3 Keys to Adapting Traditional Communications in a Digital World

10/9/2019 RRD

This past May at DOCUMENT Strategy Forum (DSF ‘19), DOCUMENT Strategy Editor Allison Lloyd sat down with RRD’s Cynthia Bajana, VP of Sales for Business Communication Solutions, and Brian Cox, Sr. Director of Application/IT Systems Development, to discuss how companies in heavily regulated industries, like insurance and financial services, are moving from traditional print workflows to modern approaches for digital distribution that are scalable and standardized to meet compliance with the regulatory bodies that govern those industries.

This is our synopsis of the topics discussed.

Invest to drive digital strategies forward

In both the traditional financial services and insurance industries, two questions tend to come up a good deal more than others:

• How do we go from our traditional workflows to digital distribution? 
• And is there an efficient, scalable, and standardized approach that is still compliant?

They’re not exactly easy to answer. And getting to an answer will most likely involve a serious discussion around investing (significantly) in new technology.  

For example, over the past few years, RRD has invested significantly into technology that takes content elements from printed materials and contextualizes or assigns metadata to them.

No matter the printed material, this technology can quickly digitize all the information on physical documents (like dates or account numbers). It can be read by a computer and used in digital assets. Customers can use this technology to reuse those data points across many different channels, including voice interactions, HTML5, and more. This content can also be delivered to the cloud, mobile wallets, or whatever database RRD’s customers design for their consumers. 

This investment has allowed RRD to help customers looking to leapfrog into the world of digital distribution but are currently challenged with disparate legacy systems that have been built with the technology of the day.

Start small to overcome legacy technologies

As mentioned, a company’s transformation from the physical to the digital world requires a huge investment and years of planning (ahead). Working with a partner, one that’s already invested in and proficient with the necessary software or technology, can alleviate those barriers to entry. 

All too often, however, companies will take an old technology, bring in a new software solution, and implement it in the same old way and lose the benefit.

With proper support, an organization can test the waters and take a small part of their business and do a pilot or a trial run, experiment at low risk, with low-cost entrance, and achieve some quick wins. 

Starting small can catapult this transformation process to other areas of the company and get that necessary buy-in along the way.

Embrace the convergence of physical and digital communications

Communicating to consumers in the ways they prefer is critical. For traditional platforms to achieve this, they must support on-demand and interactive workflows. 

As brands continue to digitize their workflows, there’s a need to support these kinds of connections across the entire customer journey to provide a cohesive experience. 

This will require leveraging what you learn in the consumer acquisition step — where they already show a particular preference for a channel — to better decide how you service them later on.

RRD clients, for instance, are asking for visibility into all of their messages, not only visibility in one or two steps of the journey. They want to know what was said to a consumer when she was acquired, when she left, and at every touchpoint in between. 

Right now, priority number one must be to support and embrace the convergence of two traditionally divided spaces — physical and digital communications — which is paramount to elevating the customer experience.

To watch this three-part interview from DSF ‘19 in its entirety, head here.

 

Cynthia Bajana is VP of Sales for RRD’s Business Communication Solutions (BCS). Brian Cox is Sr. Director of Application/IT Systems Development at RRD. Visit the BCS page and start to enable innovative document delivery for high-impact results.