SmartIQ low-code solution include: 

  • Drag-and-drop interfaces make it easy to learn and use while providing specific business units with ownership over projects. 
  • Centralized software application allows for broad use across multiple lines of business without the need for users to obtain added licenses. 
  • Automated approval workflows speed up processing times and allow for real-time status​ updates.  
  • Real-time data verification through core system integrations reduces incomplete or muddled data.​  
  • Analytics to evaluate forms performance help to identify potential areas of confusion, regional trends and additional process statistics. 
  • High security standards ensure compliance with ISO/IEC 27001 certifications, HIPAA and more.  

Optimizing forms processes is just the beginning of creating an easier, more secure experience. Guided, interactive forms can enhance the value of e-signature solutions, for example, and give customers the digital-first, end-to-end experience they expect.  

For more on the powerful pairing of e-signature solutions and sophisticated forms, check out 'Get to eSignature Faster: Maximize the Value of Your eSignature Investment with True Forms Automation' 

Maintaining Brand Standards in a Digital Environment 

There’s a good reason B2B companies devote (at least) 5 percent of their annual revenue to branding every year — it’s integral to creating a consistent experience. That’s why Smart Communications has developed features within SmartIQ that ensure companies can achieve the consistency that wouldn’t otherwise be possible by using paper forms or PDFs. Theme Builder, for example, is a low-code module that allows companies to brand forms based on business unit or the type of project. Business users can control a range of visual elements—from logos and colors to typography and styling—and view them in a live preview that makes it easy to view changes instantly and in context.  

These components allow enterprises to create a responsive, cohesive look and feel that is aligned with the company’s brand standards. This can help build brand awareness, loyalty and trust —important factors in attracting new customers and building and retaining trust among existing ones.  

Global, Cloud Offering Enhances Security and Compliance  

As technology (and the way we all use it) continues to evolve, so does the need to keep information secure across the various platforms and in the different geographies in which data is stored.  Not only do companies face regulatory fines due to non-compliance, they can also damage their reputation due to security breaches or other security-related mishaps. And, while regulatory requirements are on the rise around the world, requirements vary by country—adding complexity to an already challenging landscape for software solutions.  

Let’s look at Canada, as an example. According to PilotCore’s explanation of Canadian Privacy Laws, it can be extremely tricky to navigate how to operate digitally when it comes to data transfers, transparency and levels of protection. That’s why, in 2021, Smart Communications added a data center in Canada— easing the burden of understanding what to do if data travelled outside Canada and subsequently helping Canadian enterprises deliver secure, compliant customer experiences.  

Additional Benefits of Forms Modernization 

Consumers continue to have their attention grabbed by any number of things these days. That’s why requiring people to download additional tools or jump through other hoops to complete a form can quickly turn a customer’s experience into a negative one. However, gathering information is still important for businesses as they must understand customer needs and how to meet them.  

Fortunately, with more resources – like low code forms solutions – at their fingertips, businesses are better equipped to provide exceptional customer experiences from the very first interaction. Software that allows customers to quickly fill out a form, from wherever they are, allows companies to get the necessary information without bogging customers down with static forms or PDFs. When a company is willing to meet its customers (or potential customers) where they are in order to make their lives easier, they become a brand that people trust and want to do business with. 

Learn more about how our low-code forms solution can help your company better serve its customers and enhance the end-to-end customer experience.

7 Questions to Ask a New Vendor Before Switching from Legacy to Cloud CCM Software

Posted on by SmartComm

By: Brad McGeown, Vice President of Strategy, Financial Services at Smart Communications 

Making the most out of every customer interaction is an essential part of any enterprise and having the right SaaS Customer Communications Management (CCM) software in place makes a big difference as organizations across all industries continue to focus their investments into sophisticated tech that enables their workforces to be more agile, efficient and future-ready. While many business leaders are on board with the digital transformation from legacy to cloud, there’s still a lot of progress to be made. Here’s what Kaspar Roos, Founder & CEO at Aspire, had to say about investing in newer tech: “If there’s a gap between where your business is today and where the industry is going, the longer you wait, the bigger that gap becomes and the deeper the chasm that you need to cross. It’s not a question of ‘if’ you need to make the leap to newer tech, it’s ‘when’.” 

