CAN Digital Document Delivery Gain Global Ground?

There can be no doubt that migrating to electronic delivery of bills, notices and other business documents helps the corporate bottom line. Digital delivery demonstrates significant savings compared with snail mail, as well as in many cases, speeds the invoice cycle. So it is little wonder that electronic delivery systems are now a significant global industry. ConnXion's David Colvin explains…

IDM view: the creation of documents in digital format is without doubt key to what this magazine and its readers are about. But somehow, the delivery of the same documents in an authenticated, cost-effective manner appears to have become overlooked. More saliently it appears to have become the bailiwick of PDFs or unauthenticated email. This is not good enough. Therefore we were pleased to hear from David Colvin whose company, ConnXion, is attempting to make the cross-over from paper to digital, unauthenticated to authenticated, and cross-platform document delivery its profit base.

David Colvin - ConnXionDigital document delivery represents a challenge to traditional postal organisations. Australia Post acknowledges that its least profitable business is now postal letters. While the organisation handled nearly five billion letters in 2004-5, it predicts that, "consistent with international trends, the letters market in Australia is not expected to return to robust volume growth."

It's not surprising this is the case. Costing anywhere between 50 cents and $10 per document delivered, distribution via the postal system is not as cost-effective and typically takes days longer than electronic means. In the B2B space, digital methods allow organisations to generally improve productivity and reduce operational costs by around 50 percent, while ensuring customers:
Receive critical documents faster.
Can save and archive documents in soft or hard copy.
Have the document 'pushed' to them.
See only highly targeted, personalised communication.
Read and action information at their convenience.

Companies are embracing electronic delivery as a cost-saving option. However, the take-up rate is being determined by consumers who are, somewhat paradoxically, demonstrating preferences for good old hard copy documents.

Even the heralded online method BPay, which has enjoyed huge success and realises more than 15 million transactions per month, is still in part initiated by paper based communication - a 'call to action' notice distributed to the recipient's letter box, via the postal system.

What this means is that there is a clear need for multi-channel delivery systems that enable documents and messages to be distributed to customers via email, fax, SMS or paper - or a combination of all four - according to individual preferences.

The global communications industry is in transition from the paper paradigm to the electronic age. The process will be a rapid one - in fact, I predict it will take less than three years for electronic document distribution rates to increase beyond 50 percent of total volumes delivered. Here is what I think will drive adoption:

Deregulation Of Postal Operators
Deregulation is an imminent opportunity for document delivery providers. Royal Mail in the United Kingdom deregulated in 2006, and Singapore Post will do so next year. All signs indicate that most European Union and Asian-based providers will follow. Forward-thinking document delivery providers will already be positioning themselves to take advantage of this newly open market by structuring their technology to act as the infrastructure backbone for postal operators, in their continuing search for innovative revenue-generation opportunities. Such complementary service capabilities can be equally valuable to mail houses, telecommunications providers and business process outsourcers. For example, ConnXion recently partnered with Singapore Post (SingPost). This enabled the organisation to use our services as a point of difference to its Asian customers, as it expands in new geographical markets, post deregulation.

Rapid Broadband Internet Uptake

The sustained uptake of internet-enabled technologies and consumers' strengthening preference for online communication continues to drive digital business interaction.

In December 2005, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) estimated Australia had 2.79 million broadband consumers, an increase of 12.1% from the previous quarter. Assuming that growth rate, there are now well over three million broadband consumers.

Pull & Push: Changing Preferences For Online Interaction
Not all online tools were created equal. PostBillPayView,which sends an initial alert message via email requesting customers to visit their transactional website to react, exemplifies the traditional 'pull' model that has failed tomeet expectations of the biller and their customers.

Instead, customers are now demanding documents be 'pushed' to them as a 'call to action' that streamlines their response, whether this is making an online payment or querying a bill.

Smart document delivery providers realise that habit and psychology play a part in this and are structuring their technology accordingly. Customers expect communication to be sent directly to them, without having to visit the supplier's place of business - whether this is a local retail outlet or website - to collect, read and action the correspondence.

Security: An Issue Or Not?
The growing phishing threat has led to many billers refraining from sending an email alert linking to a trusted website.This becomes a further deterrent for the pull-based model.

Technology is available today to push a digital document to a consumer with digital certification authenticating who sent the document, protecting the document from unauthorised access and providing for non-repudiation.

Resurgence Of The Hosted Service Delivery Model
The comeback of the service-delivery style, once referredto as the Application Service Provider (or ASP) model, is an interesting trend. Epitomized by the US-based CRM platform Salesforce.com, it has recently re-emerged under the guiseof Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or pay-as-you-go software.

In short, accessing business applications online via a secure web portal, hosted and managed by a third party supplier, rather than investing heavily in the infrastructure or in-house application , means hosted delivery systems are now well aligned with customer demands.

It also enables the provider to rapidly scale globally because the model's geographically-independent nature means a quick time-to-market and low ongoing maintenance. Those digital document vendors that are already operating in this way can expect success.

We will be watching with interest to see whether the postal or telecommunication's providers, IT or business process outsourcers, or even software vendors like Microsoft or Adobe, in their battle for proprietary format supremacy, will drive the migration to digital delivery globally.

For document production and delivery providers which can seamlessly transition consumers from postal delivery to fax, email or even mobile devices and whose technology provides the backbone for complementary partners to leverage and resell, it will be a bonanza.

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