On Tuesday, we attended the OpenText Customer Experience Management User Group meeting in San Mateo, CA. It was a well-attended event with many organizations looking to hear from others that have implemented OpenText CEM solutions and get the latest product insights. Going to the User Group meeting was time well spent, and we hope that OpenText will host more of these in the Bay Area in the future!
Customer Panel
The panel discussion had representatives from Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Chevron, Franklin Templeton Investments and Kraft Heinz, as well as OpenText, and they provided some great insights from their experience going through a digital transformation and implementing OpenText CEM solutions.
One of the main takeaways shared was not to wait until there is a request to show value, be proactive and publish, so that when the request comes, you are able to show growth and value over time. Another was that with any investment and digital transformation quest, every organization has their “aha moment” when they can show value and success with their implementation. This aha moment will look different to every organization, but some of the aha moments shared related to seeing the value of insights regarding their assets and what is most used, or being able to show people the benefit of creating device agnostic content that can then be used cross-channel, mobile, social etc. as achieved through using a product like Exstream.
The panel also shared the advice that for any organization embarking on the journey of digital transformation, it’s important to keep it simple and to also consider the culture change. “It’s not just what you can do, it’s what you should do that’s important”. For some that means starting small, with a select set of documents or a specific business unit to show initial value before proceeding with other areas of the business. This is an approach we see often with our clients and can attest to as well. The capabilities with an OpenText CEM solution are extensive, but they should be used with intent and purpose for the best value for the business.
Customer Communications Management Product Roadmap and Technical Deep Dive
The focus of the CCM breakout session was OpenText Exstream, described as “a marriage of two solutions” Exstream and StreamServe (CCE) where both sides now get access to the benefits of the strengths from either product. Among those mentioned, for Exstream customers that never had a persistence layer that will now be available providing valuable job tracking and analytics, and StreamServe customers now getting access to the power behind Exstream and CAS being a core part of the platform for all channels.
As with any merger or acquisition, there is a level of worry amongst customers and users that the product they’ve invested in will be going away, but OpenText ensured that both customers of HP Exstream and StreamServe can expect to be able to continue using the applications they’ve gotten used to, and that upgrading will not mean losing anything but rather have access to more benefits and capabilities.
With EP3 coming out in a couple of weeks, there are some interesting news and updates to look forward to that are all part of OpenTexts’ efforts to stay committed to “efficient omni-channel communications”. We were given a preview demo of one of those, the new application Exstream Content Author. Exstream Content Author is part of the authoring solution, targeted for the business user and is intended to augment the Designer application. In the Exstream Content Author specific areas can be opened up to a marketing user (as an example), while keeping other areas and information static that that user can’t change. It will leverage CAS and in future releases will also support workflows, approvals and revision tracking is coming. We look forward to working with our clients to take full advantage of these new capabilities as they are released.
Training
Interesting to note from the information shared during this day was that although Exstream 16 is a “marriage of two solutions”, training is yet to be married for the two and is still separate for Exstream and StreamServe. Nothing was mentioned about when/if this will be the case in the future, but it’ll be interesting to see how long that will remain as such, as we are already seeing customers wanting that.