CCM

eBook

The Meaning of Control

Engagement Controls

Workflow Controls

Checks & Balances

“To manage something is to assure it is under control”

“The end-game of a ccm investment is a satisfied, engaged, and motivated customer”

“One of the essential characteristics of a CCM solution is personalization & targeting of each document”

“CCM solutions need to simultaneously support the apparently contradictory goals of content flexibility and content control”

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CUSTOMER COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT

MANAGEMENT OF WHAT ?

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I was at the Xploration 16 conference, on the “Who’s in Control” panel, discussing exactly that. Our panel moderator, Jerry Lazarus, used the phrase “boiling the ocean” when we got together to talk about the topic. So true. CCM brings together multiple stakeholders into a common software infrastructure, and each of them desires to retain control of their own success. How does CCM deal with this?

In preparation, I decided to take a preliminary dive into the topic. On the panel, our question was “Who”. But, before I got into that, I wanted to know the “What”, as in: what is under control of the CCM solution. In the pages that follow, I will discuss the business objectives that fall within the realm of “customer communications management”.

To manage something is to assure it is under control, to be operating as close to optimal as is feasible. But what exactly is it that comes “under control” when you install a CCM solution? Once you know that, the next question is “who operates these controls”?

CCM

eBook

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The Meaning of Control

“Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.”

Andrew Carnegie

PART

1

CUSTOMER COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT

MANAGEMENT OF WHAT ?

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1.1

1.2

1.3

CONTROL

WHY WE NEED CONTROL

CONSEQUENCES

CCMofferscontrolsinthreefundamentaldimensions:governance,production,andcustomerexperience. But, before I dig into that, I need to take a closer look at the very nature of control. Control has a purpose, and when you deploy a control system (a.k.a. management system), it also has a purpose beyond the specifictechnologyandfeatures.TherearegoalsincommonforeveryCCMdeployment.

Consistency demands control. Remember that 1960’s TV show “Get Smart”? Our hero, Maxwell Smart,wasanagentof“CONTROL”,fightingtheagentsof“KAOS”.Chaosincustomercommunicationsleadstoincorrectcontent,incongruouschannels,andirregularcommunications.Controlsystemsofferaconsistentwayto deliver the right content on the right channel at the right time.Manageabilitydemands control. A control system isbasedon feedback, and that feedback is used to alterprocess controls. Ongoing measurements and ongoing adjustments are essential. Jimi Hendrix was a master of control, as he famously “managed” the feedback loop through his guitar amp. Customer communications need feedback, a way to hear the “Voice of the Customer”. It’s a dialog, or what we like to call here at Ecrion, our “Wheel of Fortune”.

Since you are reading this, there is very good chance your organization is either planning or implementingacustomercommunicationsproject,withtheintentbeingtocontrolprocessesthataffectcustomer satisfaction. You have recognized customer communication as a critical aspect of your success, you need to get better, and you need to know you are getting better.AsyoulookforyourCCMsolution(suchasourownEOS),youshouldexpectyourcustomercommunicationtoachieveconsistency,offermanageability,anddelivermetrics.CCMcontrolsystems,likeourownEOS,providethese controls. InPart2ofthisseries,I’lldigintothedifferentkindsofthingsCCMcontrols.Customersatisfactionissubjectto“the weakest link in the chain”, and we will take a look at each of these links.

Progress demands control. I mentioned progress in the last section too, as a key customer motivator.Ofcourse,everyorganization’sstaffneedsmotivationaswell,andcontrolsystemsthatprovideprogress indicators also motivate. CCM projects don’t start when customer communications are mastered. Rather, they start when there is a realization that improvement is necessary, and that success doesn’t come overnight. Evaluation of progress is an essential part of the CCM control system.Criticality demands control. When something is important to an organization, it is controlled. Nothing was left tochanceonNASA’sApolloprogram,andthoseofuswhowatchedtheApollomissionsbroadcastonliveTVrecall row after row of consoles at Houston’s “Mission Control” room. In contrast, the soda station at the local McDonaldshasnocontrols,becauseprofitabilityisnotjeopardizedifaspilloccurs,orifacustomersneaksasodainstead of a water. If something critical isn’t controlled, success is at risk.

Engagement Controls

“A shopkeeper should always have a ready smile”Chinese Proverb

PART

2

In Part 1, I listed the primary reasons why you would want to implement a CCM solution, by looking at the big picture goals of a customer communication management investment. Management is about control, and CCM is about control over customer communications:deliveringconsistency,offeringmanageability, and providing progress metrics. If customer communication is critical to you, and you are operating without a CCM solution, I would have to conclude that you are a risk taker.

