Article on OutputLinks.com

Financial Services Companies Exploit Marketing Power of Advanced Document Automation

By Max J. Pucher

In the Financial Services business space, one of the top priorities these days is to improve the communication with customers and prospects, but a number of leading companies have gone way beyond the basic functions of CRM. Institutions, such as Citibank, UBS and others are not only producing consolidated statements, they are converting a number of mundane documents into powerful tools for marketing, customer relationship management, customer care, and customer retention.

The key to this intriguing evolution has been advances in software architecture that make it possible literally to integrate documents with any application. Integration is possible in all directions: Document uses business data, business process calls document, incoming documents initiate business process, business process links transactions and documents. We refer to it as “Document Integration”™ for the enterprise.

A little more background to explain how we got to this point.

In 1986-87, various printer vendors introduced APA or all-points-addressable printers that allowed high quality printouts at high speed, with graphics and in a variety of fonts. While this was an important advance, it meant that the process to create a document from the data became much more complex.

Subsequently, we saw the electronic conversion of pre-printed forms, leaving basements full of yellowed and useless printed paper forms. In 1990, first attempts to take raw data and create reports were made, but the forms were still pretty basic, sort of one-size-fits-all. The documents were printed in line mode, one color with no graphic appeal and no charts or graphs to help the customer understand the information. Data and text sometimes were all capitalized.

Marketing managers were frustrated, though, because until the mid-1990s, they had little alternative but to use static forms for large-scale direct-mail marketing campaigns. The marketers wanted something more dynamic, something that could be personalized and individualized with account information and documents that could be made to appeal to the target audience rather than just simple boilerplates.

The marketers' prayers were partially answered in the early-1990s when document automation moved away from line printing and into APA technology. That paved the way for new graphical design tools that could be used easily by non-technical workers.

Nevertheless, financial services companies in particular still faced the challenge of getting customer account data from mainframe printing to LAN printers, while still maintaining control and consistency. These companies wanted both centralized printing and remote printing. Even if a company could come up with a system to control access and consistency of message and consistency of design, they still probably had the problem of working with multiple printer vendors in a LAN environment.

Consequently, the companies had to re-code the document for printing on each different operating system and output target. As the platforms and output channels multiplied to include fax, e-mail, and the Web, as well as regular mail, it became critically important to come up with software that was flexible, scalable, user friendly and still powerful enough to run print jobs ranging from a handful of single-page documents to a million multi-part documents. At the same time, IT managers had to be concerned about rising postage costs and labor costs associated with printing and mailing and the diverse and complex coding process.

Giving Marketers What They Want

It soon became apparent that the kind of document automation that marketers demanded would require a suite of specific applications that had to fit together seamlessly and be printer and platform independent. And the software had to be a jack of all trades as it needed to be user-friendly, have no limitations in terms of layout and document logic, as well as offer substantial throughput volumes. Yearly output in the range of 500 million impressions was no stranger.

In order to accomplish this, developers needed a new underlying document management architecture to link all the individual software applications and integrate them with other enterprise applications such as massive databases, CRM programs and document archives.

At ISIS Papyrus, www.isis-papyrus.com, this document management architecture uniquely addresses:

• Common user interface for all document applications
• Powerful yet simple, document design and logic tools
• Thin client or browser based display technology
• Central repository with version controlled, distributed library access
• Legacy data mapping (CICS, IMS, SQL, MQ) and ERP adapters
• Business process control for documents (workflow)
• Printer, post-processing and paper format independent
• Splitting, bundling, enveloping, postal optimization
• User authorization, web applications and e-mail integration
• Integration with archive systems, output and print management
• 11 operating system platforms

This document management architecture dramatically reduces the time, cost and effort associated with defining and maintaining document applications as well as integrating Papyrus components and application programs into a homogeneous application environment for developers, administrators and users.

