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Question:
Thanks for chatting with OutputLinks. Tell us how you got started in this industry.
Answer:
Most people end up in this industry by accident or circumstance. Steve Biancaniello (Prinova's co-founder) and I met at CP Rail right out of university. We both worked in IT there for a couple of years. When CP Rail moved from Toronto to Calgary, we both found opportunities at Xenos Group. That's how we got started in the document industry. During our tenure there, Steve and I helped establish a document engineering practice providing services primarily for print stream manipulation, composition services and transforms. We learned a lot about this industry during our time with Xenos. Then one day, at a client site, we had a pivotal discussion in the parking lot. We decided it was time for us to start our own business, but we knew we didn't want it to be
'Nick and Steve, the independent consultants'. We wanted to build a brand, build a company. Prinova was born in November 1998. The name Prinova came from a brainstorming session we had where we compiled a list of industry and business terminology. We closed on a combination of print and innovation.
Question:
What do you enjoy about high-volume statements, billing notices and other customer and business documents?
Answer:
Tom Peters said it best. ?Advantage comes from the persistent seeking of the mundane edge.? Our biggest satisfaction is helping our customers get that ?edge? against their competition by realizing the power of the document. The document is an often-forgotten component of the enterprise infrastructure, yet there are a number of ways organizations can use their documents to increase customer value and the customer experience, while generating positive ROI from both cost and revenue. Working with us, a North American mutual fund company saved roughly $400,000 per year on call center costs after placing answers to customers' questions and concerns into statements. We also helped a leading retailer generate a 200 percent lift on personalized coupons when the coupons were inserted into the billing statement. Showing clients how they can be better customer relationship managers at a higher value level can be intoxicating.
Question:
Briefly give us some background on Prinova and how it helps its customers in the high volume transaction output (HVTO) industry.
Answer:
We are creative and technical. We provide our services in three ways: consulting, design and document engineering. Our focus is on document solutions for the enterprise. We start with intensive client workshops where we'll conduct a thorough analysis of existing processes, then we go through a series of ?what if? scenarios, conduct a cost/benefits analysis and develop a business case to support the goals for moving forward. Our design services team works with the customer on communications strategies and standards, messaging and personalization strategies and ultimately, developing the content, look and feel of their documents. Before finalizing the design process, our design team conducts focus groups with our clients' customers. Then our team of document engineering consultants leverages many industry technologies to design, build, test and implement the document solution. We have completely integrated our design and document engineering teams through our proprietary ENGAGEit methodology to provide a seamless transition from concept to reality. Our ability to deploy cross-functional teams to our clients ensures our customers receive maximum value from our services.
Question:
In ten words or less, how can companies make the most of their business communications?
Answer:
By increasing the value of their communication touch points.
Question:
Your web site says that every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to fortify a relationship ? or to erode it. Are companies really eroding relationships with their high-volume output?
Answer:
Yes, in two ways. First, customers get frustrated when they don't understand the information being presented, what they're being charged for or worse, questioning the accuracy of the content. This problem is exacerbated with a call to the call center and the person on the phone can't even see the document in question. As much as this is the obvious problem, the silent cause of relationship erosion is apathy. When you have documents that are bland and devoid of valuable, relevant content other than the core compliance reasons for their existence, they attract the least attention. In fact, many aren't even read unless there is the perception of a problem. Good products attract customers, but in a competitive marketplace, it's the customer experience that keeps them. These documents are and have been proven to be a critical component of the customer experience. Increasing the value of that experience will have a significant impact on customer retention over time.
Question:
What innovative projects is Prinova working on now?
Answer:
We designed and are implementing a large-scale deployment of online document- access capability for the wealth management department of one of the largest financial services companies in North America. We're linking together all the customers' transactions across the enterprise to create a single unified view of a customer's product portfolio. So when an advisor or customer service rep pulls up a customer profile, they'll be able to see all the products the customer is using, the messaging provided and the documents delivered. Many financial services firms talk about having a centralized view, but few actually have it. The next phase involves incorporating secure email delivery of these documents and making these documents available online for the customers.
For a large healthcare client, we're developing a Web-based system for creating dynamic personalized documents driven by a combination of data from the user and their central data warehouse. Through a browser-based user interface, the user can enter specific information and content, select specific topics and information to present and then deliver it to the document composition engine, in this case, Dialogue from Exstream Software. The system then dynamically assembles the appropriate information completely customized for the recipient. The output is a personalized PowerPoint slide show for their sales force, as well as an optional PDF booklet for the customer. This project represents a total solution with our Design Services team creating the design and content for the output and our Document Engineering team providing a turnkey solution.
