Healthcare runs on fax. Depending on the crowd, it may draw sighs of frustration, but fax is a vital tool in an industry that demands secure information exchange. Despite many efforts over the years to eliminate it, fax persists. As one of the only genuinely secure, affordable, and seamlessly compatible tools for information exchange, it’s no wonder that “axing the fax” isn’t as easy as the marketing campaigns suggest.
Part of the challenge is to change its perception: from the outdated fax machine that comes to everyone’s mind to the enabled document delivery over a secure network that seamlessly triggers intelligent workflows that is available with modern fax solutions. Scott Lundstrom has seen technology transform healthcare throughout his career as an analyst, CIO, and VP of Product Management. We caught up with him to discuss the future of fax in healthcare and its role in improving patient experience.
Scott Lundstrom, Sr. Industry Strategist – Healthcare, Consumer Goods, Retail at OpenText
What’s your professional background, and how did you come to work at OpenTextTM?
I started my career as a software developer back in the microcomputer days. I wrote a lot of commercial code and became a database developer for Oracle. I then moved into an analyst role in advanced manufacturing research, specializing in regulated industries like aerospace and life sciences. I helped develop the SCOR model – a business process model for supply chain that’s still widely used. I founded IDC’s healthcare research group 15 years ago. I held AI, SaaS, and cloud positions before coming to OpenText for a global Senior Industry Strategist role supporting healthcare, consumer goods, and retail.
What changes in information management and intelligent workflows have you seen over your career?
Early workflow systems date back to the 1990s: fragile, point-to-point, and always bespoke. What’s changed is the ability to capture and share aggregate information at scale –cost-effectively and turn content into data. Fax is an essential gateway. I often talk about omnichannel capture: fax is a vital component. Fax could mean many things in healthcare: letters, paper medical files, product and pharmaceutical specifications, safety data sheets, clinical pharmacy records, lab orders, and results. All communication happens on a variety of mediums. Fax is prevalent, and fax is growing. It scales well, is robust and has direct support under HIPAA as a protected technology. The thing that’s changed most is the ability to turn disparate content into data and actionable information. It’s much more than grabbing a piece of content and putting it into a repository.
Why is fax so persistent in healthcare despite repeated mandates to ‘axe the fax’?
It’s inexpensive, scalable, and HIPAA compliant. Fax is a disparaged technology, but impressions are deceiving. Fax volumes are growing. Fax is very affordable and robust. It’s increasingly highly digital and a cloud-based communications technology that’s very secure. It’s an encrypted, point-to-point, low-latency way of sharing information.
What trends do you see shaping the future of fax in healthcare?
Capture is an area of fax that’s exciting. It’s recognizing the data encoded in bits – a letter of medical necessity, a physician order – routing and placing the data where it will provide the most value to the patient and the router. That could look like escalating a situation to a case manager in a chronic disease management program, promoting ongoing communication, or proactively getting a patient into an office before a condition develops. It’s a shift to think about fax not as documents but as data to be captured and information to be utilized. You can begin to think about what ought to be an automated process driven by data.
What does it mean to make better use of data in healthcare?
All data tells a story. Drawing insights in this context can help us tackle broader industry issues—physician burnout and patient churn. Patients and members are also consumers with other digital interactions in their lives. They begin to hold healthcare up to that standard. Healthcare procedures are often paper-based processes. Information sits in a queue for a long time. Look at the image and enter data into an information management system. Look at an image and enter data into a scheduling system. With capture and integration, modern solutions can recognize things in seconds that might have sat in a queue for a day. An investigator could look at an authorization in real-time. Treatment could be accelerated; patients could access the care they need more quickly. All of this automation and acceleration adds up to a much better patient experience than what’s provided on legacy systems. Ultimately, patients notice. Patients are fickle, and healthcare providers deal with churn. Automation also helps improve the patient admission process, build loyalty, and cultivate engagement and trust. This can create real improvements in the outcome of the business overall.
We have all experienced this ourselves in the workplace lately: One week to another never looking the same with a mix of working from home, from the company office, and on the road travelling. The modern workplace has allowed many of us to benefit from a flexible-first philosophy as an employee, adopting practices that best suit our work patterns and lifestyle. However, it has also created a new set of worries for us as consumers, often wondering if the businesses we engage with and purchase from will protect our information to assure privacy-first protection.
In today’s day and age, it is critical that businesses commit to the active protection of all types of data to be deserving of customer trust and gain an information advantage. Trust is hard to build, and even harder to regain once lost. But how can organizations stay compliant and protect customers’ data against a backdrop of increasingly major data security breaches? And with the explosion of data (e.g., structured, unstructured, human-generated, machine-generated, in the data center, on the edge, fast moving, slow processing, in the cloud, within on-prem applications, etc.), consumers are becoming wary of where their data may end up and the implications of it falling into the wrong hands.
The fragility of trust
To truly understand consumer attitudes towards data privacy today, OpenText commissioned a global survey and discovered three key takeaways:
Renewed and pervasive concerns around privacy: Since the pandemic began in March 2020, almost three quarters (76%) of consumers globally have new concerns about how organizations are using their personal data.
Rise in remote and hybrid working has created this worry: Four out of five consumers (82%) worry more about their personal data being stolen because organizations now operate in distributed work models, and one in two (49%) say their worry stems from not understanding how businesses commit to protecting the data collected.
Brand trust threatens business results: Globally, a third of consumers (33%) said they would no longer use or buy from a brand they were previously loyal to if the company failed to protect and leaked their personal data. Moreover, a quarter (27%) of consumers would completely abandon a brand if the company failed to respond to a Subject Rights Request (SRR) – including a request to access, correct, delete or port the information that company has about them. Lastly, almost two thirds (63%) of consumers said they would be willing to pay more to use or buy from an organization that was expressly committed to protecting personal data.