Document Integration™ opens up new opportunities in which document automation becomes integrated with process management, CRM and customer care. Now, a monthly banking or mutual fund statement is no longer a simple numerical report. It is a powerful tool to increase the communication quality with customers and consequently create that better bond that sells more financial services and products.

Financial Services Companies Exploit the Technology

Here is how some large financial services companies in the US and around the world are taking advantage of this powerful technology:

Like many large companies that sell through a large number of independent agents, Clarica Sun Life, faced the challenge of projecting a consistent image and marketing messages, as well as being responsive to the varying needs of its sales force. The agents, for example, wanted to personalize the Clarica marketing brochures and tended to put stickers or attach business cards on them before giving them out. Clarica and its agents also faced the challenge of marketing to an increasingly diverse population in Canada.

Enter the new era of Document Integration. By moving to a fully integrated document management and automation system, Clarica now is able to produce a broad range of full-color brochures in five different languages, including English, French, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese on demand from the agents. The agents can order them in small or large quantities over the Internet and receive the next day personalized marketing material with the agent's photo and contact information. The new system was an immediate success. The customization was so important to the agents that they were willing to pay three times as much per copy for the brochures. The percentage of sales agents using the marketing brochures jumped from 4 percent to 16 percent, a four-fold increase in the first year. The agents were eager to have them because:

• The brochures could be personalized
• They could continue to strengthen their relationships with their customers
• They could target specific markets
• They can address specific client needs
• Clients are more open to considering marketing materials that speak to a specific need
• Agents can now use the brochures to sell business according to the agent's particular game plan, e.g. farm/business transference may be a high-priority issue.
• Technology for Marketing to Diverse Populations

For banks, too, enterprise document integration, is opening up a new world of CRM. Major institutions, such as Citibank, Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), Bank of Scotland, Commerzbank in Germany, as well as smaller ones such as Premiere Bank of Puerto Rico, are using the technology to produce informative, graphically appealing, customized consolidated bank statements.

At UBS, the bank produces monthly statements according to the priority of the customer. A high-priority customer, for example, receives a detailed, consolidated statement produced in four colors with informative charts and graphs. A low-priority customer receives a consolidated statement printed in one color with fewer graphics. And of course, since UBS is based in Switzerland, the statements are produced in the customer's preferred language – French, German, Italian, or English.

Document Integration also has been hugely important to the credit card issuers and their service bureaus. The technology enables the credit card marketers to tap into the vast amount of marketing information they have and rapidly adjust to changing market conditions, i.e. interest rate fluctuations. One of the leaders has been giant First Data Resources (FDR), a service bureau for many of the largest card issuers.

Much of the credit card marketing business involves the embossing of cards and the printing of associated letters, as well as statements and collateral materials. In “the old days” the handling of cards was done through the infamous “D-holes” punched paper carriers in which the card was anchored. While all the printing was done on a mainframe, the emphasis was on “pre-press” for print solutions with just variable data added in the print process. This made the process very static and did not enable a dynamic marketing approach due to the lead time for pre-printing and coding the variable data programs.

Client needs changed, though, and the card issuers were demanding more system flexibility and more personalization so they could make use of the vast amount of marketing data at their disposal and achieve a shorter time to market. As the amount of preprinted paper for these applications rose, reduced inventory costs for the number, types and volumes of preprinted stock became an essential issue.

It became obvious that marketing required dynamic documents, which utilize numerous data and text elements for a highly personalized approach to the customer's needs. The ability to make quick document and strategy changes without inventory hassles enabled the document to deliver a convergence of marketing strategies toward the customer.

For FDR, the result was the Plasticard Enterprise Presentation system, which accesses more than 300 variable data elements from account information to produce a card mailer that is targeted to an individual, rather than a population. Convenience and balance transfer checks, coupons and selective messages can also be printed on the mailers dynamically to help issuers increase card usage and boost revenue.

