We’re excited for our free Webinar tomorrow Thursday Oct 22nd, 11AM EDT (hosted by OpenText), we’ll will be sharing Considerations for upgrading to 16.6.2.
Join us! Register here: https://bit.ly/2FD4VWE
It’s been a busy but inspiring spring here at XStreamReports. One of our talented consultants, Mika Manner, attended two Exstream events, one of which was the OpenText Innovation Tour in Stockholm. The setting for this event was at the Grand Hotel, Stockholm, with beautiful scenarios close to the Royal Palace.
Overall a lot of focus was put on the prioritization of Security from the OpenText leadership, coverage of the recent release of 16.4 with its updates and features, and OpenText Cloud was a hot topic as well. We invite you to a short recap of each area:
Security prioritizing by Mark Barrenechea, Vice Chair, CEO & CTO, OpenText
GDPR, Security breaches, Military Airplane manufacturer, Cambridge, Facebook
Mark Barrenechea talked about how many companies have been looking at data security as a non prioritized matter, and shared several examples where the that has lead to data-breaches that have caused a lot of damage to those companies and its’ customers. One of them being the Cambridge Analytics/Facebook case that was heavily covered in media recently. Another example was Boeing, they were hacked and as a result became vulnerable for attacks.
Mr. Barrenechea pointed out that companies have to raise the priority of security from position 7, as it is today, to be number 1 to be able to mitigate these risks and limit the possible damage that can be seen as a result.
Together with Mats Hultin, CIO of SAAB, Mr. Barrenechea also discussed and shared how digital information has changed, and how today everything is more real-time and more intelligent, with the usage of OpenText Magellan and Cloud Solutions.
OpenText Cloud, what is it with Savinay Berry, VP Cloud Services OpenText
Hybrid solution is here to stay for a long while
Mr. Berry presented an overview and explanation of what the OpenText Cloud is, but also what it is not; it is not to be considered as a competitor to Azure or Amazon Cloud. OpenText Cloud is not a hardware in the cloud provider. It is instead a SaaS solution where customers will be able to use OpenText Cloud Services for communicating with businesses and customers in a simple, centralized and flexible way. The new release of version 16.4 is the most advanced cloud ready version of Exstream. Although the focus on cloud solutions is now really getting into speed, it is important to remember it is still in the early stages. The hybrid solution where some of the software remains on premise will be here to stay for a long time according to Mr. Berry.
Omnichannel focus in new Release 16.4
In the breakout sessions focusing on the Experience track, we were presented with the new features of Exstream (former HP Exstream and StreamServe) available with 16.4, on examples for how those features can be used. For example, you can use voice and image recognition using the AI to maximize the business communication, or with the voice recognition you can use the AI instead of human operators to assist with customer communication. For the image recognition example, object identification was showcased where an image with a family was shown where the AI recognized if the people in the image were male or female, and water and trees.
Upgrading and benefits of Release 16.4
Christian Askland, Director of Product Management at OpenText, went through the upgrading procedure and the benefits of upgrading to 16.4. For instance there are some really nice new features like mail tracking and job visualization where you will get detailed information on how the job went. There is also support for more analytics with of the usage. For example reports related to processing volumes connected to the transaction based license. Other features to highlight is the ability to use images and rich media from Media Management integration, I.e. common CAS Browser, assured delivery of communications with OpenText notifications and even more features making it possible to deploy changes to documents without involving the IT department.
Conclusion with a presentation of future releaseplan
We were shown a releaseplan with even more AI functionality, like having video recognition, to be included in the future of OpenText CCM.
OpenText Innovation Tour was a great event, OpenText hosts it in multiple cities every year, and we hope to see you at one of these events next year!
The utility industry is in the midst of a transformation towards a more digital and customer experience centric approach, and it is changing the way utility organizations are doing business.
Utility organizations are re-thinking and re-structuring their Customer Communication Management (CCM) to adapt to today’s customer expectations. Creating the ultimate customer experience across all platforms that is consistent throughout the large amounts of interactions created is of outmost importance across print, digital, interactive correspondence and dynamic online bills. To achieve this the organizations must start with ensuring they have the right solutions and processes in place, an expertly implemented solution platform is at the heart of ensuring success with their CCM.
