Columbus version 9 keeps strong focus on digital customer communications

Macro 4, a division of UNICOM® Global, has released the new generation of its Columbus enterprise information management (EIM) suite. Columbus version 9 builds on the software’s digital transformation capabilities, introducing additional features to personalize multi-channel customer engagement and generate better business intelligence.

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Dynamic personalized experiences
Columbus manages the interactions between diverse systems, people and channels to deliver personalized customer experiences. Columbus version 9 allows organizations to personalize interactions dynamically by responding to spontaneous customer and employee feedback, as Darren Jack, Senior Technical Services Manager at Macro 4, explained:

“To attract and retain customers, companies need the flexibility to treat them as individuals. Columbus provides that flexibility by allowing you to adapt business processes and customer communications ‘in the moment’, depending on how different people respond. That could mean something simple, such as a customer requesting SMS communications and then instantly getting a new, text-friendly version of physical documents such as bills and correspondence. Or it could be more complex, such as a call center agent adding one-off customer requirements into a Columbus form, which then kicks off a whole new personalized onboarding process.”

Actionable insights across the enterprise
Business intelligence (BI) embedded within the Columbus suite already helps organizations to gather and interpret operational data to improve forecasting, capacity planning, service level reporting, cost analysis and billing, and to identify potential efficiency savings in their information management environment. This BI capability has been extended to capture information from other applications, solutions and processes, and combine it with Columbus data for reporting and analytics. Examples include behavioral data from enterprise CRM, emailing and web systems, which, in combination with Columbus usage statistics, help businesses to better understand customer needs, predict future demand and build a more robust corporate IT infrastructure to match.

“The upsurge in digital customer interactions during the pandemic has shown just how important it is to keep track of exactly what’s happening in your IT environment, and respond quickly when things start to change. Our embedded business intelligence helps you to understand important aspects of customer behavior, such as how and when they are using digital channels, so you can create the right type of services, with the right capacity to meet future demand,” said Darren Jack.

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Easier SAP output management administration
Columbus version 9 introduces a new gateway for handling business-critical communications from SAP applications. The new SAP Express Gateway operates as a ‘black box’ process to manage printing and digital delivery of SAP communications output with no need for administrator intervention. As it requires no monitoring, the gateway is well suited to managed service operations. The SAP Express Gateway is available alongside Macro 4’s existing managed SAP Gateway. Both gateway options enable organizations to manage output from SAP and non-SAP systems from a single point of control, increasing the resilience of their printing and digital delivery processes.

Darren Jack said: “I feel proud that Columbus is enabling businesses to become more agile and responsive to their customers in these challenging times – helping with everything from personalizing customer communications to delivering better services backed by business intelligence. The new generation of Columbus is all about helping our customers to accelerate digital transformation by quickly adding new digital capabilities on top of their existing systems and processes.”