The State of Digital Transformation in 2024: Overcoming Legacy Technology Barriers and Elevating Customer Experience

Posted on September 4, 2025 by Leigh Segall

By Leigh Segall, CEO at Smart Communications

Reflecting on the challenges of the past four years, organizations have faced unprecedented uncertainty and pressure to adapt. In 2023, innovation was stifled as organizations grappled with the looming specter of economic recessions. This led many to shelve critical digital transformation initiatives, putting them on hold as they navigated economic uncertainties. Now, emerging from this hiatus, we see a new chapter swiftly unfolding, marked by renewed momentum and a reinvigorated push towards digital transformation.

Closing the Digital Maturity Gap in 2024

Recent research has uncovered a remarkable surge in IT spending for 2024, with 72% of digital leaders doubling down on investments to propel their digital initiatives forward. This surge reflects a broader trend towards digital transformation, with global spending projected to reach a staggering 3.4 trillion US dollars by 2026—a nearly 3x increase over the last five years.

Yet, despite this momentum, significant challenges remain. According to Forrester, a mere 6% of organizations have attained advanced digital maturity, highlighting the pervasive gap between aspiration and achievement in the digital realm.

Legacy systems continue to consume a substantial portion of the overall IT budget, impeding innovation. In fact, 87% of CIOs cite the complexity of existing systems as a barrier to investing in next-generation services. Additionally, 34% of CIOs have identified replacing legacy technology as a top digital transformation goal for 2024, underscoring the urgency of modernization efforts.

Retiring Legacy Technology for Enhanced Engagement

When it comes to managing customer communications, organizations must address the lingering challenge of legacy communications technology. While many enterprises have made strides in modernizing their customer communications with cloud-based solutions, a significant number still grapple with outdated, on-premise, channel-based systems.

These legacy solutions, acquired over time, pose a multitude of challenges—they are costly to maintain, lead to duplication of efforts, impede business agility, and detract from the customer experience. To truly harness the benefits of a modern CCM platform, we see many organizations looking to retire these outdated systems and transition to a centralized, cloud-based approach. By streamlining and automating customer communications processes across all delivery channels, organizations can deliver a seamless customer experience, maximize their return on investment, and position themselves for success in the digital age.

Rethinking Forms Processes: Digitally Transforming Transactions into Engaging Interactions

This imperative extends beyond customer communications to encompass forms processes—a critical yet often overlooked aspect of the customer experience.

Over the past several years, analysts like Kaspar Roos, the Founder and CEO of Aspire CCS, have been vocal about the evolution of Customer Communications Management (CCM) to Customer Experience Management (CXM).

According to Roos, the forms sector, mirroring the broader CCM market, is undergoing its own transformation. He emphasizes the growing need for dedicated solutions to facilitate interactive data collection, validation, and processing as the market moves towards greater bi-directional interactions.

The combination of customer communications and customer data collection, once modernized and transformed, together play pivotal roles in shaping the omnichannel customer interactions of tomorrow.

Legacy forms processes, characterized by manual, outdated, and disconnected practices, present a significant barrier to delivering seamless and cohesive customer experiences. Forms serve as a vital touchpoint between organizations and their customers, facilitating data collection and driving internal and external processes. Yet, despite their importance, forms processes have been largely neglected in the broader CX strategy, leading to a noticeable gap between digitally transformed customer communications and legacy-style form processes.

According to Forrester, 82% of organizations still use paper-based processes to some extent. The ramifications of this oversight are profound. Customers are confronted with outdated, cumbersome forms processes that fail to meet their expectations for convenience and efficiency. Frustrated by the complexity and repetitive nature of these processes, customers are left feeling dissatisfied—a stark contrast to the seamless experiences they encounter in other digital interactions. In an era where every interaction should leave customers feeling recognized and valued, outdated forms processes fall short of meeting customer expectations for convenience and efficiency.

Transitioning From Static Forms to Smarter Data Collection

However, the tide is turning. By redefining what a “form” entails, organizations can transform static transactions into dynamic, intelligent interactions that leave customers feeling valued and empowered.

Smart forms or data collection solutions leverage automation and intelligence to guide users through complex processes, adapting dynamically based on the information provided. By eliminating unnecessary fields and pre-filling data from existing databases, you will minimize customer effort, improve data accuracy, and enhance overall efficiency.

