How Did We Get Here?
In the days of highly regulated markets, when customers were a largely captive audience, operating efficiency was the foremost concern for electric providers. As a result, customer information systems (CIS) were designed to provide an efficient mechanism for keeping track of customers and populating the billing application. These systems have served their purpose well and are important information assets.
However, after deregulation, customer-centricity, rather than operational efficiency, has become the overriding concern for electric providers. Now, they must better understand their customers and improve communication with them, or risk their migration to competitors. Competition necessitates a new focus on customer relationships, communication and satisfaction, while not losing sight of traditional cost and efficiency goals. Another level of complexity is added when a provider acquires, or is acquired by, another provider, a common occurrence in today’s market.
In this new environment, providers have invested heavily in CRM in an attempt to learn more about their customers’ interests, desires and habits. These applications provide a new level of analysis and insight beyond what is capable with CISs. Though implementation is often a significant struggle, the real challenges arise once the CRM system becomes operational.
First, there is the technical challenge of compiling meaningful, quality customer data with which to populate the system. The information contained in the CIS will form the backbone of this effort, but good data from all transactions, as well as many other sources, must be added.
Providers also face significant business and cultural challenges. For example, with the onset of competition an entirely new corporate mindset must be adopted. Image, messaging and one-to-one relationships become critical, and this means attitudes, roles, compensation and career choices are affected. Providers must begin considering customer contact, whether through billing or other correspondence, a revenue generator rather than a cost driver.
Likewise, business processes are affected. Previously, when customer information fed only the billing process, the organizational impact was limited. But when attempting to integrate CRM output with billing and other customer correspondence, many different processes and departments become involved, increasing the potential for less-thanoptimum results.
Leveraging CRM Output
In light of all these challenges, one simple question must be asked – how can CRM output be utilized more effectively in the new competitive environment and provide a return on what, for many, has been a major investment? Unless CRM output can be leveraged outside of somebody’s workstation, the investment will have been wasted. This is a situation in which many providers have found themselves.
A key consideration in answering this question is realizing that touch points with customers are few, thus every interaction must count. Any information presented to customers, whether on their monthly bill or other related correspondence, must be clear, personalized, actionable, and delivered in the format desired by the customer. Accomplishing this objective requires electronic archival, retrieval, form creation, presentment, printing and Web-enabling capabilities that can be customized for any size of operation.
Extracting and Preparing Data
As providers struggle to support their CRM initiative, one of their first and most crucial requirements is a simple, effective way to exchange customer data, such as between billing, the CRM application and correspondence-generating software solutions. Tools that enable technical staff to quickly, easily and inexpensively develop processes to accept data from multiple sources and in multiple formats, translate and manipulate that data into the new data outputs needed and put these processes into production are critical.
Rather than rely on custom designed bridging programs that require commitments of multiple months of programmer effort, and weeks to months of calendar time, electric providers can now implement Extract-Translate-Load (ETL) tools that quickly and efficiently provide the same capability.
These tools extract data from multiple files and formats, translate data between formats, and then facilitate loading into applications necessary to output the data in the form of customized billing or other communications.
Turning Data Into Documents
Another crucial step in enabling the efficient and cost-effective utilization of CRM output is designing clear, consistent, personalized and powerful customer communications. How much information is provided to customers, how easy it is to navigate information within correspondence, how sophisticated correspondence appears and how much the correspondence is personalized can strongly influence customer opinions and, ultimately, determine the return on CRM investment and the effect on the bottom line.
New software solutions supply electric providers unparalleled ability to design complex, personalized, individualized documents, to accept transaction and other input data from a wide variety of sources to personalize these documents, and to create final documents in a wide variety of printer and electronic formats for distribution. These high-volume, production-ready information acquisition, personalization and presentation systems enable the production of millions of documents, each optimized for an audience of one. In addition, they enable the conditional inclusion of information based on specific business rules, such as when marketing new services to customers above a certain monthly spending threshold. Finally, any type of bill – summary, multi-service, commercial, residential and industrial – or supporting communication – reminder notices, service inserts, customer service correspondence and marketing notices – can be generated by such tools.
It is also important that customer service representatives generate personalized correspondence for every customer contact. They must be able to provide their correspondence – from a simple follow-up explanation after handling a customer call to a confirmation that a service problem has been corrected – in a timely and cost-effective manner. This capability requires archival and retrieval tools that can produce correspondence quickly from pre-existing documents, whether stored in a single, centralized library or scattered across the corporate network. These tools should automatically combine logos, graphics, text blocks and digitized signatures, streamlining correspondence production and enabling representatives to deliver personalized messages swiftly.
Electrifying Bills and Customer Correspondence
As online transactions become more commonplace, customers appreciate – and even expect – immediate access to view, print and even pay bills over the Internet, at a time of their choosing. In addition, Internet-enablement helps reduce, if not eliminate, printing and mailing costs while allowing customer service representatives to instantly manage customer information online and speed service interactions.