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CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT & MOTIVATION

CUSTOMER INFORMATION

Theend-gameofaCCMinvestmentisasatisfied,engaged,andmotivatedcustomer.ItiscertainlythecasethatCCMproductscanalsobeeffectivelyusedtoautomatedocumentproduction,butthereisadifference.Documentproductionisabusinessnecessity,ataskthatis“overhead”toanorganization’sbudget.Whendeployedtothisend,thereisnoquestionthatCCMsolutionscanreducecostsandimproveefficiencies.But, CCM, in the hands of a customer-centric organization, can achieve much more. It is re-envisioned as a tool setthatcanpositivelyaffectthebottomline,asastrategicinvestment.

Asisthecasewitheverybodywetalkto,conversationisbasednotjustonthetopic,butalsoonthe relationship. We inform our conversations based on things like shared experiences and an appreciation of the

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2.1 WHAT CCM CONTROLS

CCM solutions, and responsibility for customer satisfaction, is not delegated to one group or one specifictaskwithinanorganization.Theyinvolveorchestrationofmultipleteams,multipleprocesses,andmultiple objectives. CCM solutions don’t just control the text on the page, or the delivery channel. They empower organizations to be a shopkeeper with a ready smile. Tohelpgetahandleonalltheresourcesandprocessesbroughtundercontrol,Ihaveclassifiedthem into three broad categories, and I’ve broken each into a part within this series. In this part, I’ll explore the most important resource of all: an engaged customer.

other’s history and tastes. The state of the relationship matters too.

CCM solutions manage customer information in order to draw from it a context, and then generate from that context a personalized and targeted communication. Some of this information is unambiguous, as in preferences, shopping history, and support history. Moreover, while organizations “know” quite a bit about their customers, they can infer even more through customer analytics.

Whencustomerinformationdirectlyinfluencesthecontent,thecommunicationbecomespersonalized. We are all familiar with the monthly invoice, which by its nature, has personalized data (at least, account-specificdata).Butpersonalcommunicationsdon’thavetobelimitedtobills.On-lineshoppingexperiences are perfect examples of personalized content, as recent history and long term purchase history effectsthewebpagecontent.Withaccesstocustomerinformation,thispersonalizationisn’tlimitedtowebpagesanymore.Everycustomer“touchpoint”canbepersonalized.Targetingisabitdifferentthanpersonalization.Targetedmessagessegmentthecustomerbase,andadaptcontentappropriately.Analyticsusecustomerinformationtofindpatternsandgeneratesegmentsreceptivetosimilarmessaging.Ifyouwonderifthis is real or not, check out the success Target had with customer analytics.

Accesstocustomerinformationalsoopensupcontrolsovermessagetimingandchannelselection.Forexample,“notifications”arefrequentlypersonalizedupdatesforaparticularcustomerorder.Inthiscase,effectivecontrolsovernotification-basedengagementconnecttheCCMinfrastructuretocustomerinformationintheorderfulfillmentdepartment.

When we use customer information to personalize and target communications, we are taking control over the dialog we have with that customer. Each outbound message is a “touch point” that leverages customerinformationtooffersomecontroloverthecustomer’sengagement,motivation,andsatisfaction.

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TIMELY MESSAGE ON APPROPRIATE CHANNEL

VOICE OF COMPANY

We also control customer engagement through well timed messages. Control over communication rate is an example. I’ve been getting nearly daily e-mails from a large department store chain since I bought an appliance from them. They go directly to my junk mail because they are annoying. There may be useful information in some of those messages, but there is too much noise to make it worth looking.

Communications need to be throttled, but on the other hand, they shouldn’t be absent. Engagement and motivation are only achieved with communication, so no communication is not the answer. CCM solutions can track customer communications, and that data can be used to govern engagement policies.

The “Voice of Company” is one of the more subtle objects to control. This is more traditionally called “brand management”, but when we consider that a dialog requires two voices, we can easily see that those voicesarethoseofthecustomer,andthecompany.Brandssufferwhenthecompanysaysthewrongthing,andprosper when it says the right thing.

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Every time the company speaks through a communication, it needs to be controlled. This paper is reviewed before I get to publish it because I’m speaking as Ecrion, as well as myself. The same principle applies for all customer communications, and especially correspondence that by its nature, doesn’t include text that went through project review and validation.

