If you believe your monochrome toner printers should get you through the next couple of years, think again. The customer communications business is transforming. Money is pouring into research and dev

I recall discussing customer data quality with a print/mail service provider sales rep. "It's not our problem," he explained. "We print what they send. If the data is bad, that's their problem."

Most organizations view the effort to produce and distribute transactional documents as a necessary cost of doing business. Money spent on paper, printers, inserting equipment, postage, and production

Stephen Covey always advised to "begin with the end in mind." As I look at the way many organizations approach customer communications, they seem to have lost track of true business goals. They base

Experts predict that by 2020, customer experience will outweigh price and product as the key differentiator among competitors. Print and mail service providers can prepare for this transition by chang

Document operations departments handle lots of data. Sometimes the information is in ready-to-print form. Other times, data arrives in raw format, awaiting processing by document composition software

Does your company have a content marketing plan for this year? Many organizations have identified the value of published content to achieve brand awareness or nurture leads, but initiate thei

One thing I learned working with large corporations is the official mail center wasn’t the only mail-generation place in the company. I sometimes stumbled over rogue postal operations hidden a

Hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, fires, and other natural phenomena can put a document center out of operation, at least temporarily. But self-inflicted mishaps can ruin any print and mail job. Data i

Automated document factories (ADFs) used to be of interest primarily to high-volume transactional document producers. Today, companies of any size, mailing just about any type of documents, c

Transactional documents generated by client-purchased software packages are necessarily generic. Businesses have few design or layout options, leaving them dissatisfied with the appearance or function

If you are in the transactional document print and mail business, your clients are probably talking with you about lowering their costs. Most transactional document producers continue to focus o

Going to trade shows or getting calls from mailing equipment salespeople can lead mailing operations managers to conclude the answer to all their problems is new equipment. Sometimes that’s true,...

This is the season most business people start thinking about next year. Forecasts, plans, and budgets are activities essential for success. One thing that can get overlooked in the crush to pred

I vividly remember attending a conference in 1999 where presenters addressed electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) in nearly every session. You couldn’t have a conversation with anyon

I am dedicating these snippets of real news stories to all the hardworking people who churn out millions of personalized messages a month. Reading about these mishaps may make you sad, or elicit

Document operations centers originally installed Automated Document Factories (ADFs) to streamline paper document production and improve quality. The concept has evolved with the times to add mu

Think you've squeezed every penny of cost savings out of your document operations workflow? You're probably wrong. I've been visiting document centers for decades and have yet to encounter on

Print and mail service providers are doing business in a “data first” marketplace. Their customers have invested in data analytics to improve the customer experience. If print and mail vendors...

We read about privacy breaches a lot. Stories about hackers are in the news every day now, thanks to intrusions affecting government institutions and high-profile politicians. Security violation