Moreover, forms of the future facilitate bi-directional communication, simplifying interactions between customers and employees. Whether online or on a mobile device, these digital experiences enable seamless data exchange, leveraging features such as mobile cameras for enhanced functionality. By mimicking a conversation between the customer and the organization, smart data collection solutions foster engagement and reduce the likelihood of customer abandonment.

Recognizing the critical role it plays in the CX landscape, organizations are beginning to integrate intelligent data collection into their broader CCM strategies. Smart Communications™ leads the charge with SmartIQ™—a revolutionary forms management solution designed to automate and transform data collection processes.

Delivering Future-Ready Customer Conversations

SmartIQ empowers organizations to create and manage digital forms with ease, leveraging a low-code web-based design tool that requires minimal IT intervention. By automating data sharing and streamlining business processes, SmartIQ enhances operational efficiency and reduces technical debt.

Furthermore, SmartIQ’s analytics engine provides organizations with invaluable insights into process performance, enabling continuous improvement and optimization. Armed with detailed analysis, organizations can identify bottlenecks, refine processes, and enhance the overall customer experience.

By embracing solutions like SmartIQ, organizations can bridge the gap between customer communications and forms processes, delivering future-ready customer conversations and reducing customer effort.

The synergy between SmartCOMM™ and SmartIQ enables organizations to consolidate, centralize, and automate data collection processes and customer communications across all channels, unlocking a myriad of benefits. From reducing manual work and operating costs to ensuring data security and regulatory compliance, our industry-leading SaaS solutions empower organizations to keep pace with evolving customer expectations and drive sustainable growth.

If you’re interested in learning how you can consolidate and modernize your customer communications solutions, one of our experts would be happy to provide a free consultation. If you’re looking to transform your forms processes with SmartIQ, I encourage you to request a demo, or visit our demo zone to see it in action.

How Enterprise Risk Management Helps Enterprises Safeguard Their Reputation

Posted on October 24, 2023 by SmartComm

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 July 11, 2023 by SmartComm

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.

The Limitations of OCR: Why it’s Time to Rethink Data Capture

Posted on July 10, 2023 by Stephanie Clarke

In today's digital age, relying on optical character recognition (OCR) technology for data capture and forms processing may no longer be sufficient for businesses seeking true digital transformation. While OCR has been a trusted tool for scanning and processing paper or PDF forms, it comes with inherent limitations that hinder a seamless and mobile-friendly customer experience. At Smart Communications, we offer companies a path to retire expensive, jarring OCR-based processes and truly reimagine data collection and forms-based processes.

Understanding the Limitations of OCR

Let's take a closer look at how organizations typically use OCR solutions to manage forms data and the challenges that arise along the way:

Unnecessary Effort: Today’s customers expect speed, convenience, and personalization. So asking them to go online and download or print the right form creates unnecessary effort and impacts the overall customer experience.

Cumbersome Form Filling: Lengthy forms and complex questions can be overwhelming for customers, especially when they are asked for the same information multiple times or are required to answer questions that are irrelevant to the process they are trying to complete.

Inaccurate Data Collection: Scanning-based processes are limited in terms of how much data they can ingest and process—and the data they collect cannot be validated, resulting in errors, follow-up calls, and delayed processing.

Delayed Processing: Despite best efforts, achieving scanning accuracy and approval automation with OCR is challenging. Processes still require manual intervention and forces processes that could be handled in hours to take weeks.

Rethinking Data Capture and Digital Transformation

To overcome the limitations of OCR and achieve true digital transformation, forward-thinking organizations are adopting intelligent, guided digital interviews that personalize the customer experience and streamline processes. Here's how this approach reimagines forms:

Guided Customer Interviews: Instead of expecting customers to find and complete the right form, ask them what they want to accomplish and guide them through the process.

Personalized and Prefilled Information: Leverage existing customer data to create a personalized interview experience, minimizing the need for redundant data entry.

Mobile-friendly Capabilities: Utilize mobile features like geolocation and photo uploads to enhance the customer experience and support easy submission of required documentation.

Simplified Journey with Business Rules: Replace confusing if/then statements with streamlined business rules that determine relevant questions, simplifying the customer journey.

Seamless Multi-Device Experience: Allow customers to switch between devices without starting over, enabling them to complete the process at their convenience.

Automatic Data Synchronization: Eliminate the need for intermediate steps like OCR by seamlessly synchronizing data with core systems of record.

Automated Document Generation: Generate personalized documents, agreements, and contracts tied to e-signing for faster close and automatic archiving.

Workflow Integration: Incorporate workflows to ensure timely updates and information exchange among the right people and systems.