Accomplishing effective customer relationship management in e-bills or customer service interactions requires tools that help data flow easily from the CIS system, through document creation facilities, and on to the electronic presentation of the bill. Less manual intervention – to manipulate print streams and extract data – saves money and minimizes opportunities for errors. When e-billing and payment capabilities come from the same vendor providing document creation and delivery functionality, the integration is even tighter and the opportunity to achieve a positive return even greater.
Letting Someone Else Do the Work
A final consideration in creating compelling and cost-effective results from CRM output is ensuring that production facilities are capable of handling the volume of bills and other communication items. If electric providers cannot actually produce and deliver their customized content, all is for naught. For this reason, some utilities have chosen to outsource processing, printing and mail handling of their communications to application service providers (ASPs).
With capabilities such as high-speed printing, address verification, intelligent insertion, electronic bar coding, EDI transmissions and more, ASPs ensure that personalized customer documents are created and delivered according to exact quality and time specifications. The ASP assumes the cost and risk of implementing the software and Internet technology necessary to produce, print and deliver customized correspondence, including electronic bills.
Summary
The onset of deregulation has forced utilities to focus more on the customer experience and less on pure operational efficiency. Legacy customer information systems, though still valuable information assets, have been joined by a new wave of customer-focused IT investments, most prominently customer relationship management (CRM) systems. However, despite significant investments in CRM, few electric providers have been able to achieve a return on their investment. To fully leverage CRM applications, providers must be able to take system output and design, produce and deliver actionable, compelling, costeffective and personalized customer communications. Software tools now exist that enable providers to develop these capabilities, while application service providers enable utilities that so choose to outsource these capabilities.
About the Author
William D. Barry is senior vice president of sales and marketing for Dallas-based Docucorp International. For more information, e-mail him at bbarry@docucorp.com, visit www.docucorp.com or call 1-800-735-6620.
Docucorp (Nasdaq: DOCC) is the authority in providing dynamic solutions for acquiring, managing, personalizing and presenting enterprise information. Servicing the entire enterprise information lifecycle, Docucorp’s information application software, application service provider (ASP) hosting and professional consulting services enable companies to implement solutions in-house or fully outsource to Docucorp. The company has an installed base of more than 1,200 customers, including many of the largest insurance, utility and financial services organizations.
Headquartered in Dallas, Docucorp has major facilities in Atlanta and Silver Spring, Md. The company also maintains offices in Portland, Maine and Bedford, N.H., as well as an international office in London that represents Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.
In the days of highly regulated markets, when customers were a largely captive audience, operating efficiency was the foremost concern for electric providers. As a result, customer information systems (CIS) were designed to provide an efficient mechanism for keeping track of customers and populating the billing application. These systems have served their purpose well and are important information assets.
However, after deregulation, customer-centricity, rather than operational efficiency, has become the overriding concern for electric providers. Now, they must better understand their customers and improve communication with them, or risk their migration to competitors. Competition necessitates a new focus on customer relationships, communication and satisfaction, while not losing sight of traditional cost and efficiency goals. Another level of complexity is added when a provider acquires, or is acquired by, another provider, a common occurrence in today’s market.
In this new environment, providers have invested heavily in CRM in an attempt to learn more about their customers’ interests, desires and habits. These applications provide a new level of analysis and insight beyond what is capable with CISs. Though implementation is often a significant struggle, the real challenges arise once the CRM system becomes operational.
First, there is the technical challenge of compiling meaningful, quality customer data with which to populate the system. The information contained in the CIS will form the backbone of this effort, but good data from all transactions, as well as many other sources, must be added.
Providers also face significant business and cultural challenges. For example, with the onset of competition an entirely new corporate mindset must be adopted. Image, messaging and one-to-one relationships become critical, and this means attitudes, roles, compensation and career choices are affected. Providers must begin considering customer contact, whether through billing or other correspondence, a revenue generator rather than a cost driver.
Likewise, business processes are affected. Previously, when customer information fed only the billing process, the organizational impact was limited. But when attempting to integrate CRM output with billing and other customer correspondence, many different processes and departments become involved, increasing the potential for less-thanoptimum results.
Leveraging CRM Output
In light of all these challenges, one simple question must be asked – how can CRM output be utilized more effectively in the new competitive environment and provide a return on what, for many, has been a major investment? Unless CRM output can be leveraged outside of somebody’s workstation, the investment will have been wasted. This is a situation in which many providers have found themselves.
A key consideration in answering this question is realizing that touch points with customers are few, thus every interaction must count. Any information presented to customers, whether on their monthly bill or other related correspondence, must be clear, personalized, actionable, and delivered in the format desired by the customer. Accomplishing this objective requires electronic archival, retrieval, form creation, presentment, printing and Web-enabling capabilities that can be customized for any size of operation.