And let’s not forget this is all in the context of a rise in the volume and complexity of data being generated, the number of sources where data is created and stored, and the number of channels through which data is shared – be they commerce channels, social media platforms or collaboration tools that facilitate modern work. Take the fact that 79 zettabytes of new data was created in 2021, and this amount is expected to more than double by 2025, to reach 181 zettabytes.
What these results show us is that businesses must act now to address these new concerns and ensure customer trust is not lost. Here are five practical steps business can take.
Step 1: Establish a strong information management core
The foundation to addressing these concerns is breaking down siloes to get one integrated view of all information – all types, all speeds, all locations – to understand how personal data is managed.
With information governance solutions, organizations can manage the flow of personal and sensitive information from capture through archiving and disposition. By improving how to keep track of where data is located and stored, what categories of data are being managed and when it’s time to dispose of personal data to satisfy data minimization principles, organizations can reduce risk and meet growing data sovereignty requirements in complex regulatory environments.
In addition, using a modernized cloud platform for Enterprise Content Management (ECM), organizations can consolidate key systems to streamline information governance and bolster information sharing by implementing policy-driven, role-based access to reduce unwanted exposure.
Step 2: Get faster and smarter with embedded AI
Many organizations are sitting on years of data and terabytes of content that has not been appropriately classified in terms of value and risk. Examples include network file shares or laptop archives.
Using AI-powered data discovery tools (e.g., OpenText™ Magellan™ Risk Guard), organizations can scan this unmanaged or unclassified information to identify personal and sensitive information across pockets of data and various content repositories. Then, with the power of AI and machine learning, managers can assess the severity of the risk and prioritize remediation activities to strengthen adherence to compliance mandates. Once tagged, risky and sensitive content can be protected and secured with just a few clicks. Also, bulk policies can be set once repeated patterns are identified so automation can replace manual efforts.
Step 3: Respond to customer needs better
Demands made by consumers seeking to act upon their exercisable rights – mainly SRRs –expose many businesses who continue to perform these activities manually. Struggles to meet prescribed deadlines is why automation and workflow management remain top data-privacy technology capabilities being pursued today. Investment in solutions like OpenText Privacy Management, with strong case management tools to track performance of privacy processes required for an enterprise privacy program, can go a long way to automating workflows and operationalizing the SRR fulfilment request process.
Step 4: Create a culture of cyber resilience
With cybercrime presenting a formidable challenge to modern life and work and the potential to wreak havoc on our businesses, an organization’s best defense against cyber threats is a cyber resilience framework including robust, multi-layered security and data protection.
OpenText security solutions protect businesses. Here are a few critical components of a holistic approach to cyber resilience:
Preventing email-borne threats such as ransomware, phishing and business email compromise (BEC) causing downtime, fines and closure with Email Threat Protection
Threat hunting with security analysts to detect and respond to breaches as quickly as possible with MDR services
Recovering data by keeping critical systems online during a worst-case scenario with Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) ensures organizations can retrieve vital information with minimal downtime to keep their operations moving.
Step 5: Be ready for the unforeseen
It’s clear that the distributed nature of work today, on top of an incessant growth of data volumes and information sources, has led to growing concerns among consumers about how their personal data is managed and secured. New data privacy, information governance and security practices are needed to address these concerns. By embracing information management software and an effective cybersecurity strategy, businesses can take an important step forward to manage the unforeseen. Whether it is geo-politically driven needs for data sovereignty, continued supply chain disruptions, or new ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) regulations, not having the foundations described above in place will put businesses at a disadvantage.
Establishing an integrated data management approach will help businesses to differentiate themselves in the marketplace, maintain customer trust and loyalty, and create a true information advantage.
Today, the power of digital transformation has been realized by every enterprise organization across the globe. The transformation to become flexible and adaptable starts with the journey from on-premises to the Cloud. Cloud service providers like OpenText™, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon provide tools to facilitate the migration of data to the cloud.
But is this journey enough to make a ‘Connected Enterprise’? Is the organization’s content:
Safe?
Accessible?
Integrated?
Governed?
Mobile?
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.“
Steve Jobs , Co-Founder of Apple Inc. Name
With the ever-growing digital data across an organization, the struggle to manage and make the content accessible to employees, business partners and customers has become prominent. There are some considerable challenges that come with trying to achieve this:
Unstructured content with no governance An organization with various departments such as HR, Accounts, Sales, and IT generate large amounts of data which gets dumped onto a single repository, this is what we call unstructured content. These contents do not have any structure and processes cannot be defined for accountability, transparency, stability, or responsiveness.
Search complexities A large enterprise can generate millions of documents a year comprising of various types such as pdf, doc, excel, and images. Indexing this data and making it easily searchable for the user becomes the next big challenge.
Data integration Business partners, vendors, suppliers, and customers of an organization need to be in sync with their relevant data. This requires a system capable of integrating within and outside of the organization with minimal effort.
Mobile content The world has become more dynamic than ever, and the necessity to access data on-the-go has become imperative. Users need to have the flexibility to store or access data from their mobile devices.
These challenges are the major ingredients to the recipe of poor productivity and chaos. They can lead to organizations investing time and money on managing the chaos rather than investing in business strategic development.
OpenText Content Suite is the content services platform which is designed to overcome that chaos and help facilitate organizations to manage the flow of information inside and outside their organization seamlessly. The Content Suite bundle comprises of different products including:
OpenText™ Content Server – Captures, creates and manages content across an organization. It provides features to classify and govern data for better content security and lifecycle management. Ultimately, structuring the unstructured data and helping to boost collaboration.
OpenText™ Directory Services– manages all user’s data in a central repository while seamlessly keeping all products in sync with the latest user data.
OpenText™ Archive Center– adds a layer of security to the content by encrypting the data and provides features for archiving contents.
