A DocBridge is a Value Bridge
From Scott Gerschwer, Ph.D., Compart NA Marketing
Digital Transformation is a very popular buzzword. Customer Experience is a very popular buzzword. Both are enabled by technology. Technology is not enough.
A friend and former colleague and I were talking recently about how DX/CX reminds us of the late 90s/early 2000s when IT Superstars were in fashion. PeopleSoft and SAP and Siebel Systems, just to name a few. Big IT. Big projects.
Many failed.
Many failed because the technology substituted for clearly defined business objectives and a strategy to make it happen. Surely no one would make such a mistake again, right?
Yet they are. Example: "improving the customer experience" was the top-ranked priority of more than 14,000 marketers and ecommerce professionals surveyed by Econsultancy for its 2017 Digital Intelligence Briefing. Only 1 in 10 of the surveyed marketers said they had a well-defined strategy in place.
Here we go again. So what is the problem? Survey says:
- Difficulty unifying different sources of data (34%)
- Silo-based organizational structure (34%)
- Lack of sharing between departments (28%)
- IT bottlenecks (26%)
- Lack of leadership (21%)
- Lack of processes/workflow (19%)
If you are a business leader reading this article and your organization is in the middle of a Big IT effort to shore up your Customer Experience I have great news for you. The key to success isn't that far from your fingertips. Your natural assertiveness -- the trait that made you a leader in the first place -- is well within you. The rest of it can be accomplished simply by building and delivering what Forbes writer Michael Maven calls a "value bridge."
What Exactly Is A Value Bridge?
What you want to do is build a bridge from where you are right now to where you want to be. But you aren't alone in this. Whatever it is you do for a living, however it is that you make money, your customers want the same thing. They want a bridge from where they are to where they want to be. Build that bridge for them and you will succeed in business. The bridge represents value so it’s called a "value bridge."
A value bridge solves a specific problem. One problem, one bridge. A bridge that will take your prospect from their present place to a future place, a place they desire to go.
Mr. Maven tells us:
To build your very own value bridge, all you need to do is:
- Define your ideal prospect
- Understand their ‘present island’
- Learn about their ‘future island’
- Build the value bridge, getting your prospect’s feedback as you go
A strong value bridge can be the core of a successful business. Now let's go back to Customer Experience. Your goal is to create a customer experience that is better than your competitors. Customer insights are the building blocks of this bridge. Data is the raw material of this bridge. Documents are data in action: the interaction with the customer is the core of the Customer Experience, no matter what channel or how many channels are required for the interaction.
Documents can be a bridge to better Customer Experience. Intelligent documents that can be viewed on any device but also printed and mailed are especially effective. Documents must be enabled in multiple formats, must be universally accessible, should be interactive and will continue to play a major role in communicating key information to prospects, partners, and customers. Rethinking the creation and distribution of those documents from a customer perspective builds a great value bridge for your organization.
Customer-facing, mission-critical documents are the bridge. To become omnichannel, DocBridge® Mill. To create universally accessible, omnichannel documents, DocBridge® Impress. To ensure the quality of these, DocBridge® Delta. To collect documents from non-production sites, satellite offices, virtual employees, DocBridge® FileCab. For visibility into the document, in any format: DocBridge® View. And coming soon, to track and trace the entire lifecycle, no matter what channels are employed, DocBridge® Auditrack.
