Madison Advisors recently hosted multiple senior executives from seven fortune 500 firms in Chicago in our first Customer Communication Management Executive Roundtable. The concept grew from the idea that leadership within these firms needed, and wanted, more peer interaction outside the influences of vendors or product sponsors. The believe was that by removing these external influences, a more open and candid conversation would occur, and these peers would begin to share freely, even though their firms might be competitive. We invited senior leadership from IT and Operations, and we also had representation from Marketing and Line of Business. From the session feedback, I believe we hit a home run.

We established goals at beginning of the session, and captured those for review at the end of the day. Our agenda was structured, but fluid, to ensure we could flex, but keep us on track for the day. It included 3 short presentations with Q&A sessions, with plenty of break time. Marco Boer from IT Strategies started the day off with his read on the future of color inkjet production printing. This was a relevant topic with the audience, as only two firms had full color production capabilities, but all were currently looking at adding that capability in the next 12 months. Madison Advisors also covered current trends in the CCM and Enterprise Marketing Portal space, as well as future trends for the group to contemplate going forward. The bulk of the morning and afternoon was spend in two breakout sessions, each one hour with each group reading back to the entire group for 10 minutes each. It was in these breakouts that much of the interaction and sharing took place; including both what worked and what didn’t at their organizations.

The reception and dinner is where most of the peer to peer interaction occurred. Our 4 course dinner at Takashi was also a highlight of the day, lasting a bit more than three hours. The group occupied the entire first floor, and we had several courses accompanied with selected wines. Both of our dinner sponsors, Xerox and GMC, joined the group for dinner and shared their future strategies for color inkjet production devices.

As much as the information exchange was the draw to the day, the networking and opportunity to meet many of their peers may have been the best take away. The true test of the value of the Roundtable is if they decide to return to Chicago this fall during Graph Expo to repeat the process and continue the dialogue. Look for us there.

Digital Mail Box - the next big thing

The introduction of Pitney Bowe’s Volly electronic mail delivery portal legitimizes the Digital Mail Box space, and signals the next big thing for consumers looking to park all of their document clutter in the internet cloud. While other offerings have been around for a little longer, those smaller firms left the question of security, stamina, and authenticity that are all answered by Volly. Backed by Pitney Bowes, a 90 year old, fortune 500 company that knows “a little” something about communication delivery, Volly would only make marginally more sense had the USPS launched it.

Madison Advisors' tracking of customer electronic adoption indicates that conversion rates have stalled out. Currently the aggregate rate hovers in the low double digit percentages depending on industry and document type. Yup, that’s right, all the free Wi-Fi hot spots, iPads, smart phones, Prius raffles, tree give a-ways, and one time discounts in the last 10 years has barely made a dent in our consumer paper consumption. While the companies that send that mail have an obvious incentive to not mail you your bill or statement, the value for consumers has been elusive. That CAN change with the Digital Mail Box – a single, secure, convenient and permanent place to archive all consumer documents that now clutter our lives.

Certainly there will be some anxiety, there always is with new, transformative shifts. Do you remember the first time you reluctantly put your credit card number into the computer for a purchase? What a leap of faith that took. Chances are you conducted that same transaction process multiple times this past December alone. As we saw with online purchases, there are ways to make those documents secure, or AS secure as they are reported today within the walls of the companies that store them. Our risk would be to discredit this solution due to unwarranted concerns that represent no incremental exposure or risk. It’s not difficult to find companies with significant data breaches daily, either social security, credit card, or account numbers. Today’s “security theater” deployed by most firms should not represent the high water mark necessary for success of this new delivery alternative.

While there is money to be saved by firms not mailing you your bill or statement, they might not be as excited about this new Digital Mail Box solution as you are. Why? The answer is the potential disintermediation of those firms from your online life. Those firms are afraid they could be made irrelevant in the digital frontier if they allow you to get their/your data somewhere other than THEIR website, where they can control what you see, the user experience, maybe some ad spend, and your information access. Depending on the market, their concern is legitimate. Where will people choose to view their bank statement, at the Digital Mail Box, or at the Bank’s website while transferring funds? We’d argue that it’s both, as it is today. And lets ensure we inform the firms we do business with that this is how we’d prefer to receive our documents and information. It doesn’t have to be either or, but should be both. Plus, there is a way to support both and NOT store it twice, thereby reducing the Bank’s storage costs!

So embrace the brave new world, and let your document providers know that you want a simpler solution – a single, secure, convenient and permanent place to archive all consumer documents.