This also applies to tight correlation between component parts of documents produced throughout the organization. Distributed teams need to collaborate on these customer communications, and buildupamessage that isconsistentwithasinglevoice for thecompany. CCMcontrolsoffercollaborativeauthoring and reviewing environments, so the “voice of the company” projected in the communication is truly personifyingthecompanyasawhole,inthemostaccurate,positiveandmotivationalwaypossible.Acompanyvoiceisalwayscarriedbycorrespondence,notifications,forms,webpages,marketingcampaigns,andtraditionalbilling. CCM helps engineer that company voice.

2.5 VOICE OF CUSTOMER

Nobodygetstocontrolwhatthecustomersaysotherthanthecustomer.Influenceislimited.With that in mind, a CCM solution has to capture and present the organization with the voice of the customer in order to empower it to enter into an engaging dialog.

Tothisend,CCMsolutionsofferwaystotrackresponsescustomershavetooutboundmessages.Thesecomeintheformofspecificcustomerresponsetracking,andintermsofstatisticalanalyticsofresponsesacross customer segments. CCM solutions track opened messages, clicks within electronic messages, forms, surveys, and other digital experience interactions. The goal of this set of features is to capture the current perspective of the customer’s engagement and satisfaction.

These features are the “hearing” portion of a dialog. Customer-centric strategies need to respond to the customer, and response requires that your organization can hear the customer’s voice. How many of us have called a customer service center, entered our account numbers into the IVR system, and then been asked to enter them again? This is an example of an organization with an inability to capture the customer voice, butwithanobvioususecase.CCMoffersorganizationsawaytohear,capture,andrespondtosubtleinformationofferedthroughthecustomer’svoice.

2.6 CONCLUSION

Sometimes it is hard to envision an organization that can collaborate on a “voice of the company” scale.ThisiswhereincrementalstepsintoCCMarebeneficial.CCMinfrastructureisasolutiontotraditionaldocumentproduction,andmanyofourcustomersstartthere. AftertheCCMtoolsare inplace, itopensupopportunitiesforincrementalprogresstowardaunifiedteaminpursuitofanengagedandmotivatedcustomerbase. With the right tools, tactical document production projects are the gateway to strategic customer engagementandmotivation.Theyopenupaccessandmanagementofcustomerinformation,theyoffertimingandautomationofmessages,andtheyoffercollaborativegenerationofcontent.Withtoolslikethis,yourorganization can become customer-centric.

“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”

Marshall McLuhan

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Workflow Controls

“The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony.”

Heraclitus.

PART

3 In my past, I’ve been a software engineer. In that world, we talk about “stacks”, and “peers”. Stacks are layers of services that combine in one program, and these stacks can be used to send and receive messages. Peers are the remote stacks that a program talksto.Itistheparadigmweusetodifferentiatewhatour programs do, and what the “other guy’s” program does.

When we talk about CCM controlling a customer’s engagement and motivation, it is a “peer” relationship. But CCM solutions are not just about controlling the “peer”. They also control the stack: the files,processes,databases,andpeoplewhoarepartofthat peer conversation. In the next part, I’ll describe how CCM controls these production and delivery resources.

Inpart1ofthisseries,Iofferedsomekeyreasonswhycustomercommunicationsmanagementisimportant, and what goals would lead one to invest in CCM: consistency, manageability, progress, and criticality. In part 2, I brought these reasons into the context of the customer experience, and how a strategic CCM investment is a customer-centric investment.

In this part, I’d like to change the focus from the company/customer dialog, and focus on internal controls. What should a CCM solution do to bring manageability to the internal production process?

3.1 COMMUNICATION PRODUCTION & DELIVERY

Customer motivation is the end game of a CCM investment. But, the equipment used to deliver the content is just as important as the content itself. One does not happen without the other. In the background music world, I have controls over what 8tracks.com is streaming to my laptop’s speakers. These controls and delivery infrastructure work the same regardless of the content. In the same way, these sorts of infrastructure controls are essential to CCM as well as the communication content. EricClapton(content)wouldnotbehelpingmewritethispaperif8tracks.comdidn’toffermethecontrols to instruct their infrastructure to deliver it to my computer. CCM is like that.