This is where OpenText Exstream, formerly Communications Center Enterprise (CCE) and StreamServe comes in. It is the best solution for utility companies to successfully complete their digital transformation and improve their customer relationships. Through years of successful implementations for our clients we’ve seen how it not only helps in ensuring that the customer experience is optimized through all channels and platforms to improve the organizations digital strategy with information being accessible to customers in a consistent manner on websites, print, email etc. The organizations business users have user friendly web-based tools to easily change and customize messages as needed to be able to respond to customer and organizational needs alike very quickly, resulting in happier customers, a more efficient and agile organization with reduced costs and need for support. For those times when customers contact call centers/support, it can help reduce call center costs and facilitate those calls to be better handled as call centers can pull up exact copies of what the customer is looking at/having questions about.
2016 brought some exciting news and industry changes with OpenText making acquisition in this space and paving the way for organizations further empower their employees to provide the best customer experiences and increased efficiency. We at XStreamReports continuously work with existing and new clients to support them in their digital transformation journey, and with 2017 being off to an exciting start, we’ll continue to see the utility industry transform and OpenText Exstream presenting an even stronger solution in the market.
If you think OpenText Exstream/CCE/StreamServe might be right for your organization, contact us to learn more!
Since OpenTexts recent acquisition of Exstream from HP Inc. there has been a lot of speculation regarding the future of OpenText CCM. With the Exstream and CCE/StreamServe products being so similar, many have been waiting to find out if they would decide to phase out one product, keep both alive or the thought to be most likely scenario – would the two be merged into one product, and if so, how would the products/features be merged? The answer has now been revealed, OpenText recently shared their future vision and roadmap for their CCM platform at the StreamServe User Group (SURG) event in Sweden.
The future of OpenText CCM brings together two market leading Customer Communications Systems into a single platform, that will deliver interactive, automated and unified communications supporting the evolution from CCM to holistic Customer Experience Management.
This also means yet another name change, Exstream will be the brand name for this solution. Both CCE and Exstream customers will be able to upgrade to Exstream 16 as soon as April 2017. OpenText presents this solution as a combination of CCE’s transactional processing model and integration strengths, paired with Exstream’s high-throughput engine to leverage accelerated benefits to each customer base.
For our CCE/StreamServe customers, here are some highlighted benefits you’ll receive upon upgrading to Exstream 16:
- New document processing options with the powers of the Exstream Engine
- Exstream 16 will provide an automated upgrade process for Design Center projects and StoryTeller templates
- Existing content will be preserved through the Common Asset Service (CAS)
- One single, strategic CCM Roadmap backed by a Global CCM expert RnD team
To us, the roadmap shared by OpenText is an exciting one and opens the door for additional value for our customers with an even more powerful CCM solution. We are preparing for supporting our customers to make the upgrade, and excitedly wait for more details being released regarding OpenText Exstream 16.
SAP4UTL was a great opportunity to get insights from SAP and customers on re-imagining Utilities. Henry Bailey Global Vice President, Head of Utilities Industry Business Unit SAP, presented the future roadmap for Utilities and the new Customer Engagement model is an integral part of the future envisions by SAP. He referenced the importance of the customer experience and customer engagement via SAP Fiori and SAP Hybris. This highlights the perfect fit for Document Presentment Live from OpenText with flexibility to personalize all communications with end clients after SAP S/4 HANA processing and before final publishing to web, print or other distribution channels.
SAP HANA will help improve Predictive Analytics for Customer Communication and other cloud based solutions. The addition of SAP Predictive Analytics is a great step towards embracing the forecasting, identification and predications of customer behavior for personalized customer communication in realtime. CCM can now access SAP HANA for this data and make every Utility bill personalized based each accounts historical customer data.
We see many utility companies embarking in this direction and Predictive Analytics will be an invaluable addition, that will allow them to better understand their own data and customers, and as such, having the right information they need to provide the best customer experiences with; more effective bills and other customer communications, creating powerful personalized campaigns addressing customers individually, and reduced call center costs to just list a few. Ultimately allowing our clients to provide better services for their customers while benefiting from overall improved efficiency, optimized business processes and reduced costs.
A great conference with lots of industry knowledge and insights to be shared. We’re excited about the opportunities ahead in Utilities and look forward to seeing the advances made in the next year until we meet again at the SAP for Utilities 2017!