OpenText™ Extended ECM Platform– gives power to integrate with various leading applications and exchange data within and outside the organization in a structured and manageable way.
Content is the foundation of any organization in today’s world and the OpenText Content Suite platform provides the best tools to manage and facilitate that content to create a truly Connected Enterprise.
Leverage the enterprise information management experience of OpenText Professional Services certified Consultants to achieve your transition from on-premises to the Cloud or contact us.
Author: Shivam Guha – Shivam is a Senior Consultant in OpenText Professional Services India working on multiple OpenText technologies to serve global customers with best practice solutions for Enterprise Information Management.
Recent experience has convinced me that familiarity breeds complacency when it comes to responding to Antitrust Second Requests. In the name of the “unique nature” of a Second Request review, experienced practitioners often maintain that only traditional protocols will work, and unhesitatingly accept a production set that may be upwards of 50% nonresponsive.
Certainly, there are constraints on review techniques when it comes to responding to a Second Request. Both the DOJ and the FTC require advance written notice when “using software or technology… to identify or eliminate documents, data, or information potentially responsive to [the] Request.”[i] Both likewise demand specific information when the review process relies on either search terms or technology-assisted review. The specific reference to “seed set[s] and training rounds” in the Model Second Requests used by each agency exhibits a selective, nearly exclusionary, preference for TAR 1.0. And the concomitant prohibition in the DOJ’s Predictive Coding Model Agreement against any responsiveness review following the “predictive coding process” virtually guarantees the substantial, unnecessary production of nonresponsive documents.[ii]
But those constraints should never inhibit a constant quest for better techniques – techniques that make the review more efficient or result in the production of less nonresponsive documents, or both. Much like the technology titans chronicled in Always Day One, we cannot slip into Day Two and focus on fiercely defending tradition rather than inventing the future.[iii] As Jeff Bezos (Amazon) observed in a 2016 letter to shareholders:[iv]
Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.
– Jeff Bezos
Instead, we need to strive to continuously live Day One and prioritize focused innovation over tradition – particularly when we cling to tradition only for tradition’s sake.
And, as discussed below, there is indeed a better technique for responding to Antitrust Second Requests, a more efficient technique that effectively focuses on the exclusive production of responsive documents. There is a better way and, frankly, no rational reason to stagnate in tradition.
Tradition is stasis
Practitioners typically use one of two techniques when responding to Second Requests: either search terms followed by linear review, or TAR 1.0. Neither is particularly efficient or effective. And both provide, at best, limited insight into the documents produced to the agency. Even worse, a TAR 1.0 approach can be exceedingly harmful as a consequence of the unavoidable production of nonresponsive documents.
One tangential observation before moving to the reality of both techniques: the fact that those practitioners who focus on Second Requests use antiquated eDiscovery techniques for review debunks the “unique nature” of an Antitrust Second Request review. It is, after all (assuming proper training by counsel), just a document review – responsiveness and privilege are far from foreign concepts to an experienced document review team. And the magnitude and compressed production deadlines associated with Second Requests are becoming almost commonplace touchstones among experienced eDiscovery vendors. One marketing piece for Second Request capabilities highlights the ability to process 45 million documents in 106 days. Okay… but I have seen eDiscovery vendors capable of processing upwards of 30 million documents (~33TB), in 30 days. There is simply nothing truly “unique” about responding to a Second Request.
And if the eDiscovery realm has taught us anything, we know that search terms followed by linear review is an ineffective, inefficient document review technique. The Blair Maron study tells us that search terms often retrieve only on the order of twenty percent (20%) of the responsive documents from a document collection.[v] And while naysayers often seek to discredit the study – largely on the basis of advances in computerized search technology – I have personally seen knowledgeablemerits counsel struggle to find thirty percent (30%) of the responsive documents using search terms with even the most modern search technology. Since 20% or 30% recall will undoubtedly be inadequate for a Second Request, practitioners will need to spend countless hours refining the search terms to improve recall. And with increased recall comes decreased precision – a direct consequence of the precision-recall tradeoff.[vi] Practically, that means that every point-increase in the recall percentage will decrease the precision in the search term review set by some amount. And, since the Blair Maron study put observed precision at roughly 80%, much more than 20% of the review set will be nonresponsive at higher recall levels. That directly increases review effort and decreases efficiency.
If the eDiscovery realm has taught us anything, we know that search terms followed by linear review is an ineffective, inefficient document review technique.
Qualitatively, the search term approach is even more concerning. Typical Second Request document volumes and deadlines necessitate a substantial number of reviewers. Marketing materials for one large case tout the engagement of more than 300 reviewers for a single Second Request response. That presents two practical problems. First, more reviewers simply means more inconsistency. This can be particularly disconcerting when privilege calls are missed. Second, with documents being spread indiscriminately among so many reviewers, there is no opportunity for gaining any real insight into the nature of the documents that are being produced to the agency. In the context of a fast-paced Second Request, this can mean the difference between preparation and naked reaction during negotiations.
A TAR 1.0 approach, on the other hand, may be more efficient (in terms of the number of documents reviewed to achieve production), but will undoubtedly be less effective and less protective. At a reasonable recall level, TAR 1.0 is not particularly precise. It is not at all uncommon to see precision levels at less than 50%. And marketing materials for one large case suggest that precision for some collections may well be less than 30% at recall levels of only 75%. That means that upwards of half of a production to the agency will be nonresponsive, particularly since any subsequent responsiveness review is prohibited.
Qualitatively, a TAR 1.0 approach can be even worse than a search term approach. Poor precision in a TAR 1.0 review doesn’t increase review – it increases exposure. Nonresponsive documents are never reviewed; they are produced directly to the agency. Consequently, every issue contained in every nonresponsive document is directly exposed to the agency. And, since only a small fraction of the collection is reviewed to develop the TAR model, there is even less insight into the substance of the production.