If you’re looking at making a switch from a legacy on-premise to cloud-based CCM solutions, it’s important to ask certain questions before signing a new vendor contract. In this article, we highlight key questions to ask a CCM vendor when planning to migrate (or consolidate CCM systems) – to help you streamline the planning process and ensure a justifiable investment. 

RELATED READING | ‘Building a Business Case for Change’ 

Top Questions to Ask a CCM Vendor 

  1. Is subscription-based more expensive than licensed? Not necessarily. With a license, you pay a large purchase fee upfront to buy the software, then usually pay perpetual maintenance fees that are a percentage of the purchase price. With a subscription, the upfront software license cost is typically lower, and then annual license fees are typically broken out evenly across the life of the subscription agreement. However, that license also gives you the benefit of software upgrades, without having to spend money on new licenses and IT resources to implement the changes, so your total cost may end up lower. One thing to note is that companies can get upgrades with on-premise software, so long as they’re prepared to manage the upgrade process in-house or hire professional services, depending on the number of customizations needed. 

  2. Will I have to pay maintenance costs and/or do maintenance of the software? No, all hardware and software purchases and maintenance of the software are part of the subscription fee. Your software provider/vendor maintains the environment and keeps it patched to the latest versions and standards in alignment with your terms of purchase. This minimizes IT involvement – a relief for many! 

  3. What are the business benefits of operational expenditures (OpEx)? Historically, many technology purchases fell into capital expense budgets amortized over time, which made them more challenging to manage in the budget. However, with cloud-based software, many organizations manage them as operational expenses instead. This provides for greater flexibility in finance, allowing businesses to adjust their expenses quickly in response to changing market conditions or business needs. That flexibility enables companies to stay agile and adapt to new opportunities or challenges quickly.  More on this topic is at the end of the article.  

  1. What hardware will I need to purchase? Cloud-based CCM solutions have little to no hardware to purchase, procure, implement and manage. All infrastructure needs are handled by the solution provider and in most cases, your new tenant environment can be stood up within hours of an agreement being finalized. On a private cloud, versus public cloud servers like AWS or hybrid, each tenant’s data is isolated from, and invisible to, the other tenants sharing the application instance.  

It’s also important to note the benefits of retiring legacy systems. Retiring legacy infrastructure can lead to significant cost savings and security improvements for organizations. This article from CIO.com dives into the true cost of aging infrastructure, emphasizing the importance of deploying modern solutions that reduce maintenance costs, improve security and reduce the risk of downtime or data loss. There are also cost savings associated with more efficiency and productivity as teams are equipped with software that helps them work more effectively. 

KEEP READING | ‘Smart Communications Recognized as a Leader in the Aspire Leaderboard for Vendor Hosted SaaS CCM, AnyPrem CCM & CXP!’ 

  1. What security measures are in place to protect my customer data? A reliable SaaS provider will uphold strict physical, technical and administrative security measures. They will provide you with all independently certified standards. For example, SmartCOMM has a robust security team dedicated to maintaining certification IRAP, PCI DSS, SOC 1 and SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO/IEC 27001 certifications, and other industry standards.  

  2. Where will my data be stored? It depends on the software that you are acquiring; some SaaS solution providers only use the data to process and return results and do not store data in the cloud. Some may have a need to store it, so it is important to understand what data is used, how it is used and stored, as well as who has access to it. A quality SaaS provider will have the latest encryption standards in place to protect data.  

  3. How do you handle disaster recovery? Check with your SaaS provider to understand where their disaster recovery site is located, if it stays within the same national borders and how and when the data between the two sites is synced. They will provide insight and results from past and planned disaster recovery tests. 

How CapEx and OpEx Budgets Are Impacted by Cloud Software 

Capital budgeting is a financial planning approach that focuses on long-term investments. Capital expenditures (CapEx) involve purchasing assets that will benefit the company over time, such as equipment or property.  On the other hand, operational expense (OpEx) budgeting focuses on the day-to-day operational costs of the business. For instance, SaaS CCM software that is hosted on the cloud and is subscription-based, is considered an operating expense. 

