Do companies still rely on paper? Amdocs argues the move toward digital can help boost customer experience
Surprisingly, service providers are struggling to move out of the paper age. Paper forms and manual paper handling still account for a large portion of their day-to-day interaction with their end customers. This results in expensive and inefficient paper handling, as well as in complicated interactions between the front-end customer channels and the back-end document management systems.
Despite new technologies, smartphones and our increasingly digital lifestyles, paper documents are still ubiquitous.
While several content management products are available on the market today, these provide only partial, generic solutions and do not overcome the core issue of multiple, isolated platforms and silos.
The problem with paper
According to InfoTrends, it costs 60 cents to create and manage an average paper document. Paper documents are used for everything, from new plan enrollments to acceptance of new customer premises equipment. And as the number of services increase, so does the number of forms, creating a lose-lose situation for both the service provider and subscribers.
For the former, the main burden falls on its information technology organization, with paper management incurring high operational expenditure, covering enterprise content management software, multiple vendors providing scanning and other services and costs of labor, infrastructure – servers, database and network – as well as the cost of the actual paper, leading to wide, cross-operational inefficiencies.
One natural consequence of this is the impact on the internal IT user experience. Manual document management requires navigating the issues and challenges of a fragmented system, which includes the difficulties and complex processes involved in locating documents due to improper data entry and fragmented storage. Even greater challenges are presented when there is a need to provide analytics on a document, make business decisions or ensure compliance with government regulations or security policies. Another major implication is that launching any new product or service becomes a labor-intensive affair, greatly increasing time to market and impeding the ability to keep pace with competitors.
The prevalence of paper forms also has a negative impact on the subscriber user experience. Beginning at the retail store, the need to scan forms and personal identification results in long handling times and queues. These problems are compounded by inefficient document storage processes and extends to field technicians, sales agents and self-service kiosks, as well as the call center, where information necessary to complete an interaction cannot be retrieved. This means longer handling times and higher failure rates. And because the required service often cannot be provided during a single session, care costs are higher while customer satisfaction scores are lower.
Current ECM solutions are simply inadequate
One partial solution for paper-intensive operations are enterprise content management solutions, which provide some key functionalities such as document capture, management, storage and retrieval. They are generally delivered as a standalone “black box,” with a focus on core document management capabilities. All integration efforts to connect the document management platform to the relevant front-end channels and back-end systems, such as customer relationship management, must be built from scratch, either internally or by a systems integrator, with all associated costs and risks borne by the service provider. It’s up to the service provider to find an integrator with sufficient industry-specific knowledge to deploy the solution within its very complex systems environments.
Another limitation of ECM solutions is their indifference to the source of the documents they handle, as well as to the circumstances and complexities involving their creation. The reliance on scanned input is a prime example, which simply perpetuates manual paper handling without any real evolution toward integrated e-form processing. Even when used in conjunction with optical character recognition software, the results of scanning are far from perfect. The software’s inability to decipher unclear handwriting results in OCR fallouts, requiring manual follow up – or worse, misread characters, which leads to incorrect data being fed into downstream systems.
Furthermore, traditional ECM systems also lack essential prebuilt assets designed specifically for service providers, such as relevant reports, workflows, or pre-integration with business support systems. Without them, the service provider must create them from the ground up and face the risks involved.
End-to-end document management – a holistic approach
An end-to-end systems integration approach to document management that covers the entire cycle – beginning with the front-end customer touch point (store, dealer or self-service kiosk) through to back-end document management systems – is the best strategy today for addressing the needs of service providers. It resolves the main issues of disparate systems and broken processes by creating a comprehensive framework that can accommodate all the components in a holistic, efficient and cost-effective way.
This approach is based on three pillars:
• A software platform capable of providing core document management capabilities, such as capturing and indexing, storing and archiving, searching and retrieving, as well as reporting and auditing.
• An end-to-end system integration approach, with prebuilt integrations for the service provider market, incorporating streamlined integration between customer channels and back-end operational systems with integrated e-forms and digital mailroom solutions.
• A cloud-based solution for fast and flexible deployment.
Applying this type of approach requires a deep understanding of service providers’ business support systems, as well as competency to manage and work with multiple vendors in order to connect with their systems in a seamless manner.
The economics of end-to-end document management
On the simplest level, implementation of a holistic document management solution reduces the cost of a form by two-thirds, to about 20 cents. Further efficiencies are realized through reduced call handling time, improved call completion rates and reduced call failures due to fast and easy access to customer documentation. In the retail channel, too, efficiencies are realized through a faster and simpler retail experience for both consumers and sales representatives.
Additional service provider savings and scaling benefits can be incurred if such a holistic solution is delivered in a managed services or software-as-a-service model. As part of a managed services model, the customer purchases only implementation and support services according to a time-based operating expenditure model, as opposed to committing to high product license and maintenance fees in the traditional ECM model.
If delivered in a “pay-as-you-grow” model, service providers can pay according to the volume of documents consumed or maintained. Because there is no need for the service provider to deal with IT and infra implementation, this model gives smaller service providers the latitude they need to increase or decrease scale as needed, and manage costs accordingly.
Bottom line: operational efficiencies, cost reduction and improved customer experience
The key benefit for service providers adopting a holistic approach to document management is that internal users can access the exact information they need to do their jobs faster and with reduced effort. Often, this means not having to ask subscribers to submit information that they have already supplied, allowing them to serve a higher number of customers. Importantly, related cost benefits ultimately improve the bottom line. An image of an eco-friendly organization also benefits the service provider, as it holds special appeal to younger and environmentally conscious demographics.
Subscribers benefit from a much simpler customer experience. Rather than manually completing forms at the store, they can use integrated e-forms, and then photograph and scan identity documents (e.g. driver’s license) with a tap. Moreover, interactions with the call center are considerably reduced, as the information submitted previously is easily retrievable, which minimizes service errors that would otherwise need to be resolved with follow-up interactions. Subscribers are more likely to continue purchasing solutions from their existing provider with a lower propensity to churn.
The way forward
In an industry that is becoming increasingly competitive, and in which customer satisfaction and time to market for introducing new solutions is of the essence, document management must be an essential part of the service-provider strategy to achieve differentiation and deliver better customer experiences. This is especially true as service providers move to become more digitally empowered businesses. Integrated, end-to-end solutions that can enable simplified processes, increase operational agility and scalability, and support different business models, can ensure the best and fastest return on service provider investments.
Editor’s Note: In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this Reader Forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but we maintain some editorial control to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at: dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