Through our novaccess service, we recently implemented a Braille-format project for a large U.S. bank for their special needs retail banking customers. We're about to add large print to that, as well. It's a convenience the bank is offering, but it's also a great example of giving customers choices and understanding their needs.
Our novacare customer care program is filling an industry void with much-needed 24/7 application support. Since its 2004 launch, several leading North American organizations are now utilizing novacare to support their internal staff or, in some cases, exclusively support their applications. In today's world, a good enterprise document system requires minimal direct support staff; however, the solutions can be complex. Prinova fills the need by providing our clients' staff with the piece of mind that industry experts, familiar with their applications are a phone call away.
And we're working on some very unique offerings in healthcare. Stay tuned for this one!
Question:
What's the most important trend or issue in the industry today and why?
Answer:
Privacy is clearly one of the major issues in the industry today. It is pervasive in everything from project concept through development and ultimately how the information is communicated. One of the biggest leaks in document projects when it comes to privacy is lack of secure test data. Many companies use real customer data for testing because it's an inexpensive, faster solution. But that's not acceptable in today's world. To keep tests secure, companies must cleanse their test data ensuring there is nothing that can link data to a particular customer. The key is to spend the time to develop and, more important, maintain the customer test bed and reuse it from project to project.
Another important trend would be consolidation, or what we call the convergent statement. Seldom is our goal to increase the number of customer touch points. In fact, when we speak of increasing touch point value, we often encourage our clients to reduce the quantity of touch points. The convergent statement presents multiple products, has multiple purposes such as information, marketing and guidance, and can be deployed across multiple channels such as print and Web. If we provide an enterprise wide customer view, we should be able to do more with less. For instance, instead of receiving five envelopes over a period of months, customers receive one or two consolidated packages that really represent their entire relationship with the organization and effectively deliver relevant cohesive content for that individual. Now you're providing a powerful reason for the customer to sit down and take time out of his busy schedule to go through the document.
Along with that is the inclusion of the Web channel, which adds tremendous touch point value by allowing dynamic interaction with personalized information that is highly trackable. More companies are offering Web statements today, but the key is to provide it as an added-value choice. Companies must go beyond static electronic versions of the printed document. The information should be interactive and work in conjunction with value-added tools and utilities for the user. Ultimately, when we talk to organizations about their electronic options, we tell them that if they want to migrate customers to the Web, the paper version is the logical method for doing that, so the paper channel is equally as important. It's not an either/or approach. Today's document solutions require both channels.
Question:
What's your best advice for an organization and its high-volume output?
Answer:
Outsource your commodity services?like printing, archiving and EBP?but maintain control over your customer touch points. If you're dealing with a printer today and all they're doing is printing your files and stuffing your envelopes, then it's relatively easy to change vendors and ramp up that service. This keeps your costs competitive. But too many organizations outsource the entire document infrastructure. When vendors control your document processing starting from the data, it becomes very difficult to pull the work from them. Even worse, with resources from the outsourcer spread across many customers, the timeline and cost for implementing changes are unacceptable for today's document solutions. The solution is to develop your own client reporting capability?acquire your own document composition and processing technology, maintain a core team and near-source a provider to assist you when you need it. By owning and controlling the content, you are effectively developing enterprise intellectual property. Controlling this process is key to effectively managing dynamic highly variable business documents and ensuring you can react quickly to changes.
Question:
How does the future look for Prinova?
Answer:
Very good. After six years, we've achieved our goal of building a brand and being the go-to source for companies looking for document solutions. We've got all the elements in place?consulting services, design services, document engineering services for both paper and the Web, our novacare customer care and application support program?we've laid a powerful foundation for assisting organizations in all facets of their document solution needs.
We pride ourselves on staying several steps ahead of the curve so that we're prepared when customers are looking for new, innovative offerings. Our design team is working on some of the most advanced documents being conceived. We work hard to ensure that our team of technical consultants are well versed in the technologies required to implement complex document solutions and solutions that address new program offerings. We have the technical aspects down and we design good documents. By streamlining the design and document engineering process through our leading-edge ENGAGEit approach, we've cut time to market and cost from idea to production upwards of 50 percent without compromising the fundamentals of design.
Going forward, we are focusing more heavily on educating companies on how they can use their existing documents to grow their businesses. Our success stems from our ability to solve problems for customers and help them improve their customer relationships. Their success is our success. But it's not about buying the technology, it's about creating the customer experience, and we need to show our customers how to do that better.
Question:
Thanks for your time! Any final thoughts or words of wisdom?
Answer:
The devil is in the details. Start with the little things. Get their name and address right. Personalization starts with the envelope and home page.
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