Extracting and Preparing Data
As providers struggle to support their CRM initiative, one of their first and most crucial requirements is a simple, effective way to exchange customer data, such as between billing, the CRM application and correspondence-generating software solutions. Tools that enable technical staff to quickly, easily and inexpensively develop processes to accept data from multiple sources and in multiple formats, translate and manipulate that data into the new data outputs needed and put these processes into production are critical.
Rather than rely on custom designed bridging programs that require commitments of multiple months of programmer effort, and weeks to months of calendar time, electric providers can now implement Extract-Translate-Load (ETL) tools that quickly and efficiently provide the same capability.
These tools extract data from multiple files and formats, translate data between formats, and then facilitate loading into applications necessary to output the data in the form of customized billing or other communications.
Turning Data Into Documents
Another crucial step in enabling the efficient and cost-effective utilization of CRM output is designing clear, consistent, personalized and powerful customer communications. How much information is provided to customers, how easy it is to navigate information within correspondence, how sophisticated correspondence appears and how much the correspondence is personalized can strongly influence customer opinions and, ultimately, determine the return on CRM investment and the effect on the bottom line.
New software solutions supply electric providers unparalleled ability to design complex, personalized, individualized documents, to accept transaction and other input data from a wide variety of sources to personalize these documents, and to create final documents in a wide variety of printer and electronic formats for distribution. These high-volume, production-ready information acquisition, personalization and presentation systems enable the production of millions of documents, each optimized for an audience of one. In addition, they enable the conditional inclusion of information based on specific business rules, such as when marketing new services to customers above a certain monthly spending threshold. Finally, any type of bill – summary, multi-service, commercial, residential and industrial – or supporting communication – reminder notices, service inserts, customer service correspondence and marketing notices – can be generated by such tools.
It is also important that customer service representatives generate personalized correspondence for every customer contact. They must be able to provide their correspondence – from a simple follow-up explanation after handling a customer call to a confirmation that a service problem has been corrected – in a timely and cost-effective manner. This capability requires archival and retrieval tools that can produce correspondence quickly from pre-existing documents, whether stored in a single, centralized library or scattered across the corporate network. These tools should automatically combine logos, graphics, text blocks and digitized signatures, streamlining correspondence production and enabling representatives to deliver personalized messages swiftly.
Electrifying Bills and Customer Correspondence
As online transactions become more commonplace, customers appreciate – and even expect – immediate access to view, print and even pay bills over the Internet, at a time of their choosing. In addition, Internet-enablement helps reduce, if not eliminate, printing and mailing costs while allowing customer service representatives to instantly manage customer information online and speed service interactions.
Accomplishing effective customer relationship management in e-bills or customer service interactions requires tools that help data flow easily from the CIS system, through document creation facilities, and on to the electronic presentation of the bill. Less manual intervention – to manipulate print streams and extract data – saves money and minimizes opportunities for errors. When e-billing and payment capabilities come from the same vendor providing document creation and delivery functionality, the integration is even tighter and the opportunity to achieve a positive return even greater.
Letting Someone Else Do the Work
A final consideration in creating compelling and cost-effective results from CRM output is ensuring that production facilities are capable of handling the volume of bills and other communication items. If electric providers cannot actually produce and deliver their customized content, all is for naught. For this reason, some utilities have chosen to outsource processing, printing and mail handling of their communications to application service providers (ASPs).
With capabilities such as high-speed printing, address verification, intelligent insertion, electronic bar coding, EDI transmissions and more, ASPs ensure that personalized customer documents are created and delivered according to exact quality and time specifications. The ASP assumes the cost and risk of implementing the software and Internet technology necessary to produce, print and deliver customized correspondence, including electronic bills.
Summary
The onset of deregulation has forced utilities to focus more on the customer experience and less on pure operational efficiency. Legacy customer information systems, though still valuable information assets, have been joined by a new wave of customer-focused IT investments, most prominently customer relationship management (CRM) systems. However, despite significant investments in CRM, few electric providers have been able to achieve a return on their investment. To fully leverage CRM applications, providers must be able to take system output and design, produce and deliver actionable, compelling, costeffective and personalized customer communications. Software tools now exist that enable providers to develop these capabilities, while application service providers enable utilities that so choose to outsource these capabilities.
About the Author
William D. Barry is senior vice president of sales and marketing for Dallas-based Docucorp International. For more information, e-mail him at bbarry@docucorp.com, visit www.docucorp.com or call 1-800-735-6620.
Docucorp (Nasdaq: DOCC) is the authority in providing dynamic solutions for acquiring, managing, personalizing and presenting enterprise information. Servicing the entire enterprise information lifecycle, Docucorp’s information application software, application service provider (ASP) hosting and professional consulting services enable companies to implement solutions in-house or fully outsource to Docucorp. The company has an installed base of more than 1,200 customers, including many of the largest insurance, utility and financial services organizations.
Headquartered in Dallas, Docucorp has major facilities in Atlanta and Silver Spring, Md. The company also maintains offices in Portland, Maine and Bedford, N.H., as well as an international office in London that represents Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.