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3.2

3.3

AUTHORING & COLLABORATION

PRODUCTION WORKFLOWS

Thefirstquestionswehearfromcustomersalwaysincludeconcernfortheauthoringenvironment. What is the process of designing a customer communication, and how is it controlled? Lookingcloseratauthoring,wecanfindmultipleskillsetsatwork.Theprofessionalwriterwillknownothingabouttheenterprisedatastructure,andtheITstaffwillknownothingaboutvisualizationofcustomer-specificinvoicecontent.Controloverauthoringmeansthatthepeoplewithskillsappropriateforataskareabletocontributetoaprojectwithoutsteppingoutsideoftheirskills.Authoringenvironmentswillinclude multiple tools, with an integrated project repository, to enable collaboration across the organization.

Finally, control over authoring includes control over consistency. Items such as styles, logos, and layouts,whichallrepresentaunified“VoiceofCompany”,havetobeundercontrol.Theseitems,iftheyweretochange, are global.

With multiple delivery channels, control over consistency is also a prime concern. One “control point”willeffectchangesinprint,hostedande-mailedrenderingsofadocument.Inotherwords,thetemplaterepresents control over all channels, rather than just one. This gives consistency, and also enables downstream controls to render documents for any channel in any format, without the need to develop new templates. One template/multi-channel/multi-formatisanessentialfeaturetoenableflexiblemanagementofdownstreamdistribution.

Ecrion has been rendering documents for almost 20 years. However, rendering engines are not CCM solutions. Instead, some higher layer software has to control the production process – to bring together the right data with the right templates at the right time, and to distribute them in the right format on the right channel.

Thisorchestrationprocessiscommonlyreferredtoasa“workflow”inbusinessprocess,andthatsametermappliestodocumentproduction.However,adocumentproductionworkflowistypicallysubordinateto the business process. The business process “controls” document production, whether by automation (e.g.RESTAPIs)ortriggers(e.g.timeofday).

CCMworkflowshavethreeprimaryfunctions.Theycontroldataretrieval,theycontroldocumentrendering,andtheycontroldocumentdistribution.Thereismuchflexibilitywithinaworkflow,asallthreemaydepend on business intent (e.g. invoice), customer information, customer preference, and business process status.Workflowsofferproductioncontrolpoints,andoneworkflowmaytakemultiplepaths,dependingonthecontrolling parameters associated with each document produced.

Thedocumentproductionworkflowcanalsobeusedasacontroltriggerforbusinessprocesses,especiallyinregardtothe“interactive”usecase.Inthisusecase,theworkflowcontrolsdatainputandcanpushcollected data into the business process, independent from the document it produces. Documents that are

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triggersforinternalprocessesneeddatavalidationcontrols,andCCMtoolsofferthis. Theworkflowalsorepresentsthesourceofoutboundmetrics.DashboardsthatshowthehealthoftheCCMsolutiondrawfromtheperformanceofeachoftheseworkflows,anddrawattentiontoworkflowsthatarenotoperatingcorrectly,oraccordingtohistoriclevels.Justastheembeddedreviewprocessoffersqualitycontrolsoncontent,theworkflowarchivesofferqualitycontrolonthedocumentproductionprocess.

One of the essential characteristics of a CCM solution is personalization and targeting of each document. Unpacking this, we get to the realization that there need to be conditional parts of each document. Everydataitemwehaveregardingaspecificcustomercanbeacontrolpointwithinthedocument,andwithintheworkflow.Paragraphsortextwithinparagraphscanbedependentonsuchthingsasgeography,orderstatus,and account history. For example, a sales team may want to focus one campaign on California, and another on Florida.

These sorts of content control points are a necessary part of a CCM system.

3.4 DOCUMENT CONTENT MANAGEMENT

3.5

3.6

PROJECT LIFECYCLE

DISTRIBUTION

Building up a set of related documents is not a trivial afternoon task. Rather, these are projects with requirements, contributors, test cycles, and ongoing updates and releases. Lifecycle controls include built-in version control tools, review and approve processes, and project promotion tools.

Eachfileinvolvedinaprojectcanundergochange,whetheritisanauxiliarycomponentlikeanimage, or an actual authored template or data model. Files undergoing change need a revision control system, with tracking of the who/when/why of updates. CCM systems include these version control systems, and make them an essential part of the solution. Control is impossible with attachments to e-mail or simple shared global folders.

Built-in review tools give all stakeholders an opportunity to invest in the authoring process, withoutgettingthemboggeddowninprocess.Tasknotificationandmanagement,withautomaticprogressionon approval, is all part of the project’s lifecycle control. Review of sample documents, rather than components, is a critical feature of this control point. This is essentially a step that allows the stakeholders the opportunity to buy into the communications, without any need to know the underlying technology. This applies to large batch productions, or to correspondence. Controls are necessary.