Capital expenditures associated with private cloud/hybrid may encompass the acquisition of hardware, such as servers or the establishment of a data center, thereby qualifying as CapEx. A pure SaaS CCM software subscription will require zero hardware purchases. Traditionally, the purchase of on-premises software constituted a capital expense that could be amortized over time for accounting purposes. In such cases, software was accounted for as a one-time expenditure as opposed to a subscription model. It was feasible to procure the software once and continue using it indefinitely, even ceasing to pay maintenance fees if so desired.  

Today, subscription-based software purchases typically result in the buyer obtaining a license but they do not own anything so it can only be expensed not capitalized. This can be an advantage in terms of flexibility and reduced hardware costs, but it also means that businesses do not have full control over the software's development or customization. 

Overall, a SaaS CCM software model helps businesses reduce the high costs associated with on-premises technology which requires a significant investment in hardware, licensing and maintenance, whereas SaaS allows businesses to scale to real-time needs and avoid the need to track the ‘highest need’ day. 

Conclusion 

Ultimately, the vendor you choose when switching from legacy to cloud CCM software should have rigorous standards for security and data privacy. Also consider which professional partnerships they offer as any leading CCM provider should be able to provide integrations that help enterprises be more agile, efficient and less dependent on IT resources. Don’t forget to look for these additional benefits: 

  • Reduced total cost of ownership

  • Enhance customer experience 

  • Consistent innovation and product investments 

  • Enhanced speed and agility 

Want to learn more about how a leading cloud CCM provider can enhance your business? Read ‘The Ultimate Guide to CCM Software & Strategic Solutions’  

Could Postal Delays Lead to an Increased Focus on the Digital Customer Experience?

Posted on by SmartComm

By: Sally Schulte, Director of Product Marketing at Smart Communications

Beginning Oct. 1, the U.S. Postal Service implemented “new service standards” that could slow target delivery times by about 30%. While this will obviously have implications for online holiday shoppers in the near term, it will also have a long-term impact on how industries like insurance, healthcare and financial services communicate important information to their customers. Wells Fargo even notified customers of the potential interruptions – pointing out that the delivery delays could impact customers’ mailed payments.

As enterprises face disruptions on all fronts – whether it’s USPS, supply chain delays, natural disasters or a global health crisis– it’s critical for businesses to reimagine interactions with their customers—and focus on their digital customer experience.

This post highlights why digital customer experience solutions are key to business continuity, how companies can efficiently reach customers on their preferred channels and how an enterprise cloud-based customer conversations solution can protect the business.

Accelerating Digital Transformation for Business Continuity

The latest development from USPS has the potential to disrupt millions of individuals and companies—and further solidifies how important business continuity and contingency planning are. Constant change and disruptions mean enterprises need to be responsive and agile – something only achievable via digital transformation.

When COVID-19 took hold, 65% of business leaders indicated that the pandemic led them to identify digital-first approaches they could implement quickly. In many industries, employees continue to work from home at least part time while customers now overwhelmingly expect (and prefer) digital-first interactions. Investing in digital customer experience solutions and implementing organizational changes will allow enterprises to put the customer at the center and seamlessly manage the experience across functional areas.

Orchestrating Omnichannel Customer Experiences

With the recent announcement from USPS, companies need to rethink how they get critical information to their customers – and vice versa. Today’s customers expect to be able to initiate conversations on their own terms, making two-way, digital conversations more important than ever.

Every interaction a business has with a customer is an opportunity to shape their overall experience and in today’s always-connected landscape, customers’ expectations are increasing quickly. With the majority of customers more comfortable with digital, they prefer to interact with businesses across a number of channels.

SMS, in-app messaging and WhatsApp are just a few of the channels where customers want to be able to initiate conversations with businesses. Unfortunately, many organizations have siloed tools that only allow for one-way, single-channel communications. This ultimately leads to internal inefficiencies, compliance risks and an inconsistent customer experience. An omnichannel, orchestrated approach, however, puts the customer at the center of two-way, interactive conversations – achievable with a cloud-based platform that optimizes the entire customer experience.

Owning the Customer Experience with Two-way Conversations

Whether it’s USPS or another service provider, relying too heavily on third parties to shape the customer experience poses risk for businesses. And, this risk will only continue to grow. Today, leading enterprises should own the entire digital customer experience, from start to finish.

