If your company runs SAP or Oracle, integration with either of the platforms will be vital. This is where careful examination of a vendors credentials are important.
Some vendors in the marketing, notably Nordic based Streamserve have majored upon certified integration, particularly with SAP. Other companies such as Pitney Bowes Group 1 Software and HP Exstream Software have achieved integration.
But be wary of blanket statements of the type ‘yeah, we integrate with SAP and Siebel and Oracle’.
What is important to remember is that Customer Communications management is a multi-point solution. Whilst a company may have experience of integration with SAP, Oracle or Siebel, does this experience cover all aspects of the products?
Data integration and data management is perhaps one of the key components. The ability to extract, manage and transform data from these ERP and CRM systems is vital to the outbound communications process. Being able to easily and seamlessly draw and present data to document composition applications will make life much easier and will allow the development of a standard data model – which will save a great deal of money in terms of future document composition application development costs.
But it is not just the extraction of data that is significant. Proven connectivity for the document archive / vault may be critical in delivering benefits to customers service and finance areas of the business. Being able to link and view document applications within the likes of Siebel, SAP and Oracle will accelerate business processes and drive a strong business case for an investment in Customer Communications Management. Again, check the vendor organisations credentials in this area – much of the hard dollar business case could be lost if this element of the project fails.
Going a step further, the value of the information generated within the Automated Document Factory should be considered. The data generated by Automated Document Factory systems may well be very useful in managing organisational cost and accounting if it is easily made available to SAP, Oracle or other ERP applications. It may speed up the process of cost control, inter-departmental / inter-company accounting, giving the operation visibility and making it easier to understand return on investment from a marketing communications perspective.
In order to serve messages to the customer documents, remember that the Customer Communications Management platform may also benefit from integrating with the ERP/CRM application Enterprise Content Management (ECM) application as well. Check the vendor experience here.
In reality many vendors can probably do much of this but it is the experience that counts in reducing project risk. Make sure that you ask to speak with previous clients regarding the vendors experience and capability in this integration process and check the companies ability to support you should integration issues occur.
Customer Communications Management should not be an isolated business process but, there should be careful evaluation of the merits of integration and the likely benefits of different levels of integration with major line of business applications.
For more information concerning marketing communications and customer communications management, please visit Customer Communications Community.
Archive for ◊ February, 2011 ◊
Investment in IT is usually aimed at improving productivity, profitability and quality of operations but Devaraj and Kohli (2003) were unable to identify the impact of technology on the organizational performance. Kelly (1994) found out that the reason for the inability to properly explain the relationship between technology and productivity was due to the aggregated unit of analysis at the organizational level which adds to the complexity of isolating the effects of any individual technology. He noted that the chance of finding IT usage impacts depends on how detailed the analysis is. Devaraj and Kohli (2003) stated that examining the amount of money invested in IT may not yield accurate measure of IT effectiveness because levels of usage could be different across industries, firms and processes. In their own contribution to the fledging debate on IT usage impacts, Goodhue and Thompson (1995) explained that the fit between task and technology would have to be established before IT utilization can lead to individual performance impacts. In order to achieve task- technology fit, the technology and targeted application would have to be compatible as well as the availability of qualified users who will use the technology (Goodhue & Thompson, 1995). This proposition implies that IT infrastructure and the organization’s business goal would have to be in alignment.
The IT usage literature has shown that there is difference between voluntary use of IT and mandatoriness. Subjective norm was found to affect mandatory IT use whereas it was absent in voluntary use. Also, it was noted that pay off in technology do not usually occur instantaneously but are realized over time (Devaraj and Kohli, 2003; Hartwick and Barki, 1994). Peffers and Dos Santos (1996) conducted a survey on the impact of IT in banks and observed that cross-sectional studies that are done soon after applications are installed may not yield desired results by not finding benefits even if their is potential for large benefits. Their study indicated that impact of IT on performance became apparent after certain time lag and that benefits from IT accrued more to early adopters than late adopters.
References:
Devaraj, S., & Kohli, R. (2003). Performance impacts of Information Technology:
Is actual usage the missing link. Management Science, 49(3), 273-289.
Goodhue, D.L, & Thompson, R. L. (1995). task technology fit and individual performance. MIS Quarterly, (19)2, 213-236.
Hartwick, J., & Barki, J. (1994). Explaining the role of user participation in information system use. Management Science. 40, 40-465.
Kelly, M. (1994). Productivity and Information Technology: The elusive connection. Management Science, 40(11), 1406-1425
Peffers, K., & Dos Santos, L. (1996). Performance effects of innovative IT applications over time. IEEE Trans Engrg. Management, 43(4), 381-392.