Move Beyond Static Forms with SmartIQ

OCR may be limited to data capture, but SmartIQ offers a comprehensive solution that empowers businesses to go beyond scanning and truly embrace digital transformation. With our expertise and SmartIQ's capabilities, you can transform your static PDF forms into interactive and engaging customer experiences. Our exclusive Quick Reference Guide provides an insightful comparison of business processes before and after implementing SmartIQ.

Break free from the constraints of OCR and embark on a digital transformation journey that puts the customer's needs at the forefront. By embracing intelligent digital interviews, you can enhance the customer experience, improve accuracy, and accelerate processes. At Smart Communications, we're here to guide you through this transformation and empower you with SmartIQ, a game-changing solution for end-to-end forms processes. Say goodbye to the scanning cycle and unlock the true potential of digital transformation in your business.

Here’s What We Learned at Duck Creek Formation ‘23

Posted on June 20, 2023 by SmartComm

By Eileen Potter, VP Insurance Marketing at Smart Communications

Recently the Smart Communications team attended the 2023 Duck Creek Formation conference. After reflecting on the insights, trends, and especially the conversations we had over the event, we’d love to share them with you. Spending time at a partner’s customer conference is particularly energizing and is a great opportunity to discuss the latest developments in insurance technology and strategy.

The theme for this year’s conference was “Building Together,” with timely sessions focused on how human experience will drive the next era of insurance by building meaningful interactions that foster trust, earn loyalty, and create lasting value. In this article, we’ll dive into our takeaways from the event and further guidance for insurers looking to remain customer centric.

Focus Areas for Insurers to Remain Customer-Centric

Build Greater Trust

For insurers, building trust starts with effective communication throughout the policy and claims lifecycles. In today’s connected world, that means taking advantage of cloud-based technology that will enable you to drive a digital-first customer experience strategy.

Customers want to feel secure and confident in their insurance company, and one of the best ways to build trust is through clear communication, including being proactive in reaching out to customers when there are updates or changes that might affect them. Insurers should be responsive and accessible when customers have policy questions or concerns, and most importantly, make the claims process as smooth and hassle-free as possible, from FNOL to close.

Communicate Clearly

Customers buy insurance to protect themselves and their assets, and they expect their insurance company to be there for them when they need it. Your customer communications should reinforce the value of your policies and the protection they offer, including easy-to-understand explanations of policy language and coverage limits. Additionally, part of the value and protection is to educate them on ways to minimize risk and prevent losses.

Deliver More Human Experiences

In today's world, customers crave authentic, personalized experiences. They want to feel like they're dealing with a real person, not a faceless corporation, and they want empathy – especially when they have a claim. Your customer communications should reflect this desire for a more human touch, including giving your policyholders options for how they can interact with you. And make sure to personalize communications whenever possible, using the customer's name and referencing specific details about their policy.

Conclusion

The accelerating pace of change in the industry combined with the current economic environment is challenging insurers to reimagine the way they do business, including how they interact and communicate with their policyholders. By focusing on these key areas, P&C insurance companies can create long-lasting relationships with their customers and differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Our partnership with core system providers like Duck Creek enable us to help insurers build technology ecosystems that will deepen customer relationships, drive loyalty, and deliver amazing customer experiences.

Customer communications is not just part of our company’s mission – it's all we do, and we believe this is why more insurers selected Smart Communications as their CCM partner in each of the last five years than all other CCM providers combined. Learn more about our partnership with Duck Creek.

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

Posted on June 13, 2023 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 May 31, 2023 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.

FCA Compliance: Consumer Duty and the Impact on Financial Services Communications

Posted on May 1, 2023 by SmartComm

By: Karen Oakland, VP of Financial Services Marketing at Smart Communications

One of the key industry regulators in the U.K., the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has introduced a new directive aimed at protecting banking and financial advisory consumers, which has significant compliance implications for more than 58,000 businesses in the region. Following on the heels of its Vulnerable Customer regulation, the FCA’s new Consumer Duty regulation addresses not only the ways in which financial institutions communicate with their customers, but also how easy they make it for customers to engage in return.

Consumer Duty was rolled out quite quickly – and with the FCA’s final guidance spanning 121 pages, it’s a lot to take in. Many organizations are wondering exactly how it will affect them and what they need to do to ensure FCA compliance. Let’s look at what this new regulation means and how you can leverage it as an opportunity to improve customer communications and service, rather than an obstacle to work around.

