In business, speed is everything. You want to be the first to launch that groundbreaking product or service, you want to be the first to identify and capitalize on future trends. But you also want to bind your customers to your brand before your peers do. Delivering relevant, individualized and consistent customer communications is crucial and you need operational efficiency to do so. Yet this is something that a lot of companies lack.
Depending on their location and company structure, many businesses out there have to communicate in different languages and/or for multiple separate brands within the company. Car importers for example. Often these companies not only import a certain brand of cars but also different subsidiary brands of the same group, like the Volkswagen Group which not only produces Volkswagen cars but also owns brands such as SEAT, Skoda, Audi and others.
Now for an importer of Volkswagen and its subsidiary brands in a multilingual country, communicating efficiently in this multilingual and multibrand environment can quickly turn into a practical nightmare. Working in silos almost becomes inevitable, as every separate car brand uses its own communication templates, often managed within separate software systems. Add to this the local dealers eager to communicate in their own language and the additional templates they use themselves to generate their customer communications, and you’ll see that making errors will happen sooner than later.
Furthermore, as these local dealers use their own templates, the importer loses grip on how they all communicate, let alone the fact that they all do so consistently. Customers receiving a communication about a new car model, might look upon something entirely different depending on the city they live in, the language they speak and the car dealer they visit.
Efficiency plumits
Like car importers, a lot of other companies are faced with an abundance of communication templates and struggle with dealing with them efficiently. They juggle all these different templates in multiple languages for different brands, while eventually they all trickle down to the exact same communications.
Editing all these templates is a tedious chore. Although the difference between templates is hardly noticeable and the demanded edits like switching a logo ever so minor, changes require a lot of effort and a lot of time. All due to the vast amount of templates. As complexity rises, operational efficiency plumits.
Furthermore, editing these templates is a task often demanded of IT as the software implemented is too technology-driven for business users to operate and make even the smallest adjustments themselves. This usually leads to major delays in deployment to market. In next week’s blog we’ll talk about how business user empowerment can improve operational efficiency, so stay tuned!
The solution?
First let’s take a look at how you can improve operational efficiency in a multilingual and multibrand environment. In fact the best solution is quite simple. To avoid delays, errors in adjustments and get rid of redundant templates, you need to integrate your multibrand and multilingual communication flows from different systems in a single customer communication platform. As management is centralized, the number of templates will decrease immensely. Included features like multilingual text objects, reusable objects and styles not only improve operational efficiency but will also allow you to make your communications and each of your brands consistent with relevant, individualized and actionable communications.
A single customer communication platform can also enable business users to operate independently from IT. As it provides a UX friendly design environment that includes a template designer, business users can easily make adjustments to communications themselves.
In business, speed is everything. You want to be the first to launch that groundbreaking product or service, you want to be the first to identify and capitalize on future trends. But you also want to bind your customers to your brand before your peers do. Delivering relevant, individualized and consistent customer communications is crucial and you need operational efficiency to do so. Yet this is something that a lot of companies lack.
Depending on their location and company structure, many businesses out there have to communicate in different languages and/or for multiple separate brands within the company. Car importers for example. Often these companies not only import a certain brand of cars but also different subsidiary brands of the same group, like the Volkswagen Group which not only produces Volkswagen cars but also owns brands such as SEAT, Skoda, Audi and others.
Now for an importer of Volkswagen and its subsidiary brands in a multilingual country, communicating efficiently in this multilingual and multibrand environment can quickly turn into a practical nightmare. Working in silos almost becomes inevitable, as every separate car brand uses its own communication templates, often managed within separate software systems. Add to this the local dealers eager to communicate in their own language and the additional templates they use themselves to generate their customer communications, and you’ll see that making errors will happen sooner than later.
Furthermore, as these local dealers use their own templates, the importer loses grip on how they all communicate, let alone the fact that they all do so consistently. Customers receiving a communication about a new car model, might look upon something entirely different depending on the city they live in, the language they speak and the car dealer they visit.
Efficiency plumits
Like car importers, a lot of other companies are faced with an abundance of communication templates and struggle with dealing with them efficiently. They juggle all these different templates in multiple languages for different brands, while eventually they all trickle down to the exact same communications.
Editing all these templates is a tedious chore. Although the difference between templates is hardly noticeable and the demanded edits like switching a logo ever so minor, changes require a lot of effort and a lot of time. All due to the vast amount of templates. As complexity rises, operational efficiency plumits.
Furthermore, editing these templates is a task often demanded of IT as the software implemented is too technology-driven for business users to operate and make even the smallest adjustments themselves. This usually leads to major delays in deployment to market. In next week’s blog we’ll talk about how business user empowerment can improve operational efficiency, so stay tuned!
The solution?
First let’s take a look at how you can improve operational efficiency in a multilingual and multibrand environment. In fact the best solution is quite simple. To avoid delays, errors in adjustments and get rid of redundant templates, you need to integrate your multibrand and multilingual communication flows from different systems in a single customer communication platform. As management is centralized, the number of templates will decrease immensely. Included features like multilingual text objects, reusable objects and styles not only improve operational efficiency but will also allow you to make your communications and each of your brands consistent with relevant, individualized and actionable communications.
A single customer communication platform can also enable business users to operate independently from IT. As it provides a UX friendly design environment that includes a template designer, business users can easily make adjustments to communications themselves.