Ultimately, traditional review techniques do not well serve the spectrum of objectives attendant to Second Request reviews.
Ultimately, traditional review techniques do not well serve the spectrum of objectives attendant to Second Request reviews. Neither technique adequately optimizes efficiency, effectiveness, and protection.
Day One: Innovating a better way
To say there is a better way to respond to a Second Request is an understatement. An innovative rapid analytic investigative review (RAIR) that combines refined workflows with the adept application of analytics, and integrated and targeted sampling, will collectively optimize for all three – efficiency, effectiveness and, perhaps most importantly (particularly given the deficiencies of traditional approaches) protection.
So, how does a RAIR review work?
The backbone of a RAIR review is a small, sophisticated team dedicated to the investigatory, analytic, statistical assessment of substantively similar tranches of documents – typically a team with fewer than ten members. More than one team may be necessary, depending on the volume and homogeneity of the collection. But, given that one team can typically assess a few hundred thousand documents in the span of just a week, seldom will any review require more than three teams.
It nearly goes without saying that the concentrated and focused character of the RAIR team will improve consistency, particularly over massive 300 person reviews. And an ingrained practice of constant communication and collaboration within and among the teams only serves to further promote not only consistency, but also decision-making – drawing on the collective wisdom of the team(s), as opposed to the isolated individual determinations of a single reviewer.
Each tranche of documents is derived using all available analytics, essentially by aggregating sets of documents that are substantively similar from the perspective of responsiveness. This approach often results in the creation of document sets that combine thousands, or even tens of thousands, of similar documents for a single decision – responsive or nonresponsive. (I have personally seen one situation where more than 2 million virtually identical documents were aggregated.) This aggregation process continues until the entire collection has been evaluated. And the basis for aggregating each document set is recorded to support the defensibility of the process.
Throughout the aggregation process, this focused assessment automatically instills valuable insights into the context and substance of the documents in the collection, far more than any single individual might garner using traditional review techniques. This continuous and timely knowledge of the contents of, particularly, the documents being produced to the agency can be critical to advance planning, and fully protecting the client’s interests in negotiations with the agency.
As document sets are aggregated, random samples of each set are generated to provide the basis for a bulk responsiveness assessment. At least one sample having a confidence level of 95% and a confidence interval of ±5% should be drawn from each set. More than one sample may be drawn from larger or more diverse (less homogenous) document sets, and small document sets may be reviewed in their entirety.
These representative samples are then reviewed for responsiveness. If the entire sample is consistent and correct, the entire document set is coded accordingly. If the sample is not wholly consistent, the original document set will be reassessed and, if necessary, further separated into responsive and nonresponsive sets. New samples of both will then be drawn and reviewed for a subsequent iteration. Throughout this sample review process, each document may also be evaluated for privilege.
The statistical implications of this approach for the responsiveness review are noteworthy. The responsiveness decision for every aggregated document set is essentially validated with a 95/5 sample. As a result, a RAIR review drives superior levels of recall and precision, often reaching greater than 90% on both. That means that the agency will get virtually everything it might be entitled to under the Second Request (responsive), and nothing that does not otherwise need to be produced (nonresponsive).
A RAIR review drives superior levels of recall and precision, often reaching greater than 90% on both.
Finally, in addition to the preliminary privilege assessment during the responsiveness sample review, privilege is subject to much closer scrutiny. Documents are not simply reviewed independently; analytics are used to identify the characteristics (subject matter, timing, people, etc.) underlying contextual privileges, and investigatory techniques are then used to find the privileged documents. This approach ensures the utmost consistency and coverage, particularly given the symbiotic operation of the RAIR team and the intensive, focused analysis underlying the investigation for privileged documents.
Once all of the aggregated document sets have been assessed, and the privilege assessment is complete, a clean concise set of documents almost exclusively responsive to a Second Request can be produced to the agency.
Abandon tradition for innovation
The relative benefits of a RAIR review over traditional review techniques for responding to a Second Request are straightforward. Fewer documents are reviewed. More responsive and fewer nonresponsive documents are produced. Privilege protection is greater. And a RAIR review provides insights into the substance of the production that would otherwise never be available. That is why it should always be Day One.
Learn more about OpenText Managed Document Review.
[i] Seehttps://www.justice.gov/atr/file/706636/download (DOJ Model Second Request, Instruction 4) and https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/attachments/hsr-resources/model_second_request_-_final_-_october_2021.pdf (FTC Model Second Request, Instruction 15).
[ii] See https://www.justice.gov/file/1096096/download (DOJ Predictive Coding Model Agreement).
[iii] Alex Kantrowitz, Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever.
The evaluation, code named OilRig 2022, assessed the industry’s top sixteen Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services as well as Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) on their ability to detect, analyze and thoroughly report on adversary behavior in response to a threat and maintain cyber resilience.
OpenText MxDR reduces noise by 97% and detects 99% of threats
OpenText MxDR successfully defended a simulated customer environment against the MITRE red team impersonating APT-39 (a.k.a. OilRig):
No false positives Throughout the evaluation, OpenText MxDR did not alert on any false positives and did not incorrectly report on any threatening behavior.
Reported all tactics Immediately, the OpenText MxDR service identified the threat actor and detected every single attack tactic within 7 minutes.
Top tier security expertise Our Security Operations Team distinguished itself by providing mature Security Operations Center (SOC) capabilities and advanced digital forensics investigations capabilities. Our methodology ensures rapid response to maintain cyber resilience.
No Noise, All Detections
OpenText achieved a perfect score in OilRig 2022 for noise reduction. In fact, OpenText did not falsely alert or create unnecessary case work for the simulated customer. Alert fatigue is a main issue with most other vendors, but not OpenText which promises 97% noise reduction. At the same time, OpenText MxDR provided exact and documented response actions to remediate the APT-39 attack. Alerts and actions were provided within minutes, even seconds in some cases, and it detected all tactics in OilRig 2022 to uncover hidden attacks.
