Christian Blind Mission

CBM sought to automate the way it responds to the hundreds of donations it receives daily yet ensure that each communication is customized to the donor and the donation made. Alexander Kindinger, Head of IT at CBM, explained, “We receive hundreds, even thousands of single donations each day, and we want to say thank you to every donor by sending them a letter. And in this letter, we try to refer to their donation, what was the reason for them to donate, what is the purpose of the donation, and thus try to get an automatically created document sounding as individualized as possible.”

Automating personalized communications with OpenText

To achieve a highly automated print output that would meet its complex requirements, CBM assessed several solutions before selecting OpenText Customer Communications Management (CCM), a solution designed to improve customer experience through the personalization and automation of customer communications. Customized documents are created through rules-based dynamic assembly and presented in a variety of digital and print formats and channels, from one-to-one contact to high volume, mass production of documents.

Kindinger noted that a key driver in the decision to use OpenText was CBM’s desire for a cloud-based solution. The CCM solution is offered as part the OpenText Experience Cloud platform: “Once we had a look at OpenText CCM, it was a very clear decision. The OpenText CCM solution fulfills our business requirements, and we selected the OpenText Cloud option because we are following an overall Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) strategy. This approach results in higher availability with lower operating costs.”

To help implement the solution, CBM relied on OpenText Professional Services for the experience and expertise needed to ensure the solution met the organization’s complex requirements. Kindinger explained, “When we needed support from technical experts, we very often contacted OpenText Professional Services. They helped us in different areas—developing the main architecture, programming various parts of our solution, solving technical issues, and finding bugs in our own programming. Even after a year, they still help us, and it’s simply great.”

Generating savings and satisfaction

With the OpenText CCM solution in place, CBM has automated the generation of thousands of customized communications, including postcards, tax receipts, and thank-you letters, for annual donations worth 80 million euros. “We send roughly 100,000 letters each year. At Christmas time, there are a couple of thousand letters each day. We have 500,000 active donors, and if each one of them gets some kind of communication each year, then you can imagine the number of documents we produce with OpenText CCM. Each document is now generated by an automatic system with many rules and if-then connections. And it’s working pretty well,” said Kindinger.

Automating complexity for newfound efficiency and quality

In the past, the complexity of donor communications required significant involvement on the part of IT. Now, business users can quickly and easily access, personalize, and generate donor letters without relying on IT. Kindinger explained, “With OpenText CCM, IT builds the technical frame, but the input, the logic, and everything else can be done by an end user. The front end is much easier to use, and so we have a major efficiency gain in the business and business processes.” He added, “We can see that we increased the overall efficiency, especially around Easter or Christmas when we typically had a huge backlog of letters to be sent out. Now, we have no backlog.”

The flexibility of the solution has not only led to increased efficiency, it has also improved user satisfaction. Kindinger reported that business users appreciate the ability to generate letters easily and independently: “With OpenText CCM, users can decide to change a letter and they don’t have to wait for another department. They can do it on their own. A year later, they are quite happy with the solution. I’m not hearing a lot of complaints, which is a very good sign because usually I’m getting involved when something fails. But it hasn’t. Our resource mobilization teams are happy, and if they are happy, I’m happy too.”

“Satisfaction with the solution even extends to valued CBM donors who appreciate accurate, personalized, and high-quality communications. With logic built in to ensure accuracy, donors receive error-free thank-you letters. A critical measurement is that we have no complaints from our donors and supporters about the letters they receive because those letters fit to what they would expect from us,” noted Kindinger.

Getting value from the Cloud

The organization’s commitment to a cloud-based approach has also delivered the benefits that Kindinger anticipated, including lower costs and lower downtime: “The benefits from moving to the OpenText Experience Cloud include much higher availability than if we were operating it on our own and the lower operating costs connected to that. To have support 24 hours, seven days a week—I can’t offer that with a small team of 15 people, doing all their other stuff around the world. System downtime is very expensive for CBM. That was a crucial reason for going with the cloud.”

Pivoting for a pandemic and the future

Flexibility and availability were critical to CBM when COVID-19 demanded a quick reaction. “The pandemic is a good example of how fast things change and how fast you have to react with technology. We had always thought that we couldn’t work from home at CBM, but once we decided we had to, we proved that we could. The OpenText CCM solution made it possible to move to home offices without interruption. We still had to physically print out the thousands of letters each day in our office, but only by a small crew there while the rest worked at home,” said Kindinger.

As CBM looks to the future, the journey has only just begun and Kindinger sees OpenText as an important partner in it: “OpenText CCM is a key part of our strategy. It makes work more efficient and that saves us a great amount of time and therefore money. All this contributes to CBM’s mission to change the lives of the poorest persons in the world—to change them forever, to raise awareness, to leave something good behind. It is such a valuable goal.”