Standard Data Models in CCM
How Interchangeable Parts Can Improve Your Capabilities
By building parts that are standardized and effectively identical, each part can freely replace another of the same type. This allows for easy assembly and repair of a system and minimizes the time and skill required for maintenance and management. Standard data models in CCM (customer communication management) also work in an equivalent way.
Many of us learned in school about Eli Whitney, Marc Isambard Brunel, Henry Leland, and others who pioneered the idea of âinterchangeable parts,â a concept that accelerated the industrial revolution. Over 200 years ago, standard, identical parts drove explosive growth in manufacturing as assembly line production replaced handcrafting for many goods. In recent decades, the ability to customize within any given set of standards, through modular design and production techniques, has shown that the same principles of interchangeability still apply.
The use of interchangeable parts unlocks potential that is otherwise lost in managing unnecessary complexity. Another result is that division of labor is more easily accomplishedâpeople can focus on their core responsibilities while being assured that their work will integrate with everyone elseâs without having to manage a large set of customized requirements.
These same concepts can be applied to your CCM framework. Some of the more obvious examples are the standards that govern images (EPS, TIFF, JPG, PNG, etc.) and documents (PDF, AFP, HTML5, etc.) where organizations often choose a limited set of input or output standards to be used. These are important, but simple standards to establish and most organizations have adopted standards in this area.
However, a common gap we often experience in our enterprise CCM solution at BelWo is that organizations miss the opportunity to establish a set of âstandard data modelsâ or standard specifications for the technical layout of certain data and templates, to enable broad, modular reuse of components across their content communication management framework. Whether itâs due to poor governance or poor architecture design or just sheer scale, it is easy for organizations to lose control of their complex CCM applications. Standard data models, applied appropriately, can help solve that problem.
Letâs explore some of the concepts of standard data models and how they can be used effectively in CCM.
What is a standard data model in CCM?
In a CCM solution, a standard data model should include a database model and a template model:
Database models are either relational or flat models that show the field definitions, parent/child arrays, etc. for all data sources in the framework, as well as their relationships to each other. These are typically visualized in a hierarchical or tree format and are typically implemented as XSD (XML schema definition) files that define certain interchange points in an application.
Template models show how data elements from the database model are represented in the variable composition from your CCM system. These are blocks of layout logic that might range from simple and common uses like address blocks and key lines, to more complex business blocks like transactional tables, targeted messaging areas, and content insertion logic.
In combination, these models define how data should be âshapedâ when it comes in or out of the application and how that data is represented when it is composed and printed or emailed or sent to any other channel.
These become our interchangeable parts. A CCM standard data model results in an inventory of interchangeable parts that, within the appropriate context, can be reused across various applications.
When standard data models should be used (and when they should not be used)
Letâs start with some discussion of how standard models can be misapplied. While they are a critical part of a successful CCM solution development, standard data models arenât a cure for all your customer communication-related woes. Improperly applied, they can slow you down.
For instance, a Print Service Provider (PSP) would not build a single, monolithic standard data model to serve all their customers. Trying to build a model that would support healthcare, insurance, financial, and retail customers would be impossible.
Even an enterprise with a narrow business focus might not build a single, monolithic standard to drive their customer communications. When there are significant data structure or template layout approaches between communication streams, they often warrant different models. In every enterprise, there will be some small amount of customer communication output that just does not happen consistently enough to warrant the development of a model.
Over-standardizing can create confusion, lengthen development times, and decrease flexibilityâexactly the opposite of what standard models are meant to achieve. Choosing the boundaries for a standard model is not a trivial task and requires an understanding of the bottom-up realities (existing data structures and how they operate today), the top-down goals (what the business wants to accomplish), and the capabilities of your CCM framework.
While the service provider would not build a single standard model for their entire business, they would certainly develop a model for address blocks and key lines. They would also develop a standard model for healthcare ID cards, for instance and for auto policy quotes, daily confirmations, and for quickly deploying emergency letters. In this way, they can address those products quickly, using well-established data and layout standards. They might create a layout variation from the standard for a specific customer, but the existence of the standard cuts the development time enormously and the layout variation is linked to the standard for easier maintenance and management. In addition, the standard model components are well-tested and robust, lowering testing effort and the risk of untested conditions.
Our enterprise customers use standard models to drive lines of business or product lines and to help govern standards across their organization. A property & casualty (P&C) insurance customer might have its own auto policy quote model with layout variations for different regional markets, along with similar models and regional variations for a range of personal and commercial P&C products. When a standard CCM system is in place, onboarding a new customer or even a brand-new product becomes the assembly of some standard components, some (much lower than normal) customization work, and faster, lower-risk deployment. The result is communication that the enterprise knows will be accurate and consistent in content and style.
The impacts of using standard data models
As we have noted, the biggest impact of adopting standard models is an increase in speed-to-market, communications accuracy, and improved governance of standards (data and layout). Onboarding new customers is faster and developing new communication variations or completely new communication products becomes more efficient. As with the interchangeable parts that helped launch an industrial revolution, standard models in your customer communication framework can help launch a revolution in capabilities.
Will every new document be assembled solely from pre-configured standard blocks and use only the standard data model within the application? No, there will be some document streams that require variations from the standard. These are easily addressed by âextensibility,â the ability to carry non-standard data structures and template layouts through the application while not abandoning the core standards. Does a customer have a special transaction array thatâs not part of the standard? No problem, within that customerâs application, we can join that array to the standard data model and use it for composition. Does a customer have an incredibly special transactional table that is not at all like our standard? No problem, we can build that custom table layout and use it as an exception in our customerâs templates, effectively creating a customer-level standard that is a variation from the core standard. Who knows, perhaps that special transactional table will become a new core standard over time.
This extensible approach to standard and custom CCM solution development means that we get the huge benefit of standard models while not losing our flexibility for customized products.
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