A Quick Tour of the “IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Intelligent Customer Communications Management 2024 Vendor Assessment”
By Scott Draeger, SVP of Product Marketing and Vertical Solutions at Smart Communications
Every other year, IDC provides a highly anticipated assessment of the CCM market. In December 2024, IDC’s Marci Maddox released two pivotal IDC MarketScape reports, spotlighting key business and technology trends shaping the future of enterprise communications. These insights guide technologists, communication owners, and architects as they prepare for the next wave of advancements.
I'd like to share my perspective on some of the most important innovations highlighted in the Worldwide Intelligent Customer Communications Management report and how they align with the Smart Communications portfolio. These capabilities have been empowering our clients to achieve greater efficiency, speed, and value in the cloud for years.
The first key finding is that CCM communications have grown from a base of routine outbound communications to include business critical data collection experiences that replace legacy forms technologies. The report states: “Forms capabilities have been underutilized, mostly relegated to web forms, and have missed the opportunity to connect data during interactions with the end-to-end customer journey processes and be a source of value to the AI engines for better personalization of customer communications experiences.” Let’s look at Smart Communications’ Conversation Cloud™ to see organizations transform how they collect data, turning poorly performing legacy approaches into transformed digital experiences with SmartIQ™. You can see for yourself how SmartIQ helps insurance clients submit claims with digital experiences that are quick to implement, reduce errors, and avoid the IT backlog.
While CCM expanded to include new experiences, the report explains how channel dynamics have changed in the past two years. “CCM's strength is in generating a variety of output (e.g., guided forms, communications, messages, and interactive tasks) to a range of delivery channels (e.g., print, email, SMS, voice, digital wallet, and IoT) in multiple formats (e.g., HTML, XML, PDF, AFP, WEBM, and MP4) tailored to any audience or recipient (e.g., customers, citizens, partners, suppliers, chatbots, and machines).” Communications technology like SmartCOMM™ has been making it easier to design and deliver omnichannel communications with features like Editions to easily express approved content through a variety of channels without the need for redundant designs. In 2024, SmartCOMM users experienced innovations in capabilities like Interactive Merge, Embedded Template Editor, and Business Events that made it easy for business users to engage in customer conversations that are individually tailored to recipients, even in multi-stakeholder situations with complex regulations.
Looking forward, CCM is evolving to include more people with a variety of new and exciting skills in a way that blurs the traditional ownership of communications technology within the organization. The finding, “With the increase in technology-generated customer communications and nearly half of the organizations witnessing a rise in customer service correspondence in the past 18 months, there is a trend toward digital transformation in customer interactions” conveys the speed at which firms that have postponed communication innovations are being left behind by their peers. SmartCOMM offers seamless batch, interactive, and on demand technology that integrate to forms experiences with technology like the Embedded Template Editor, creating a valuable portfolio integration. When a communication can be converted from batch to self-service on demand or even an employee-assisted interactive experience without redesigning, reprovisioning, or re-hosting; communication owners can scale efficiencies that also improve customer experience.
As you can see, the innovations in the Smart Communications Conversation Cloud are in line with the market direction explained in this critical report. We hope you read the report and challenge your current and prospective vendors to show you where these critical innovations are within their portfolios, how these capabilities are connected, and the benefits they bring to organizations like yours.
To download a complimentary copy of the full report, please click here.
About the Author
Scott Draeger is the SVP of Product Marketing and Vertical Solutions at Smart Communications. He has a passion for collaboration, and over 25 years of innovating customer communications technology, around the globe. He focuses on improving communications for the recipient while improving performance for the business. He started as a document designer using a collection of hardware and software technologies, before moving to the software side of the industry. He finds connections across disciplines with certifications in graphic design, customer experience, electronic documents, and an MBA in international business.