OpenText’s capability to keep security teams focused on actual security incidents propels its Managed Extended Detection and Response (MxDR) service to the top of the list, helping customers maintain cyber resilience. Research shows that 75 percent more time is spent chasing false positives than dealing with actual security incidents. With OpenText MxDR, a fully managed service, organizations can cut the noise, cue the results.
Security Expertise First
MITRE Engenuity research found that a majority of organizations are exclusively using managed services, or a hybrid of managed services combined with in-house security operations. However, nearly half are not confident in the service technology or people.
Enters OpenText… MITRE assessed, our threat-informed defense practices are delivered from our 24x7x365 virtual security operations center staffed with threat hunters, digital forensic investigators and incident responders to manage and maintain cyber resilience for our customers.
OpenText stands out with a complete security consulting portfolio providing detection, response and remediation. Our customers need only a single vendor for their managed security services, their digital forensics and incident response (DFIR), and their risk and compliance advisory.
OilRig 2022
The MITRE team emulated the OilRig tactics and techniques, a threat actor with operations aligning to the strategic objectives of the Iranian government. OilRig has conducted operations relying on social engineering, stolen credentials, and supply chain attacks, resulting in the theft of sensitive data from critical infrastructure, financial services, government, military, and telecommunications.
OpenText showcased its threat-informed defense practices against this threat actor known for evasion and persistence techniques and its complexity. OpenText engaged in the assessment with MITRE as a simulated customer of its Managed Extended Detection and Response (MxDR). Our managed XDR complements the customer’s existing security infrastructure with OpenText technology such as BrightCloud®, OpenText™ EnCase™ and MDR Agent.
Learn how OpenText’s defended against OilRig 2022 by listening to the on-demand webinar.
The market continues to be volatile and change is occurring with great velocity. Shortages and price increases have made customers less loyal, and the landscape is more competitive as customers look for alternatives. Organizations try to keep up, but masses of dispersed business information make it difficult to satisfy constantly changing customer needs as the way we do business continues to evolve.
Wasted time, duplicated work, and inefficient processes due to poor information flows can chip away at an organization’s reputation and bottom line. Small inefficiencies add up—and they can hurt worker productivity and your competitive edge in the market.
79% of sales reps say they have had to quickly adapt to new ways of selling to stay agile in an uncertain world with unpredictable buying behaviours. – Salesforce, State of Sales, 4th Edition, 2021
But agility is a challenge for many. Siloed departments, with siloed information, translate into stagnant and disconnected customer experiences. Sales and customer service teams of all types, from call service agents to caseworkers, are only as good as the information they can access.
How can your organization adapt? Customer information management is critical for organizations to stay competitive and gain momentum
What should organizations consider for better customer information management?
Capture and collect relevant information – Not effectively collecting all information in an automated and integrated way to classify and route it to the right place is a root cause of content chaos across the business.
Connect relevant information – Storing unstructured information separate from the customer’s transactional data in the CRM and other systems leads to inefficiencies and lost productivity and causes risks if mishandled.
Understand and address digital expectations – Both employees and customers expect content and experiences to be connected and available at the right place and at the right time to speed access and avoid frustration.
Make customer needs the top priority – Ensure content is available to the entire organization to enable frictionless business processes for more responsive and better customer experiences
Deliver relevant communications – You need to strongly represent your message, quickly and on-brand. Connecting with customers with the right message, before someone else does, can make all the difference.
How can better customer information management impact sales and service processes?
An effective content management platform integrates with the tools that sales teams use every day for instant access to relevant customer content. It allows them to collaborate to move customers through the lead-to-order process quickly and efficiently with reduced friction.
Effective content management provides a complete 360-degree account view and ensures operational efficiency by allowing appropriate access to all departments (sales and beyond) from anywhere, while delivering on governance with auditing, versioning, and comprehensive access control to mitigate business risk.
How can your organization gain the information advantage?
Bring people, processes and content closer together with centralized customer information for modern Sales and Service teams. A true 360-degree customer view must include not just real-time data from a CRM, but also related, connected content.
With this complete and enhanced customer view, sellers can make smarter and faster decisions. Sales and Customer Service teams will no longer waste valuable time hunting across systems for the right version of a customer document. A consolidated and complete view of the customer across the enterprise builds better sales processes and drives deeper insights that help surface more opportunities, generate greater customer loyalty, and build better relationships.
Take these steps to gain the information advantage
Step 1: CaptureInformation
Digitize the inbound processing of business content so sales and service agents have early visibility and can prioritize urgent, value-add tasks. Automating repetitive tasks streamlines processing, ensuring improved customer satisfaction and a better employee experience.
Step 2: ManageInformation
Produce a complete view of the customer across the enterprise, including structured and unstructured information, to improve sales and service processes. Achieving deeper insights into related content speeds up decision-making and generates more opportunities while promoting greater customer loyalty and stronger relationships.
Step 3: Deliver Information
Reduce sales and service cycle times by generating pixel-perfect, personalized customer communications that nurture closer relationships, delight customers, and engage them at every step of the decision journey.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast – or does it? The famous quote from management consultant Peter Drucker is often debated in corporate circles. But the role of communications in achieving both strategic and customer experience objectives cannot be overlooked.
Communications is at the heart of workplace culture and change. Muriel Rukeyser was onto something when she wrote that the universe is made up of stories, not of atoms. We connect and relate to each other through storytelling, and it is a powerful force to motivate action.
