Customer Communications Management: What CCM Software Does Not Deliver

Six months into a customer communications management rollout, the templates are signed off, the rules work, and test statements look right on screen. Then someone asks which plant the print files are going to, and nobody knows.

Customer communications management (CCM) software builds, personalizes, and manages the documents a company sends customers, such as statements, notices, policies, and letters. What it doesn’t do is print, sort, or mail them. That half of the job falls to a print and mail provider or an in-house print shop.

A CCM platform turns customer data into a finished, often regulated communication and sends it to the right channel. It does five jobs:

CCM isn’t CRM. A CRM tracks the customer relationship and usually feeds data and triggers to the CCM platform, which produces the documents.

CCM also overlaps with two neighboring categories. Document generation tools produce individual documents from templates, and enterprise content management (ECM) stores and governs documents once they exist. CCM covers the full outbound flow, from data and templates through channel delivery to the as-sent archive.

Gartner Peer Insights hosts buyer reviews under a customer communication management software category, and Aspire Customer Communications Services ranks CCM vendors in its CCM-CXM Technology Vendors Leaderboard. Both evaluate the software platforms.

A CCM platform stops at the print file. Turning that file into sorted, barcoded mail USPS will accept is the job of a print and mail provider or your own print shop. That holds for OpenText Communications (formerly Exstream), Quadient Inspire, Smart Communications, Cincom Eloquence, and Adobe Experience Manager Forms: each creates print files, and none is a print and mail service provider. Quadient sells mailing equipment such as folder-inserters, but its Inspire software still stops at the file.

Physical production. A CCM license gives you an AFP or PDF file, not the presses, the inserters, or the people who run them. What happens after the file, from intake to delivery, is covered in the six-stage statement production pipeline. Bills and statements are a big share of that mail: in the USPS FY2011 Household Diary Study, bills and statements made up about 43 percent of the First-Class Mail households received, and USPS still tracks household mail in its Household Mail Survey.

Postal optimization. Presort discounts start with clean addresses. The current Domestic Mail Manual requires CASS-certified address matching for automation prices and Move Update processing for commercial prices, and sortation software applies USPS rules on top. The mail preparer handles certification and rate strategy.

USPS induction. Mail enters through a Business Mail Entry Unit or Detached Mail Unit, with permits, electronic paperwork, and an acceptance check.

Piece-level tracking. Full-Service Intelligent Mail requires mailers to submit electronic documentation (eDoc) along with Intelligent Mail barcodes. Scan data goes to whoever holds the Mailer ID, usually not the CCM platform.

Physical archive. The platform keeps the composed document; the production floor keeps proof the piece was printed, inserted, and mailed.

The handoff between CCM software and print production tends to break wherever each side assumes the other owns a decision. These five problems show up most often at file intake, much like the gaps in managed mail campaign handoffs.

Where a production partner fits. At Mailing.com, one team takes the file from your CCM platform through data intake, printing, presort, and on-site USPS verification, with each job tracked on our digital platform through USPS pickup. That way, every failure mode above has one accountable owner, so you aren’t chasing answers across vendors.

Find out who owns each handoff, then pick the setup your team can staff. Six questions to ask:

If you’re planning for growth, the direct mail maturity model shows how vendor needs change as volume grows, and the mail service companies stress test lists questions to ask before you scale.

Here’s the short version: CCM software composes; it doesn’t deliver. Splitting marketing and transactional mail across vendors creates two problems after handoff: suppression lists drift apart, and postal volume splits across two presort pools. Our case for one vendor for marketing and transactional mail covers the coordination and data costs of running two providers. At Mailing.com, data processing, printing, quality control, and USPS verification happen in-house under one chain of custody, in SOC 2 Type II audited, ISO 27001-certified, HIPAA-compliant environments, and every program has a named point of contact.

We can sit behind your CCM platform with one agreed file handoff, or, if you have no composition team, handle variable data, versioning, and merge processing under one contract. Our six production facilities include mirrored sites for continuity during peak demand, and onboarding runs through discovery, setup, test production, and staged migration, so programs move over in phases while live runs continue.

Does Quadient Inspire or OpenText Exstream handle the actual mailing?

No. Both build documents and create print files (Exstream is now OpenText Communications). Printing, presort, USPS induction, and tracking fall to a print and mail provider or your own shop.

Can a CCM platform qualify mail for USPS automation prices?

Not on its own. That depends on clean addresses, presort software, Intelligent Mail barcodes, and eDoc filed under a Mailer ID, all handled by the mail preparer.

What file format should a CCM platform send to a print provider?

Agree in writing before the first cycle. Production floors typically run AFP or PDF/VT with embedded fonts, CMYK color, and a page index carrying account, page count, insert codes, and presort keys.

Talk to the Mailing.com team about what happens after your CCM platform hands off the file.