At the beginning of 2020 we are in the midst of the digital customer era, but customer communication management (CCM) still operates largely in a vacuum, with no owner in the organizations. People, creative assets, business processes and technology investments are largely managed by individual departments and duplicated across organizations. This results in a disconnected and poor customer experience.

Leading customer experience (CX) companies now see CCM as part of their overall CX strategy, and have taken steps to truly integrate them. And that trend is accelerating; we see it accelerating and evolving even further over the next three to five years. We summarize some points based on our own experience and on different studies by the prestigious analyst Forrester.
In the short term: consolidate and integrate

The adoption of cloud-based software solutions will become much more common in the short term. The reasons will vary from company to company, mainly due to the need for greater implementation flexibility and business agility, but everyone will be looking to respond better to their customers anytime, anywhere and through any channel.

Most companies will avoid putting all their eggs in one supplier’s basket. The exchange of data and content through digital experience architecture will become more common, as will multi-user collaboration when composing communications, thanks to the increased use of intuitive software, and the emergence of shared services CCM / CX.
In the long term: services replace applications

We will see a trend that started with service-oriented platforms, iPaaS and iSaaS going beyond the early users in the innovation phase.

As more software is built using microservices, companies will buy features and functionality rather than pre-packaged applications. Instead of buying and integrating CCM and Web Content Management (WCM) applications just to have multiple design environments, separate content delivery functionality, etc., companies will choose the best features from software vendors and “build their own” solution using API management and low or no-touch tools. It will be common to use the design environment of a CCM solution to design communications and have a WCM component deliver the content. They will move from selling one-size-fits-all “platforms” to offering highly specialized services that add unique value to a digital experience architecture.