Correspondence Management – Bringing Order to the Chaos (Part I of II)

Dealing with large insurance companies, financial services firms, health payers and other large enterprises on a daily basis, we’ve become as familiar with their customer communications as we are with the infrastructure they use to implement those communications. The recurring theme in our work is the tremendous difficulty they have creating, reviewing, tracking and coordinating their communications. We created our Messagepoint platform to solve these exact problems.

Before we get into the solution that Messagepoint provides, let’s talk more about the challenges companies are facing. What we discover with most companies is that they have very little infrastructure in place to manage correspondence.  Companies that do have technology in place often complain that their own systems are too complex for them; not business-user friendly at all, and frustrating to work with.

This isn’t to say that the systems are useless – in most cases, they’ve been used to manage and deliver correspondence for years. The problem is usability. These systems typically require a high level of expertise to work with, and remain inaccessible to business users.

What companies need in their correspondence management systems is a business-user layer.  They need to reduce their volume of duplicate templates, and correct inconsistent content within letters that are sent to customers.  They need to conduct an inventory of existing correspondence and analyze and rationalize how to make the optimal templates.  They need a document object model, where objects can be optimized and then reused in an efficient manner.  One-off letter generation needs to be replaced with standardized templates, leveraging standard object naming conventions and reusable document components.

That might sound like a tall order, but it’s all part of Messagepoint Rationalizer  With Rationalizer, we’re able to help our client reduce the number of templates in their system by as much as 70%, and reduce content objects from over 6,000 to less than 500.

Once the system is working properly, you can focus on what really matters: crafting your messaging, fine-tuning your designs, and delivering a great customer experience. This is where our Messagepoint platform really shines (check out part II of the blog for more)