When most people hear the term “cutting costs” it may make them cringe a little. Often it requires hard decisions and giving up things they're accustomed to having, and may even NEED.

What if we told you that reducing costs isn’t actually a direct result of CUTTING Costs? 

Cutting costs implies cut backs, cutting corners, and cutting features that may be important and useful to your organization. That’s the last thing you want to do.

REDUCING COSTS IS ALL ABOUT ROI.

Today we’re sharing the top 4 ways to increase the ROI of your document processing operations, thus reducing your overall costs and increasing the value of your business processes.

1. SAVE TIME:

We’re sure you’ve heard the expression “time is money,” and guess what? It’s true. You need a document processing partner that takes on the lion-share of operational tasks and thus, saves your business money as well. 

-Fast Change Management- Making changes to your customer documents is a painful process. Compliance and regulatory requirements can change fast, so you need to be able to make document changes fast as well. When choosing a document outsourcing partner, or evaluating your in-house operation, fast change management should be one of the top factors influencing your decision.

-Reduce Customer Service Calls- Calls regarding difficult to understand statements and bills can be factor eating up a major portion of your customer service representative’s time. Make sure your operational system has capabilities that accommodate optimized document design for easy readability, and result in less customer calls for help. 

2. ADD VALUE:

Selective marketing in your member communications is something most businesses today implement, but is it dynamic and personalized? If you’re currently offering only static, un-personalized marketing messages, you’re missing the opportunity to speak directly to your customers on a one-to-one basis. 

3. ELECTRONIC DELIVERY:

Most businesses today have an electronic delivery platform, but to really save money, customers need to be using it, and not receiving print communications at all. To find out the top ways to increase electronic adoption rates, download our eBook to learn about our step-by-step electronic onboarding plan, and start increasing your eAdoption rates today.

4. PARTNER UP:

Outsourcing document production is the complete solution and best way to increase your ROI. Here’s how:

Eliminate physical document processing costs – Through document outsourcing you can completely eliminate the need to have dedicated print and mail resources.

Better marketing capabilities – Offset production costs and create additional revenue streams through new, dynamic marketing opportunities.

Increase electronic onboarding – Reduce paper, print and postage costs by providing solutions that help increase electronic adoption rates.

Postage Discounts – Take advantage of any postage and presort discounts that an outsourced partner may provide

A great document outsourcing partner’s sole focus is creating custom solutions that drive customer development, save time and effort, and increase the value of their documents. The best solution may not be the cheapest on paper, but real cost savings happen over time and are achieved by adding value, not cutting corners. 

Contact us today to find out more about Lanvera’s custom solutions and how we can help you increase the value in your member documents.

As postage and paper costs rise, the ROI of printed customer communications for many organizations is dropping significantly. The optimization and consolidation of your customer documents is key to improving the ROI of your print documents.

Optimizing your print documents doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive, but there’s one thing you absolutely need to make it a reality.

DOCUMENT TEMPLATES.
Creating documents from scratch is a waste of time. Standardized document templates can help your business to increase brand consistency, save time on document creation, and easily incorporate personalized marketing messages into designated areas of the documents…

Today we’re sharing everything you need to know about utilizing document templates to optimize your documents for production, readability and marketing implementation.

HOW TO USE TEMPLATES TO OPTIMIZE DOCUMENTS FOR: PRODUCTION
The impact of poorly designed documents on your print operations is huge. Increased postage on heavy envelopes or documents that take up many pages, excessive paper consumption, and redundant postage costs accumulating by sending numerous documents to a single household, frequently arise as a result.

To combat this postage increase, you can create standardized workflow templates that allow you to utilize duplex printing to decrease page counts, use re-pagination to increase lines per page and control line spacing, eliminate wasted white space and practice “house holding,” which is the consolidation of numerous documents sending to the same house into a single envelope. All of these practices will lower production and postage costs and increase the efficiency of your operations.

HOW TO USE TEMPLATES TO OPTIMIZE DOCUMENTS FOR: READABILITY
Unfortunately, your print operations aren’t the only area suffering as a result of poor document design; there can be a lot of unexpected collateral damage that happens as well. From unnecessary customer service calls and low electronic adoption rates, to customer frustration and poor corporate image, the repercussions can trickle down to almost every element of your business.

You can use templates to provide documents with a consistent user-friendly design. By formatting your documents with tables, shading, summaries and bolded headers, you make documents easier to read and understand, increase customer satisfaction, and improve the overall impact of your documents.

HOW TO USE TEMPLATES TO OPTIMIZE DOCUMENTS FOR: MARKETING IMPLEMENTATION
Templates can also help to expedite the automated marketing process. First, start with a global document template. This template will be the standard format guide for all documents of a particular type. Next, insert branding and business information into certain areas on the template, and finally, through business rules and workflows, segment your customers based on specific criteria to insert personalized content into the remaining areas.

Templates make the entire document lifecycles easier and faster, and will significantly improve the ROI on your document processing operations. 

The invoices, notices, statements and other business-critical documents your organization sends represent not only a substantial allocation of funds, but also a key vehicle for communicating with your customers, and thus one of the most critical components of your business. That said, these documents should not be overlooked as a simple operational formality.

There are four important facts every executive should know about customer documents and why they are one of the most important elements of any business:

1. Between 50-70% of total indirect spend in the financial services industry is on I.T. and technology infrastructure.  Part of this percentage includes the equipment, software and maintenance costs necessary for document processing and production, as well as costs needed to ensure compliance with changing regulations, data security and management and overall operational improvements. Having the infrastructure necessary to keep up with demands is essential, but it is costly. Additionally, expenses tend to be on the higher end of the overall percentage if all production operations are kept in-house.
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2. A decline in branch visits and increase in digital and mobile banking has made business-critical documents a major contributor to the customer experience.  Last year saw the highest level of bank and credit union branch closures in U.S. history, according to FDIC data. This solidifies the fact that financial institutions must improve the customer experience in other ways to account for this drop in face-to-face interaction. Customer documents, both print and electronic, are more important than ever for enhancing the customer experience and driving behavior.

Here are ways you can use transactional documents to enhance the customer experience:
-Offer user-friendly eStatement hosting on your Home Banking
-Utilize mobile applications that provide capabilities such as opening a new account, fund transfers and direct check deposit 
-Print documents that are designed and optimized to be easily understood, personalized and fully branded

3. Documents can serve as a Powerful Marketing Tool. Given the drop in branch visits, both print and electronic customer documents can supplement for the loss of face-to-face interaction and serve as an essential and profitable marketing tool. Access to transactional data gives the financial industry the unique ability to personalize documents and provide their customers with timely, applicable marketing messages through transpromo marketing in the form of personalized affiliate ads, as well as cross selling and upselling.

4. Document outsourcing is the best way to simplify processes, reduce costs and manage risk while increasing value. While the need to reduce costs and conserve resources is a prominent one, it’s important to remember to cut the RIGHT costs and allocate your expenses to elements that will work tangent to your business goals while increasing overall efficiency. Document outsourcing is an excellent way to mitigate some of the IT spend while continuing to achieve the technological advancements that customers require.  

A great document outsourcing partner will serve as a single-source extension of your business, offering a comprehensive combination of equipment, security, delivery vehicles and software. In addition to controlling operational costs and reducing capital expenditure needs, outsourcing can provide added value through enhanced marketing opportunities and assured quality control, which ultimately allows you to devote your time to your core competency.

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