Customer communication is currently undergoing rapid change. Today, information on one and the same business transaction is exchanged via different media. What is required is a high degree of "suppleness" in order to be able to "serve" from one channel to another or even several media simultaneously when necessary. The question remains how to achieve this agility - and without much effort. A basic prerequisite is that the IT systems used in a company must have so-called open programming interfaces (API) so that applications, both internal and external, can act efficiently and smoothly among themselves, i.e., exchange data (for example, via a cloud) and can be combined with each other.

In principle, this is about "working together" within the so-called API economy, which offers companies unimagined opportunities to flexibly adapt or expand their business field to market requirements without having to invest heavily in the development of new software solutions every time a change occurs.

This ability to integrate new applications and services into existing IT structures at will will help companies add value, especially in their customer communications. Suddenly, completely new scenarios in document and output management are possible.

As customer expectations have evolved, the need for personalization has outpaced the ability of business applications to meet them. In practice, business data is often insufficient to achieve personalization. It must be supplemented by parameters that are often specific to the variable data document composition/production platform that will be used. This separation of data has a major impact on the agility of customer communication, especially for the integration of a new distribution channel. It is also a major impediment to business visibility and responsiveness in the event of an error.

Compart's DocBridge® solutions address this major challenge to customer communication automation by reversing the processing paradigm. Application-specific parameters and data changes to a communication channel

Parameters and data changes for a particular application and communication channel are no longer generated in a specific way and sent with the document. In Compart solutions, the approach is to centralize and make available both the parameters, rules and shared functionalities. They are thus reusable by all document composition or production processes, regardless of the source and the output channel.

Modern personalized customer communication is not just about the ability to use variable data. To be effective, it must also make intelligent use of this data, based on business prescriptions in terms of the customer journey. In most situations, however, the implementation of these good customer experience management practices is often hampered by technical limitations.

For example, it may be more complex than expected to offer a customer the ability to download a PDF of the invoice they just received to their cell phone. This is because the composition platform requires the entire document to be regenerated from a new data request to the business application.

In Customer Communication Management (CCM), the important thing is not to be able to define rules in theory, but to be able to apply them without being limited by the rigidities of the infrastructure.

In Compart's DocBridge® solutions, this capability is based on a thorough decoupling of the core production functions of customer communication at the most basic level. For example, the dynamic document composition tool only performs this task and can be called up independently without triggering a whole series of other processes. The same is true for conversion tools, enrichment rules, etc. The API mode architecture thus allows businesses to faithfully model the expected customer experience by linking the relevant processes at will for truly automated customer communication.

Omnichannel communication means breaking away from a specific page format so that any document can be output on any channel without "expensive" detours such as de-formatting, etc.

In other words, the choice of the respective dispatch medium is decided anew for each business transaction. For companies, this means that they must separate the creation and dispatch of documents and establish a central output management instance. This "hub" decides, based on defined rules and criteria from the specialist departments (e.g., sales, marketing, service), which data is output in which layout and format on which channel; of course, always in relation to the respective recipient.

And: With a central output instance, controlled via omnichannel output management software, one is more flexible in connecting new communication channels.

An often overlooked aspect of Customer Communication Management (CCM) is its industrial dimension. Seemingly simple tasks, such as composing, formatting and sending a personalized document, are in fact repeated thousands of times. But, because of the need for personalization, each time they follow specific rules linked to the profile of the recipient customer. In many cases, this personalized communication takes place in a transactional context, in response to a customer's request or during the exchange with the customer. Business operators need to be able to quickly check the document they are about to send for anomalies before it is actually produced.

DocBridge® solutions are designed to provide the visibility required for effective customer communication at any point in the process. Their open technology design makes it easy to integrate the visualization and control functions that business users need into their business applications. These capabilities also play a key role in the scalability of customer communication. They enable new communication channels to be integrated more quickly, or new functionalities or business rules required by the business to be implemented as quickly as possible.