Forrester’s research shows that customer experience leaders grow revenue faster than CX laggards, cut costs, reduce risk and can charge more for their products. On average, when companies deliver a good service experience by solving problems quickly, their customers are 2.4 times more likely to stay with them.1 A relatively small improvement in the speed of problem solving could increase the revenue of a multichannel bank by $37.9 million and the revenue of a mass-market auto brand by $370 million.2 How can communications help elevate CX in your organization?
1)Fostering a culture of transparency
Customer experience starts with employees. Prioritizing employee experience alongside an enterprise CX strategy helps engage people in rallying around your company mission, vision and values. It highlights the importance of putting customers or clients at the center of everything you do. It helps ensure employees have access to customer data in order to best do their jobs and are on board with achieving company-wide KPIs related to CX. Communications can also play a pivotal role in connecting CX company-wide and individual measures to performance management activities and helping to build employee engagement.
2) Connecting CX to the C-Suite
Communications can help elevate the profile of CX – especially as it relates to leadership. By communicating frequently about your ambitions and ensuring executive buy-in, employees will understand the importance of customer experience to the company’s bottom line. Reinforcing CX strategy, progress, goals and more at townhalls, leadership forums and other internal company meetings helps build momentum and engagement.
3)Instilling empathy
Sharing great customer experiences alongside frustrating ones to a broad audience will help open employee’s eyes to pain points in the customer journey. By highlighting common process errors playing out it real time to cases where employees go above and beyond to solve problems for customers, communications can help build empathy. Thoughtful communications can help employees better understand customers and to put them at the center of their work.
4)Accelerating quick wins
Communications help educate, inform and engage employees along your CX journey. Create incentives for employees to submit process improvement ideas and accelerate quick wins. Share your company’s progress toward larger goals on a regular basis. Humanize individual instances and tell stories about ways in which listening to customers resulted in exceeding their expectations.
There are so many ways that communications can fuel a company’s journey to becoming truly customer-centric. With a thoughtful strategy, communications can build a customer-first mindset and help execute on a company’s CX objectives.
Can you follow the “practice, practice, practice” model of the best pianists to succeed at digital transformation? Cindy Olsen, Sr. Manager, Brand and UX at Micro Focus thinks it’s about more than developing expertise. The LEGO Company is a great example, and offers a starting place for understanding how to embrace the tensions that accompany digital transformation.
Many of us embarked on the path of musicianship by learning how to play piano when we were young. Some of us endured it, and hopefully many enjoyed it. The skills you need to master this instrument require doing many things all at the same time. Reading two different lines of music. Left and right hand each doing multiple things independent of each other. But all in a way that it synthesizes together—and sometimes coordinates with other musicians—to reveal a hidden world of soul-stirring beauty within the piano’s 88 keys.
Fighting nature
The problem I had—and I suspect many others do, too—was that I couldn’t make my brain, hands, and sometimes feet, do all of that together at the same time. And it turns out that’s how nature intended it. Studies show that we can’t really multitask—and if we try we’re prone to mistakes. Our limbic systems, or our “lizard brains”, try to make us prioritize immediate needs over future needs. With all the tasks laid out in the music, it just wasn’t in the cards for me.
In business terms, figuring out everything that you have to do at the same time for digital transformation is a bit like learning to play the piano. You have to do many things, all at the same time. Ultimately, piano players figure it out by devoting hours and hours of practice over many years. But is it the same for digital transformation? There are some important differences for organizations who want to succeed.
Embracing the tensions of digital transformation
A recently published book, Both/And Thinking, by Smith and Lewis, helps us understand that those organizations with digital transformation agendas need to embrace what’s made them great in first place. But they can’t let it make them complacent. Their book cites the example of LEGO Company—so successful they were named “Toy of the Century”—and how they started to lose their market position in the late 90s because they didn’t embrace new ways of doing business. In fact, when Lucasfilm proposed a partnership of the two companies for introducing Star Wars, a vice president was quoted as saying, “Over my dead body will LEGO ever introduce Star Wars.” Now more than 30 years later, six of the top-10 owned-LEGO sets, according to BrickEconomy.com, are Star Wars-themed.
Clearly LEGO found a way to embrace not only film partnerships, but movies, computer games, theme parks, and more. Smith and Lewis show us that they managed to navigate the tensions “between innovation and efficiency, modernization and traditions, flexibility and control.” Now LEGO is even more iconic than just the classic brick construction toys so many of us played with as children.
And so it is the same for digital transformation. The global economy is quickly moving to digital-first, and IT must learn to embrace the tensions that it brings. Attitudes like, “This is how we’ve always done it, and it still works,” need to change to, “This is how we’ve done it. What can we keep? What bridges do we need to build? How can the things that make us great make us better as we move forward?” And of course—how can we do it all at the same time?
Five strategies for digital transformation agendas
Micro Focus has five strategies that help IT work through—and embrace—the tensions and dilemmas of digital transformation. Each of these help our customers develop a tailored approach that works best for them to run and transform at the same time.
Don’t replace, update: Enterprises invest significant capital and resources into their technology choices and are often reluctant to abandon them—because they still work. But they become more expensive and riskier to maintain. These organizations can make incremental steps toward digitalization such as virtualization, containerization, so they can begin moving that intrinsic value to the cloud.
Incorporate insights quickly: Finding a way to improve customer experiences with the immediacy required by customers today means releasing applications on an increasingly accelerated schedule. Adopting software development lifecycle practices that allow you to input feedback and act quickly is key. Value stream management applies well-known manufacturing principles to application development, makes processes transparent, and gives visibility into value.
Automate everything possible: Automating processes and procedures that were once manual removes both risk of error and drives down cost. Robotic process automation, machine learning, and AI are all solutions you can pursue to move toward smoother digital IT operations.
Augment your analytics: Analytics used to come from humans digging insights out of spreadsheets that were thousands of lines long. In the digital world, change happens in hours, not days. Selecting a strong analytics solution for your enterprise can help surface critical insights early so you can feed them back into your business.