What is Consumer Duty and When Do FCA Rules Apply?

Consumer Duty is a set of rules for financial services firms that enforces greater consumer protections. Banks must align to its overarching principles: that communications sent to consumers should be easy to understand, products and services should meet their needs and offer fair value, and consumers should be able to get the support they need, when they need it.

The FCA developed these Consumer Duty compliance guidelines to enforce these principles as part of a paradigm shift it hopes to influence in both the culture and conduct of financial institutions. Financial services and insurance firms operating in the U.K. were required to have an implementation plan in place for FCA compliance with Consumer Duty by October 2022, and need to have rules in place for open products and services by July 2023 and for closed products and services by July 2024. (Note that organizations in the U.S. market are seeing similar regulations from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau / CFPB.)

FCA Compliance Implications for Financial Services

Several of the Consumer Duty’s key requirements call for firms to improve the customer experience. If your business operates in the U.K., while it’s easy to view these as more regulatory hoops to jump through, they present an opportunity for your organization to assess current communications across the entire customer journey and identify where and how you can do better. Here are three examples.

1) Fast-Tracking Customer Support

One Consumer Duty requirement dictates that firms must “provide helpful and accessible customer support.” That means making it faster and easier for consumers to get the answers they need, and not making them wait so long for an answer that they give up.

To comply with this mandate, firms will need to centralize processes for collecting client information, so that it can be used to trigger automated responses and so that it’s available to support contact center agents or financial advisors in real time. In addition, firms will need to offer more robust self-serve options on digital and mobile channels, such as smarter chatbots, to save customers from having to call a contact center and wait on hold. The goal should be to make it possible for customers to get whatever help they need in the most convenient way possible – on the channel of choice.

2) Revising Communications for Clarity and Readability

Consumer Duty also requires firms to provide timely and clear information so consumers can understand the products and services they buy and make sound financial decisions. Rather than burying key details in lengthy terms and conditions that few people actually read, firms must work to make communications clear and readable, and be able to prove that they’ve taken steps to optimize their communications.

Additionally, financial services firms must provide products and services that are right for clients – that is, personalized to their needs. This means organizations must provide clear, transparent communications that guide clients to the right decision for their unique circumstances. This also means maintaining a full audit trail showing when and how communications are updated for FCA reporting.

3) Shining the Light on Communication Pain Points

Consumer Duty is all about making things easy for the customer by asking financial institutions to optimize their communications – to make sure customers understand things like the cost of the financial products they own and how to use their benefits. In addition to reviewing and optimizing customer communications, firms can take this opportunity to review common journeys to identify when and where customers or even employees get hung up or are likely to abandon a process and find ways to improve.

Solving for common pain points is also an opportunity to boost customer satisfaction and retention. In an uncertain economy, customer trust is more important than ever – and can become a key differentiator as consumers tighten their purse strings and approach new products and investments warily.

FCA Compliance in Practice Across Financial Services

Let’s take a closer look at Consumer Duty by considering three use cases where clear communication is essential to allow customers to make informed choices.

Lending Communications

To ensure positive lending experiences, banks need to make it easy for customers to understand the cost of credit. That means providing total transparency into interest rates, fees and penalties, and clear guidance on how to complete processes such as closing an account or paying off a loan. All customer communications must be consistent and accessible to facilitate informed decision making.

One roadblock to achieving streamlined lending transactions is disparate communication streams which limit visibility, introduce the chance of costly errors and increase compliance risks. Using a cloud-based communication platform that’s integrated with core systems like CRM and other data sources is important for breaking down internal silos and ensures a single source of truth for a unified approach to agreements. By applying the directives of Consumer Duty, banks can offer customers clearer access to the capital they need.

Communicating About Investing Risks

FCA compliance with Consumer Duty also compels wealth management companies to improve transparency in how they communicate with investors; firms must disclose advisor incentives up front as well as potential risks. They need to make it easier to engage, for example enabling clients to complete risk assessment interviews over digital channels instead of blank fillable PDF or web forms.

Further, as clients increasingly expect advisor availability across multiple channels and time zones, organizations will need to adapt to deliver on Consumer Duty’s customer support requirements. By embracing two-way, digital-first conversations, wealth management companies can steer clients toward gainful investments no matter where they are.

Insurance Interactions Made Easier

Consumer Duty will shift the pension and life insurance industry toward greater customer-centricity as firms are required to make their products easier to understand and use. In the realm of claims in particular, insurers will have to show urgency, empathy and proactiveness in the way they communicate. Digital-first technologies like AI, automation and omnichannel communication delivery can help bring policyholders the efficiency, speed and service consumers deserve.