An FDR spokesman said with the new dynamic system, enabled by document integration technology, card issuers achieve cost savings by using a variety of forms with variable template applications and two-sided printing. In addition, issuers gain operational efficiencies by electronically composing a document without the cost and time needed to replenish large quantities of paper stock.

When you think about it, it is almost magical how far document automation has come. Because of enterprise document integration, the large-scale personalization of business documents – both electronic and printed – is limited only by the data available and the creativity and intelligence of marketers.

Automating In-bound Documents, too

Communicating with the customer does involve sending documents out. But should it not include taking care of customer responses as well? Up to now, most of the advances have involved outbound communications, but that is about to change. In fact, in Europe it already has changed. The inbound communications can be by snail-mail, fax, email or telephone call. While dealing with the telephone call is usually connected to a CRM system, most companies are quite deaf on the other inbound channels! With Papyrus Objects document automation and document integration can be set up to be a harmonious, yet simple add-on to any CRM system. If your company does not yet use CRM for some customer care functions, they can be easily defined with the inbuilt process management functions of Papyrus Objects.

Companies such as Telekom Austria, Lufthansa AirPlus (business travel management), Canon (office copiers), Securicor (Frankfurt-based financial services provider), Deutsche Post, and Society for Paperless Document Process (flight coupons for airlines), and Wincare of Switzerland (health insurance) have automated the process of intelligently handling inbound documents, capturing the relevant information, sorting and routing it, and in some cases even generating a response.

Bank Austria is one of the largest users of this solution, which has been installed 200 times, and captures 240.000 bank transfer documents every single day. But capture is only the start, because the key functions are data extraction, automatic validation and user verification.

The software uses machine-learning software algorithms that are not programmed but taught by example, and with document integration, works smoothly with other enterprise applications. The software has recently been introduced to the US market.

Wincare receives up to 10,000 invoices from physicians and laboratories daily. The company desperately needed an automated system to extract relevant information from the invoices in support of the insurance customer's claim for reimbursement. A capture power tool was needed to provide a responsive service to clients.

Each supplier, however, tends to have a unique invoice format which makes searching its contents for the information of interest a significant challenge that could not be met by a conventional bottom-up, template-driven approach. Furthermore the information of interest is frequently printed in small font size and not within constrained areas on the document.

To solve the problem, Wincare deployed the off-the-shelf Papyrus technology that automatically extracts the key data of each invoice, such as insured client, date of treatment, and amounts involved. Due to adaptive document understanding functions and precise recognition, it is even possible to capture automatically every single service item position, plus additional service related information. The details provided by the software allow for consistent and objective revision of the positions on the submitted documents.

The incoming invoices are scanned in both sorted and unsorted batches using a high-performance document scanner. Images of the documents are transferred automatically within the system for classification into document type and the extraction of their contents of interest.

Staff within the verification group deal only with the exception documents, e.g. uncertainties raised during the recognition process or non-compliance with the business rules. The processed document batches are then exported automatically to the host system. During this stage the data for processing claim settlements are transferred into a DB2 database and from there into the Winterthur system “Heureka plus.”

The information contained within the statements/invoices is analyzed and checked for plausibility e.g. policy coverage, scope of benefits provided, etc. Controlled by user-to-user workflow, the document images are presented to the responsible official for finalization.

The savings from the automated system were realized immediately and the cost was recovered within only a few months.

Wincare/Winterthur is just one example of many of how technology is automating the intelligent handling of inbound documents.

A New Era for Precision Marketing

If a large company today wanted to take advantage of Document Integration technology to the fullest, it could deploy an automated system to create, produce and distribute (via regular mail, e-mail, fax, or the Web) outbound individualized documents and handle the responses.

A credit card issuer, for example, now can – using Document Integration – launch a marketing campaign segmenting the market according to scores of variables, reach hundreds of thousands or even millions of prospects, and efficiently and intelligently process the responses. And all this can be done with a fraction of the cost, effort and time that such a campaign would require without this new technology.

(2003-07-24)