On March 28-30, Xplor International held its annual Xploration 2017 conference in Orlando, Florida, providing more than 60 educational sessions for vendors, service providers, enterprise attendees, and other industry experts from around the world.
The educational sessions covered a broad range of customer communications management (CCM) and related topics including customer experience, workflow and automation, data management and compliance, e-presentment/payment technology and much more. This year, senior analysts from Keypoint Intelligence – InfoTrends hosted multiple educational sessions, participated in several panel discussions, and hosted a special Industry Analyst Workshop. Here are our key takeaways from the conference.
Pitney Bowes held a Software Technology Analyst Summit in Half Moon Bay, California, on February 28 to March 1. It was the first dedicated technology analyst event in several years for the company. With 34 analysts from 19 firms in attendance from around the world, including senior executives from Pitney Bowes, the Software team was making a statement that they were ready to put their corporate wide go-to-market strategy center stage with the analyst community.
Pitney Bowes had put together a comprehensive and highly informative 1.5 day program to bring participants up-to-date on its software strategy, latest business developments, and latest software innovations. Next to the agenda and scheduled 1:1 meetings with senior management, participants had plenty of opportunities to network or to get live demonstrations on some of Pitney Bowes’ latest software innovations.
GMC Software (GMC), a Neopost Digital Company, recently hosted two events in Europe. On February 14th, it held its first EMEA analyst summit in Paris, France. The following weekend, it hosted its Service Providers Executive Advisory on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. InfoTrends was invited to participate in both events.
The EMEA analyst summit included discussions around GMC’s latest major product release, R11, the future state of customer communications technology, and GMC’s future strategy. In addition to presentations of Henri Dura, COO at Neopost Enterprise Digital Services (EDS), Scott Draeger, VP Product Marketing at EDS, and several other product managers at GMC, there was ample opportunity for 1:1 networking with the leadership team.
As for the executive advisory board, GMC did a great job of pulling together a group of 13 service providers and 15 representatives from various countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific. Attendees received updates from leadership at GMC on enhancements to the offering, discussed market disruption and service expansion opportunities during the session, as well as shared best practices and provided input on how GMC can continue to evolve its offering to best support their future needs.
OpenText recently invited more than 350 customers, prospects, partners, and analysts to its Dialogue 2016 conference in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. The team rebranded this former HP Engage event to focus on the digital transformation for meaningful conversations across multiple channels. This was the first major event to take place after OpenText acquired the HP Engage and HP Exstream assets for a total transaction price of $485 million.
Last year’s event expanded the focus to the full HP Software portfolio, while this year’s event generally focused more narrowly on the Exstream, TeleForm, and LiquidOffice investments. As in previous years, the event focused on extensive educational sessions directed toward IT and marketing professionals, with networking opportunities to help cultivate a stronger user community. Here are our key takeaways from the event.
We are now just one month away from Money20/20, a conference and trade show billed as “the world’s largest payments & financial services innovation event.” Now in its fourth year, the show has grown to more than 10,000 attendees, 500+ exhibitors and about 125 educational sessions. This will be my third year presenting and moderating at the event, with our research helping to cover the household bill pay component of the broader payments market that will be on exhibit.
For the first time in more than 20 years, Pitney Bowes has launched a large-scale $20 million integrated advertising initiative.
The company secured prime advertising time this past weekend for a special airing of their 60-second commercial ahead of the AFC Divisional Playoff game, where the New England Patriots hosted the Kansas City Chiefs.
The 60-second commercial (entitled “The Story of Commerce”) leads out with dramatic imagery flashing by and a voiceover stating: Read more »
What is the most loathed household task for Americans? It turns out that it is cleaning bathrooms. The second most common response, however, was paying bills. In fact, 32% of the 2,000 consumers we surveyed had missed a payment due date in the last year, most often because they simply forgot to pay. Stress plays a significant role in why consumers dislike paying bills.
These insights came from research that we conducted earlier this Fall in preparation for Money20/20, Read more »
Mint Bills has a new business model for billers who want to offer customers mobile bill pay.
We have been following Mint Bills since it was a fast-growing startup named Pageonce, when it rebranded to Check, and when Intuit acquired the company and later rebranded it to Mint Bills. We recently caught up with Steve Schultz, General Manager of the Biller Network for Mint Bills, to discuss how the company is doing with its new identity and expanded support structure, as well as to discuss its new business model for billers.
First off, tell us how things have been going since the acquisition and rebranding last year?
Check was already growing fast ahead of the acquisition by Intuit and rebranding to Mint Bills. It’s been about a year now and our metrics have doubled in most categories, including payment volume, payments, payers, and accounts. This is only partially from biller growth. We also have Read more »
Last week, customer communications conference Xploration 15 hosted around 350 participants in Orlando, Florida. This annual conference is a major industry event with more than 60 educational sessions for vendors, service providers, and enterprise attendees.
The educational sessions covered a broad range of CCM topics including workflow and automation-related technology, e-presentment and payment technology and innovation, hosted/cloud managed models, as well as strategy considerations for outsourcing versus maintaining in-house operations. InfoTrends hosted two sessions that covered a review of highlights from our annual customer communications research, and insights on the importance of CCM in an increasing connected world.
Last week, Re/code published an article which reported that Google is working on a project called Pony Express to help customers receive and pay their bills within their Gmail accounts. Google declined to comment.
In our 2011 study entitled The Emergence of Digital Mailbox Services, we explored the possibility of a leading consumer technology service vendor entering—and disrupting—this market. Here’s an excerpt from that study: Read more »