ACCMsolutionhastoprovidedistinctseparationbetweendevelop,test,andproductionenvironments.CCMistooimportantto“golive”outofthegate.Entireprojects(incontrasttoindividualfiles)need controls that allow them to progress as a whole, from initial development all the way into production. vIn addition, promotion needs to be a privileged operation, under control of a select few.

Distribution controls used to be limited to interaction with print room and mail room equipment. While this is still an essential aspect of a CCM system, it is certainly not the only distribution control. Customer preferences can control distribution channel (e.g. e-mail, on-line, or print) and content (e.g. full vs. summary,language).Beyondthat,evenadistributionchannelitselfneedscontrols,asdifferentchannelshavedifferentneeds.E-mailaddressesmaybounce,justasprintersmayneedpaper.Controloverthesedistributionchannels, as well as the communications they carry, are essential pieces of a CCM solution.

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3.7 HOSTING AND STATISTICAL COLLECTION

In part 1, I mentioned that progress measurements are an essential component to CCM, because theyofferincrementalmeasurementsofsuccess.Practicallyspeaking,printeddocumentshavelimitedabilitytogive a voice to the customer, and consequently, limited ability to generate a progress metric. However, with electronic delivery, the limitation is gone. Click-tracking and related technologies open up opportunities to measure engagement, and to create a database that will feed back into customer analytics.

CCM infrastructure provides this feedback, so an organization can manage and, over time, improve customer communications.

3.8 CONCLUSION

Thissetofcontrols includes traditionalcontrolsyouwouldfind inanyautomateddocumentproductionsolution,butwithadditions.CCMopensupflexibility.Authoringistakenoutofthehandsoftoolspecialists, and given to teams of people drawn from the organization according to their existing skills. Data throughout the organization can be integrated into the production process, and can be enhanced through the document feedback process. Each document, whether produced in batch or on demand, whether delivered electronicallyorinprint,istargetedandpersonal.Andinallofthis,therearemetrics.

In this part, the focus has been on the mechanics of document production. This is an essential aspect of CCM solutions, but it is not the complete picture. In addition, there is an aspect of “governance”. Governancereferstopolicy,andhowthatpolicyisrespectedandenforced.ACCMsystemnotonlyanswerstothe production manager, but also to those who create and are responsible for policy. This may be security policy, regulatory policy, brand policy, legal policy, or even engagement policy. Inthenext,andfinalpart,thetopicwillbegovernance,whichisanessentialpartofthecontrolsystemaCCMsolutionoffers.

Checks & Balances

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”Jean-Jacques Rousseau

PART

4 This is the last in my series focused on the “management” aspect of Customer Communication Management, but certainly not the least of them. In part1,Iidentifiedtheforcesdrivingcustomercommunicationsintoaunifiedsolution:establishingconsistency, measuring progress, reducing risk to critical operations, and applying controlled change. In part2,Iofferedperspectiveonmanagingpersonalized and engaging dialogs with each customer. In part 3, I changed focus to the mechanics of internal automation and process controls.

Finally, in this last part, I’ll call attention to

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to governance, which is the ability to enforce policies and execute strategies across all customer communications.Withoutgovernance,customercommunicationmaybeunifiedinsharedtools,butthecommunicationstheygeneratewillbedisconnectedfromauthority,andunabletorepresenttheunified“Voiceof the Company”.

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4.2

GOVERNANCE

BRAND MANAGEMENT AND CORPORATE IDENTITY

Governance,asacontrol,isadifferentdimensionincomparisontoboththeproductionandengagement dimensions. Governance is about policy, in implementation and in assurance. Policy may be as critical as protection of personal information, or as detailed as the exact placement of a logo within every document produced. If a customer communication policy is declared within an organization, the CCM infrastructureshouldoffercontrolsthathelpgovernconformancetothosepolicies.

CCM systems open a collaborative door to an organization team charged to design recurring communicationstemplates.Additionally,ad-hoccorrespondence,bydefinition,containscontentthatbypassesformal project review cycles. This distributed source of communication content and presentation poses a challenge to CCM solutions, which must also prevent divergence from the intended “Voice of the Company”. CCMsolutionsneedtosimultaneouslysupporttheapparentlycontradictorygoalsofcontentflexibilityandcontent control.

In support of collaborative design, complete documents need to be broken down into smaller components, such as headers, footers, cover sheets, contacts, terms and conditions, and the like. These reusable constituentpartsrepresent“brandpolicy”,andshouldbeusedwithineverymasterdocumenttemplate.Officialstyles, layouts, fonts, images, etc., fall into this same category, so components containing these are centrally locatedandreferencedwithinalldocumentscoveredbythepolicy.Theseare“locked”byuser-specificpermissions, so only those authorized to change policy can change these communication components.