Be proactive about security: Unfortunately, “security by obscurity” isn’t always enough to keep your valuable data and assets safe anymore. Criminals are highly motivated, so you must protect what you already have, and simultaneously anticipate where they might try to attack next. Cyber resilience must always be on, and is a board-level imperative.
Practice flexibility
So as organizations “practice the fundamentals” of their business, it’s important to stay flexible with an eye to the horizon. Move forward by taking incremental steps and finding the right digital technology for what you’re trying to accomplish, not just the new and shiny thing. The game is changing—are you ready to find a new way of thinking that could change everything? Embrace the tensions of digital transformation so you can build a pathway to success.
To learn more about how Micro Focus helps our customers embrace the tensions of digital transformation so they can run and transform at the same time, check out our website.
Build strong work relationships. Find a mentor, and consider a sponsor. Work hard ― but carve out time for life outside of work. All these things are so important for the advancement of women to the highest levels of an organization, and they are just a few pieces of advice that OpenText senior leaders shared at a recent panel discussion at the University of Waterloo (UW).
OpenText is a proud sponsor of the Women in Computer Science Committee (WiCS) at UW, with a goal to empower women to pursue careers in technology, computing, engineering, and become leaders in their fields. On September 28, Jen Bell VP, Chief Communications Officer at OpenText hosted a panel discussion for female computer science students at UW featuring OpenText leaders Renée McKenzie, EVP & Chief Information Officer, and Tracy Caughell, Senior Director, Product Management.
This candid discussion was full of advice on overcoming challenges like unconscious bias and imposter syndrome. Here are some key takeaways from their discussion that left attendees inspired and ready to take the next step in their careers.
JB: Renée and Tracy, you’ve both shown your ability to thrive as leaders in the technology industry, which has historically been male-dominated. Could you tell us what sort of challenges you have faced while navigating your careers, and how you overcame them?
RM: When I started in the workforce, working in the tech field was not a nine-to-five job. It still isn’t. Technology doesn’t rest ― you have to be available and meet deadlines. At that time, I was the only woman in the room, and I had to explore my boundaries early on. I was a single mother, and I had to leave at 5. I had to pick up my daughter from daycare, make dinner, and focus on being a parent. I was happy to go back online later in the evening, but I had to educate the men around me that I couldn’t stay until seven, I couldn’t do the after-work socializing, or work Saturday at the last minute, because childcare was my responsibility. I had to make sure that they understood those boundaries, and the rationale behind them. I wasn’t doing less than the peers around me, but my time scale had to be a little bit different if they wanted me at the table.
TC: What I noticed in working at a very large global company with over 15,000 employees were the cultural differences. I see this not so much as a challenge, but as a learning opportunity. When I returned to work after my first maternity leave, I was in a part of the world that I’d never been to before, and someone asked me who was looking after my children. I told them, truthfully, that my mother was, and it seemed like everyone breathed a sigh of relief at this “acceptable” answer. I learned that it’s important to be aware that everybody has a different perspective in life, and it’s important to be openminded in places around the world you’ve never experienced before.
It also helps to remember that you got the job because you deserve it. You are really qualified for the role, and you earned it. Keep making yourself better, and then earn your next step. You can’t possibly know everything, but you need the confidence to know that you’ll be able to figure it out.
Tracy Caughell
JB: That’s very true. And people tend to make sense of our world by organizing it into categories, which gives rise to unconscious biases about various social and identity groups. In the tech industry in particular, gender bias leads people ― including women ― to believe that women cannot build tech skills as successfully as men, or don’t have the leadership qualities needed for a successful career in technology. What do you think we should be doing to overcome gender bias in the tech industry?
RM: First, we need to recognize that unconscious bias is real. We all have biases ― it’s what we learn as we grow up, and we take this forward into the workplace. Secondly, we need to identify our own biases. Do you expect notetaking to be done by a woman in a meeting? Do you accept that the whiteboarding of a technical design will always be done by a male colleague? Write your biases on a piece of paper, and you’ll see where you need to adjust. The next step is to have the voice to call it out, because it’s not only about you ― it’s about what you see around you. When you see someone always deferring to a woman or man for a certain task, call it out. You can do it in private, but when you see it, say something, with courtesy and respect. We all must solve the problem together.
TC: Once you understand that you grew up believing a bias, that’s when it becomes conscious ― and then you need to do something about it, right? When you realize that about yourself, it can be unsettling. There are many ways to handle it, but always handle it with grace. Maybe you decide to rotate tasks among the group to address something you notice before it becomes a problem.
JB: We all celebrate the well-deserved success of women who’ve achieved fulfilling careers as leaders within their own organizations. But sometimes, women have a tendency to feel that they don’t deserve their success ― this is “impostor syndrome”. Have either of you ever been affected by impostor syndrome, and if so, what strategies do you use to combat it?
RM: Imposter syndrome is very real for me. It was something I experienced early in my career: Am I smart enough? Am I fast enough? Is there enough quality in my work? And yet I continued to be promoted. I had those questions in my head because I always wanted to be better and do better.
I thought once I reached a certain level in my career, it would stop. It didn’t. But those voices got quieter because I’ve learned to cope with it. I have a rational conversation in my head to pair those sentiments with the facts: “I haven’t done this task before, but I know I can do it. I have these peers to rely on, this sponsor to go talk to, this plan that I know is going to be effective.” After walking myself through this logical conversation, I come out the other side: “Yeah, I’ve totally got this. And I’m the best one to do this thing!”
TC: It also helps to remember that you got the job because you deserve it. You are really qualified for the role, and you earned it. Keep making yourself better, and then earn your next step. You can’t possibly know everything, but you need the confidence to know that you’ll be able to figure it out.