Three Ways Smart Communications Can Help with FCA Compliance

Smart Communications can help your organization comply with Consumer Duty by simplifying and automating customer conversations across every channel.

First, our forms automation software enables you to turn static, paper- or PDF-based forms into dynamic, two-way digital conversations powered by data in your core system. By eliminating unnecessary questions and complex if/then statements, it’s easier for customers to understand what they’re signing up for. In addition, pulling customer data from connected systems reduces the effort required to fill out applications for loans, credit cards and other products, while also increasing accuracy. Forms automation also supports the need to deliver better digital and mobile self-service, so customers can stop and start processes on different devices for added convenience.

Next, our SmartCOMM™ customer communications management (CCM) platform enables you to centralize and manage all of their customer communications for greater visibility and transparency across every line of business. Using business rules, you can deliver across any channel, from digital to print, with just a single template. In addition, SmartCOMM provides an audit trail detailing when communications were changed, what was changed, and by whom, to enable reporting for the FCA or other regulators.

Finally, our built-in content intelligence capabilities mean that you can gain true insight into the effectiveness of both communications and forms processes. Understand where customers are getting stuck in an interview, where questions or processes can be improved, and how to enhance customer communications across the lifecycle. With our Content Intelligence module you can evaluate the readability, sentiment and tone of communications to make sure they are both empathetic and effective.

Compliance with FCA Consumer Duty: An Opportunity in Disguise

While the FCA’s Consumer Duty rules only apply to firms serving customers in the U.K., it’s part of a global movement by regulators towards increasing consumer protections in financial services—one that’s also being advanced in the U.S. No matter where in the world your business operates, it’s time to improve customer communications and add transparency to product offerings. It’s time to put customers first.

Given the constantly changing requirements in financial services, insurance and other highly regulated industries, compliance teams need the ability to manage and monitor changes to customer communications. Adopting an agile, cloud-based CCM platform alongside a forms automation solution will allow firms to provide consumers with clear, consistent, accessible information to make better decisions. That’s good for the consumer, and the business.

Ready to discuss your compliance challenges and how Smart Communications can help you mitigate risk? Let’s Talk!

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

Posted on April 19, 2023 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’

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’

Cloud-based Customer Communications: Choosing the Best CCM Solution for Your Business

Posted on March 27, 2023 by SmartComm

By Simon Tindal, CTO of Smart Communications

No longer a buzzword, the cloud is here to stay! With an anticipated 17.3 percent growth in public cloud revenue in 2019, more and more organizations are turning toward cloud-based customer communications to strengthen satisfaction and retention. Anyone who has done their research already knows there are a multitude of terms being used to describe cloud deployment models. And even the most tech-savvy agree that interpretations of “the cloud” can get a bit foggy.

If your organization is starting to warm up to the idea of a cloud-based customer communications solution, it’s time to familiarize yourself with the various deployment options available to find the solution that best fits your needs. To help guide you in your cloud-buying journey, here are four criteria to look for as you choose a modern CCM system to ensure you find the solution the best fits your needs and allows you to fully reap the benefits only a solution truly built for the cloud can deliver.

Faster Time to Market

According to a Keypoint Intelligence-InfoTrends report, speed of production and execution was a top reason many enterprises opt for a cloud-based customer communications solution. Sure, your on-premise solution will eventually get the job done, but is the downtime and maintenance hindering your speed to market? Those still holding on to their legacy systems are likely leaving innovation on the table and falling behind the competition. A cloud-based solution improves speed by drastically reducing time spent maintaining a local IT infrastructure, freeing up resources to allow organizations to better prepare for anticipated market changes. The cloud also improves business agility, allowing companies to go to market faster, thus maintaining a competitive edge. On-premise legacy solutions that are now hosted in the cloud are limited with fixed resources, making it challenging to scale.

PRO TIP: Ask vendors how frequently their platform is updated. Platforms that are updated frequently and automatically push these updates live to their customers (vs. relying on IT departments to manage complicated upgrades), making it easy to stay ahead of the curve.

