Variable data & personalisation

If you regularly produce transactional data documents such as invoices, credit notes and statements, or personalised documents such as mail merges or promotional materials, variable data and personalisation technology could deliver major business benefits for you.

Whilst more organisations are becoming aware of their true printing costs, many struggle to implement a best practice approach to transactional and personalised output.

For some the challenge is the source data. Proprietary or fixed file formats from legacy systems are often viewed as a roadblock and the data centres of many businesses choose to persevere with costly pre-printed stationery and impact printers, an inflexible and often risky approach that does little to inspire customers. Other organisations fail to optimise the distribution format to maximise the effectiveness and reduce the costs of their communications efforts, over-stretching the use of applications such as mail merges, and settling for a standard layout for everyone which is relentlessly committed to paper before distributing.

Simple ways to manage legacy data formats

Balreed can help you take control of legacy data output without the need to invest in expensive rewriting of the report formats. Our solutions can be tailored to capture the key data fields from existing report files, then produce a unique, dynamic new document to a new template format for each of your records. And these new documents can then be printed on the device of your choice without the restriction and expense of pre-printed stationery.

Dynamic personalised output

As well as producing your data in an improved layout you can add new variable content to your documents. A statement need not only carry the account balance and a client’s details for example, but also a promotional message related to a key field of their data, perhaps prompting an offer on a product related to what they purchased from you previously for example. Dynamic text, images or graphics can all be added to increase the effectiveness of the personalised document.

Output management

As well as improving the ease of data management and the layout of documents, Balreed can help you optimise the process so that the document is distributed in the most appropriate format. For example if you have the email addresses of some clients, the personalised document could be automatically formatted and then emailed to them without you having to print and post it to them, improving your efficiency and dramatically reducing your costs and environmental impact.

Variable data and personalisation technology can help improve many paper processes within an organisation, and can be a key part of an integrated document strategy.

Please talk to us to find out more.