JB: Great insights from both of you. I would also add that having a network of people that you trust is very important. Your colleagues, whether inside your organization or out, can help raise you up when you’re feeling self-doubt. At OpenText, we’ve created a Women In Technology group, which is an empowering group of women from across the globe, at all levels within the organization. These women come together to raise each other up and challenge unconscious bias, as well as processes and policies to advance the female perspective and female leaders within our organization. I mirror exactly what you said: Find a support network, practice self-reflection, and be kind to yourself. You’ve got this – don’t allow yourself to get in your own way.
I love this next question: If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self, what would it be?
RM: I was mid-career before I figured out who I wanted to be at work. So, I would go back and ask myself to figure it out earlier: Who do I want to be at work? What’s that persona? How do I want other people to perceive me? What the influence I want to have?
I wanted to be seen as somebody of quality, somebody of commitment, somebody who is not just passionate about what they do but willing to do what it takes for a successful outcome. It’s not just about getting your work done. Think bigger from the get-go. I also decided what I wasn’t going to do at work: I wasn’t going to be a note taker. I wasn’t going to bring in cookies. These things may seem trivial, but for me, they formulated a persona of who I was going to be at work. Of course, it’s followed up with doing your job exceptionally well, putting in the time, and making peer connections. But find out who you want to be in your journey. And value yourself high. Ask for the salary you deserve. You’re smart, you’re educated, you’re successful, and you’re passionate. Never underestimate your value.
TC: That’s really good advice. To add to that, I would say that everybody’s journey is different. For example, I like to be the note taker, because I like the sense of control over what happens next. If I could go back in time and give myself a piece of advice, it would be to make sure to make time for myself. I tend to be a workaholic and push myself to be an expert in everything I do. You can do that, but remember to carve out personal time. To be honest, it’s something I’m still working on.
JB: Very good pieces of advice. One thing that I have really found valuable when I started my career was having a mentor, and it’s something that I pay forward now. Could you speak to a mentoring relationship that you had that was really impactful, or maybe you’ve been a mentor to someone, and it’s been quite impactful?
TC: I didn’t have an official mentor, but there are a lot of women in our organization that are really good role models, and I would look at how they handled similar situations. There are also a lot of men that have been great role models for me. As for being a mentor, sometimes it’s simply encouraging somebody who is struggling. Take the time to ask how you can help. That’s all it really takes in some cases.
RM: Having a mentor is very helpful. I’d recommend going one step further and get a sponsor. A mentor is someone you can go talk to: How would you handle this scenario? What would you recommend? Find someone that you trust. A sponsor is somebody who raises your visibility when you might not be in the room. This encourages awareness of your capabilities not only within your department, but to leaders across the organization. So, when someone says, “hey, I wonder who could do this”, and your sponsor is in the room, they may encourage your leadership team to think about you. This is a really powerful way to help advance in your career journey. And then, you pay it forward.
OpenText is focused on the advancement of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (ED&I), by committing to having a majority ethnically diverse workforce by 2030, 50/50 gender parity within key roles by 2030, and 40% women in leadership positions at all management levels by 2030. Read more about OpenText’s bold goals in our 2022 Corporate Citizenship Report.
Technology alone won’t defeat cybercriminals. Effective cybersecurity isn’t something you buy off the shelf, set, and forget. To secure your data, you must be proactive, have oversight of your entire IT infrastructure, and be poised to efficiently remediate any incidents.
OpenText’s MxDR platform combines exceptional tools and a proactive approach to ensure you have highly advanced threat intelligence and the ability to root out trouble and keep it from re-occurring.
Smarter forensics. Unparalleled detection.
It begins with superior forensics.
Our MxDR is built around a 100 percent remote, cloud-based virtual security operations center supported by powerful machine learning and MITRE ATT&CK framework. We also employ advanced tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) built across the entire cyber kill chain to develop correlations between computer, network, and device logs. OpenTextTM MxDR can ingest any log source and develop correlations between desktops, laptops, servers, firewall logs, IoT devices, IDS logs, proxy logs, and more.
By directly integrating BrightCloud® Threat Intelligence Services, we help you understand the scope and impact of any security event for immediate threat validation to known malware.
The “enterprise network” as we used to consider it is no more. The perimeters of today’s typical IT infrastructure keep expanding. In addition to your traditional enterprise network and endpoints, your data now lives on the cloud, on personal devices, on web servers, and with your supply-chain partners.
Proactively monitoring it all, and mitigating risk across your attack surface can be daunting, and simply adding new technology to your stack can strain your budget.
Wherever your sensitive data travels and however you store it, OpenText’s MXDR Platform delivers a comprehensive view of your infrastructure. It enables you to see your endpoints, servers, email, cloud, and network traffic—thoroughly analyzed and correlated, using a cloud-based SIEM for real-time threat alerts and remediation.
OpenText MXDR’s approach stands apart. It collects and ingests any log source—allowing for customized TTPs to be developed for each unique environment—no matter how complex. We let you stay a step ahead of APTs in an ever-changing world, and unlike some detection and response solutions, ours offers a multi-tenant platform with full access for customers to run full reports.
Integrate it with your existing security investments or let us host it. Either way, it’s a seamless solution.
Always on. Always vigilant.
OpenText MxDR lets you pair best-in-breed technologies with security personnel who have more than 15 years of experience working in breach response investigations and malware analysis.
Once a threat is detected our team of experts conducts an in-depth investigation to identify the origin of compromise, the extent of the breach, and its intent. We give you your most critical alerts, and only the alerts that truly matter. OpenText’s outstanding TTPs ensure you won’t get thousands of false positive alerts.
Use unmatched security workflows that reduce alert and event noise with zero false positives, saving analysts valuable time and providing confidence in any findings.
Intuitive and powerful, OpenText MxDR is your single source of truth—the next best thing to being inside your infrastructure.