Interoperability

Legacy platforms initially built for on-premise deployment likely still rely on outdated technology standards, offer limited APIs, and are unable to integrate with key elements within the customer’s technology stack. As cloud services become more important to today’s organizations, so is the need for interoperability, or the ability for cloud services to connect with and understand each other’s APIs. A true cloud-based CCM solution is equipped with a suite of API integrations and is built with modern standards to enable seamless implementations, giving enterprises immediate access to the latest innovative tools. For example, SmartCOMM^TM’s Conversation Cloud^TM is an all-in-one cloud solution that connects all your data, applications, and history to build conversations that are relevant and impactful, time after time, making it easier to increase internal efficiencies and scale personalized interactions.

The key is finding a platform that offers the flexibility needed to take your customer communications to the next level.

PRO TIP: Examine how extensive a vendor’s API suite is and look for technology that’s built with modern standards to facilitate interoperability. Look for vendors that have a published API set as this will lead to easier interoperability.

Enhanced Organizational Efficiency

A CCM solution that’s truly built with the cloud in mind increases productivity by enabling employees to work together through the number of tools available in the cloud. Cloud-based communications solutions have the power to break down organizational data silos, making it easier for employees, customers and third-parties to communicate and collaborate. Rather than relying on IT as the go-to data source, a cloud-based CCM solution equips organizations with enhanced data visibility across departments, making it easier to decide which users have what level of access to what data. This also streamlines work efficiencies and increases collaboration as staff will know which communication documents are directly assigned to them. Imagine having one version of a document that can be worked on by different people – with the cloud, there’s no need to have multiple copies of the same document in circulation!

PRO TIP: Ask vendors how users can interact with the software to avoid reliance on other divisions within the company for data insights and how quickly important upgrades are implemented. A software that’s truly designed with business users in mind should be more than willing to demonstrate these essential capabilities.

Improved Customer Satisfaction

Easier access to customer data allows organizations to create a more consistent and rewarding experience throughout the entire lifecycle as they have greater insight into behavior patterns and individual communication preferences. As technology continues to grow and evolve, customers expect organizations to keep up or else they will gladly find another option that better serves their communication preferences. As you explore cloud-based communications solutions, it’s important to look for platforms that can easily deliver communications via multiple channels based on customer preferences and allow for recent interactions to inform subsequent outreach to that customer—even allowing a conversation to start on one channel and continue on to another.

PRO TIP: Look for a platform that is poised to deliver interactive, on-demand, and batch communications across multiple delivery channels, and can future-proof your customer preferences as new channels emerge.

Making the choice to invest in a cloud-based customer communications solution is an important step in an organization’s digital transformation journey. It’s also likely one of the biggest investments your business will make. Make sure you fully understand the nuances and the benefits only a platform built from the cloud up can deliver.

For more insight to help guide your cloud-based CCM buying journey, download our latest thought leadership, Conquering the Brave New World of Modern, Cloud-Based Customer Communications Management: A Buyer’s Guide.

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Closing the Digital Maturity Gap in 2024

Retiring Legacy Technology for Enhanced Engagement

Rethinking Forms Processes: Digitally Transforming Transactions into Engaging Interactions

Transitioning From Static Forms to Smarter Data Collection

Delivering Future-Ready Customer Conversations

Shifting Regulations Present New Opportunities for Risk Management and Compliance Management

WCAG Driving Change Across Enterprises

Reducing Risk for Highly Regulated Industries

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

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

Business Drivers for CCM Migration from Legacy to Cloud

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

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

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.

Understanding the Limitations of OCR

Rethinking Data Capture and Digital Transformation

Move Beyond Static Forms with SmartIQ

Focus Areas for Insurers to Remain Customer-Centric

Conclusion

Customer communications is not just part of our company’s mission – it's all we do, and we believe this is why more insurers selected Smart Communications as their CCM partner in each of the last five years than all other CCM providers combined. Learn more about our partnership with Duck Creek.

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

Challenges that Enterprises Face with Paper Forms

Impacts to Customer Effort and Experience

Desired State – Creating a Better User Experience

Key Capabilities Needed by Enterprises

No More Manual PDFs

Low-Code Form Builder

Integration with Legacy Systems / Disparate Systems

Field Validation to Improve Data Accuracy

Workflow & Automation to Accelerate Back-End Processes

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

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

Conclusion

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

Low-Code Forms Solutions for Business Users

Maintaining Brand Standards in a Digital Environment

Global, Cloud Offering Enhances Security and Compliance

Additional Benefits of Forms Modernization

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.

What is Consumer Duty and When Do FCA Rules Apply?

FCA Compliance Implications for Financial Services

FCA Compliance in Practice Across Financial Services

Lending Communications

Communicating About Investing Risks