Conversations between businesses and customers have never been more important, especially as customers prefer a digital-first, personalized approach. And since customers’ expectations will only continue to increase, enterprises must optimize the end-to-end experience to succeed. Businesses must provide the tailored, personalized conversations today’s customers expect. Investing in pure cloud platform that delivers personalized, omnichannel conversations across the entire customer lifecycle is the best way to succeed.

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Customer expectations will only continue to evolve, making it more critical than ever for enterprises to invest in the resources and technology that future-proof their businesses. No one knows what the future holds or what the next disruption will be, but investing in the right technology (and technology partners) that evolves and scales as customer needs change over time will be critical to long-term success.

How can businesses deliver impactful, relevant and personalized conversations at scale? Check out “Deliver SMARTER Customer Conversations in the Cloud” to learn more. 

Communications in the Time of COVID-19: Delivering SMARTER Digital Conversations Just Became More Critical

Posted on by SmartComm

Digital Conversations Made SMARTER During COVID-19

By James Brown, CEO of Smart Communications

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically impacted nearly every aspect of daily life for everyone around the world. While we continue to limit human contact in an effort to slow the spread of the illness, businesses still must support their customers from a distance.  As a result, many enterprises are now faced with accelerating their digital transformation plans in order to deliver the high touch, yet digital, interactions customers need and expect.

We knew 2020 would be a critical year to evolve from static communications to two-way, interactive, SMARTER conversations, but we couldn’t have even imagined just how quickly this shift would need to occur.  We’ve been talking about digital disruption for years now, but businesses are now faced with a new type of disruption. Futurum Research Senior Analyst, Oliver Blanchard, said it best, “At its core, disruption is disruption. It doesn’t matter if it’s technological, economic, environmental, political, or a pandemic.” This pandemic is a wake-up call for businesses of all shapes and sizes – and IT leaders are faced with an unexpected opportunity to revisit their business continuity plans and response strategy. As they do so, it is critical to prioritize and stay focused on what matters most—the customer experience.

Keeping the Customer at the Center

Even before this crisis began, consumers have been trying to tell businesses that they need more. They don’t want to simply receive communications, they want to have SMARTER conversations—interactions that are digital-focused, interactive, relevant and timely.

With anxieties heightened, the need to receive accurate information quickly is more important than ever. Companies that can’t deliver highly personalized, nearly real-time interactions risk losing customer trust and loyalty, and eventually losing customers altogether to a vendor that is better equipped to meet their needs.

By going beyond delivering static, one-way communications and engaging in SMARTER, two-way conversations, companies can actually deepen customer relationships and increase customer loyalty at a time when customers need to feel genuinely supported by every one of their business relationships.

Removing Friction is Key to Meeting Customer Needs

To facilitate more dynamic, interactive conversations, companies must efficiently collect needed information from customers, and use that information to respond appropriately, quickly and via preferred channels. Those companies holding customers on the line for indefinite periods of time aren’t winning deeper loyalty points today. Your customers are as busy and as taxed as you are right now. Emotions are running high as bills mount, family needs continue to grow, and demands skyrocket for each of us. The way you gather information from your customers sets the tone for the immediate interaction – as well as those that will follow during this current pandemic period and beyond. If your company is still highly reliant on paper or scanned PDFs you are delivering an outdated experience that is time-consuming, not customer-centric and ultimately putting your business at risk during this unprecedented pandemic.

Now is the time to transform your forms processes and shift to more adaptive interview-like processes that are more efficient, more meaningful and deliver more value. By asking intelligent questions you can eliminate unnecessary fields and the need to enter and re-enter information into a static form. Customers are guided to either confirm known information or provide necessary details via the shortest route possible. All of this improves customer experience and speeds up processes—both more critical today than ever before.

We Can Help

In our latest piece of thought leadership, we address in more detail the specific shifts enterprises can make to improve their business processes and engage in more meaningful conversations across the entire customer lifecycle. Some of these items can be initiated today; others are items businesses are beginning to consider now knowing that digital transformation is no longer a “nice-to-have” initiative. As stated by Strategy Meets Action’s Mark Breading, “The more that people and businesses get used to operating remotely via digital tools, the more it will be expected – even after the virus is contained. The genie is out of the bottle, and it will be hard to put it back.” Regardless of where you are in your journey, we’re here to help navigate through these uncertain times.

As we work through this global challenge together, we stand with you in support of a stronger community that remains connected through SMARTER digital conversations.