Content policies control the text included in customer communication, and are an addition to brand controls. For recurring documents such as invoices and statements, stakeholders need review and approve authority over the process, without creating a burden on the developers of the schedule. For correspondence, organizations may be comfortable providing nothing more than a letterhead template to agents, while others are uncomfortable delegating any freedom at all to those who will communicate with customers. In the middle, there are review and approve use cases applied to the generated documents, rather than the production process as a whole. CCM solutions with these sorts of sub-component parts, and with quality control policies, enable and promoteaunifiedandpositivecorporateidentity.

4.3 CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE

This structure has to be balanced with personalized and targeted content. These targeted messageswillvaryfromdocumenttodocument,evenwithinthesameworkflow.Theywillfrequentlychange,asthe strategy for messaging to customers evolves over time (we call these ‘message campaigns’). These campaignscannotputentireproductionworkflowsbackintotestmode.Rather,thecampaignmessagesare“carried”bytheproductionworkflow,justlikeawebpagethatcarriesanadvertisementthatvariesfromclicktoclick.

Governance over these targeted messages relies on generation and execution of rules based on available data. These rules can be derived from static customer information (e.g. home address), dynamic customer information (e.g. invoice amount), historic record (e.g. message sent last month), or predictive

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4.4 SECURITY REQUIREMENTS AND CERTIFICATIONS

CCM infrastructure leveragesdistributedprocessing,APIs,Web Services, andbrowser-basedmanagement. Servers may be deployed on an organization’s premises, in a virtual private cloud surrounded by an enterprise security perimeter, or in a public cloud.Each of these deployment scenarios subject the CCM components to security policies. These cover everything from disaster recovery to malicious attacks. Policies may require use of encrypted connections between

In a broader sense, interaction with the customer is useless if it cannot be used to adjust outbound communications to improve personalization and targeting. This feedback loop is closed, and transforms into a dialog, using customer intelligence tools built into some CCM solutions. In the document production perspective, electronic delivery is best because it is less costly than traditional paper delivery. From a governance perspective, electronic delivery is valuable because it provides opportunities for interaction, and that produces metrics. CCM solutions can count interactions, and measure engagement. These sorts of measurements feed into customer intelligence algorithms, and can be used to govern the dialog, as well as govern content. Content without responses can be discarded, and content that engages can be pursued.

information (e.g. likely to be looking for a new computer), and the rules may be a combination of all of these.

4.5 REGULATORY REQUIREMENTS, CUSTOMER PRIVACY AND ELECTRONIC ACCESS

Electronic access controls certainly apply to customer portals, as well as any integrated systems that access and present hosted documents. In this use case, customers need credentials, and the CCM solution needstooffercredentialmanagementandappropriateauthentication.Accessneedstofollowsecureprotocolsand procedures. Security integration through SSO is an important consideration, because document access might just be a portion of a much larger scoped customer portal. Accesscontrolsalsoapplytointernalstaff.ACCMsystemisarichsourceofpersonalinformation, and access from inside requires controls as well. Security procedures constructed by the organization need a CCM infrastructure that enforces these policies, both on a group and an individual level.

components,orauthenticationlogs.Theymayrequirezeroingdiskfilesorencryptingdataatrest.Therearethird party security policies, such as ISO 20071, which apply to these solutions.

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4.6 CONCLUSION

Peeling the onion on CCM controls has been a bigger job than I anticipated, and I appreciate that you are still with me. The most interesting thing about this investigation of the objects of customer communication management brings us back to why controlsareestablishedinthefirstplace.Ifyourorganization feels that customer communication is something more than overhead to be endured, and instead feels it is an opportunity to improve customer satisfaction and retention, then all of these controls should sound desirable rather than ominous. LeadingCCMtoolsofferstraightforwardcontrols,andin fact, that is a huge part of their value proposition. That is why the tools are “Customer Communication Management”, and not “Customer Communication Production”.

Ecrion is a privately owned company with average year over year growth for the last 6 years of between 20 and 30%.

Founded in 2002 Ecrion has been providing viable solutions to customers for more than a decade.

With thousands of direct and indirect customers on six continents, no two customers have the exact same configuration. Each of our

customers configures how they use the solution in different ways, and Ecrion successfully meets the specific needs of each and every customer.

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