Adopting open standards can help to ensure that the different applications and implementations inside and outside your organization can interoperate and integrate much easier. Open standards help define interfaces and this leads to simpler and quicker integration efforts. They are making the integration of disparate systems easier. Open standards are widely used, so more options are available to integrate and expand your business applications. More choices help you to reduce risk, obtain better solutions,acquire flexibility and benefit from quality.

1. The business case for open standards
in customer communications
management
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Scriptura Engage | Market view | Open standards
1. What are open standards?
According to Wikipedia, an open
standard is‘a standard that is publicly
available and has various rights to
use associated with it, and may also
have various properties of how it was
designed. There is no single definition
and interpretations vary with usage.’
1.1 What are open standards?
Basically, open standards is the concept
of a group of people working together
openly to develop and maintain
technology standards. Often they work
together in committees through open
standards organizations, such as the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
We are a long standing member of the
W3C where we have contributed to the
XSL-FO, XForms and Web Cryptography
Working Groups.
What is very important is the process
leading to a particular open standard
specification.
This process is based on:
• Transparency: all technical discussions
and meeting minutes are archived and
open to everyone
• Relevance: The development of a new
open standard is based on market
needs
• Openness: Anybody can participate:
industry, individual, public,
government bodies, academic, on a
worldwide scale
• Impartiality and consensus: This
guarantees fairness with equal weight
for each participant
• Availability: There is free access
to the standard text and it can be
implemented royalty-free
• Maintenance: There is an ongoing
process for testing, revision,
permanent access, validation, etc.
In Scriptura Engage we use a long list of
open standards: XML, XSL, SOAP, XForms,
XPath and many more. It has enabled
us to make sure that our solutions
can integrate with any application or
platform in every environment.
1.2 What’s the difference with
proprietary and industry
standards?
The term proprietary refers to formats
which are owned by an organization,
group, etc. The term industry standard is
often used to refer to a widely used
proprietary standard.
You should consider this wisely when
choosing to do an implementation of
a CCM solution based on proprietary
standards. The organization owning the
format may choose to change the format
or the usage conditions at any time.
We at Inventive Designers strongly
believe that the adoption of open
standards in our CCM solution Scriptura
Engage offers nothing but advantages to
our customers.
2. Making the business case
Obtaining the advantages of open
standards begins by making it a high
priority in your organization. Consider
it in all your options, include it in your
planning, and improve your processes to
use open standards. Make it an integral
part of your application architecture.
2.1 Reduces risk
When selecting a proprietary solution
for CCM, you are betting on one
horse. What if the supplier stops
supporting the technology or goes
out of business? What if they remain
the only supplier and they become a
monopolist that you depend upon? Do
you want to have to call them every
time you need to make some changes
to your CCM implementation? You
also risk interoperability issues. Will
your suppliers, customer and partners
integrate well and at what cost?
Open standards are, by definition,
supported by more than one supplier,
so this increases the probability of
long-term availability of support and
continuous improvements. Open
Standards allow everyone equal access
to a given technology. It ensures full
competition among suppliers of that
technology and more competitors
results in more options for your
organization and thus, lower risk.
2.2 Simpler integration and more
interoperability
Two people talking the same language
is simple. Talking through an interpreter
makes things a lot more complex.
In IT, the ability to collect information
from one system, transform it into a
format another system can understand,
then find a way to get the new data
correctly inserted into the new system is
a challenge.
In customer communications, a lot of
data needs to be transformed from
different (legacy) systems and be
combined to produce the‘output’you
need to send to your customer.
If all your business applications would
Scriptura Engage is a software solution of Inventive Designers | © 2015. All rights reserved.
Reach. Connect. Engage.

2. More information?
Visit www.scripturaengage.com
or call 0032 3 425 40 00
Scriptura Engage | Market view | Open standards
be able to communicate through open
standards with the CCM platform, it
would be like everyone speaking the
same language: it makes things so much
easier!
Use of open standards help provide
interoperability and maximize access
to applications and services. Adopting
open standards can help to ensure
that the different applications and
implementations can interoperate and
integrate. Open standards help define
interfaces and this leads to simpler and
quicker integration efforts. They are
making the integration of disparate
systems easier.
2.3 More and better options
It’s about giving you more and better
choices for accomplishing your business
goals. Open standards are widely
used, so more options are available to
integrate and expand your business
applications. More choices help you
to reduce risk, obtain better solutions,
acquire flexibility and benefit from
quality.
2.4 Quality
Open standards allow everyone
to utilize the specification and this
creates the opportunity for different
vendors competing on the quality of
their solutions. Increased competition
increases quality. Since the cost of
switching vendors is decreasing, vendors
are under more pressure to provide
good quality and improve their products
and services.
Open standards are also under constant
peer review since the specifications
are openly available and everyone
can participate in the standardization
process. This increases early
identification and resolution of potential
problems. And this leads to higher
quality than closed proprietary solutions
where the public may not be able to
adequately determine quality.
2.5 No vendor lock-in
One does not need to be in IT to know
the impact vendor lock-in can have. A
lot of wrong IT decisions have been
made due to the potential costs of
switching vendors. Open standards help
to reduce vendor dependence. Open
Standards are openly available and
free for anyone to implement, resulting
in more competitors. So the cost of
switching vendors is reduced. This leads
to increased vendor-independence and
lowers barriers to choice.
You want to keep all options open
and be able to make use of new
technologies and new output channels
in your communication strategy. Open
standards guarantee that – outside from
your supplier’s portfolio – you will be
able to integrate with other external
applications that will enhance the value
of your CCM platform in place.
2.6 Increase Retorn on Investment
There are basically three ways to increase
ROI. The most obvious one is to decrease
cost. Another is to increase benefits. And
the third is to shorten time-to-market.
You can reduce costs through the use
of open standards, since more options
are available, resulting in lower prices.
Also integration efforts will be lower,
since no expensive data transformations
are needed. Consolidation in other
resources, such as training costs, can also
decrease overall costs.
And once your initial implementation
of a CCM platform is finished, adding
additional communication channels or
adding new business applications will
be easier and less expensive, because
all integration efforts are based on open
standards.
Shorter integration cycles also result in
shorter time-to-market. And increased
competition between vendors in an
open standards market increases
pressure to release updates and more
functionality.
By reducing costs, shortening time-to-
market, and increasing market adoption
and acceptance, solutions developed
using open standards benefit from a
higher ROI.
2.7 Reduced Vendor Cost
If multiple vendors implement an open
standard, this can decrease the cost of
switching vendors compared to leaving
or moving to a vendor of a proprietary
solution.
The increased competitiveness as open
standards lowers barriers to entry in
your supplier market also increases
efficiencies resulting in lower overall
costs throughout your vendor’s market.
2.8 Flexibility
Proprietary solutions are often
incompatible with other competing
solutions, and can also require a high
learning curve for the support specialists
or end user to make the switch. Open
standards can reduce the impact of
change to your systems, your support
staff, and other business assets.
Coupled with durability, your flexibility is
greater with open standards in the long
term, as technological progress tends to
isolate proprietary solutions over time.
2.9 Future-proof
Vendors come, and vendors go, but
open standards are there to stay for
the long run. Your vendor options are
more flexible. In an industry where
accessibility to open standards is high,
this leads to higher quality and lower
pricing.
Whereas individual vendors of
proprietary solutions have an incentive
to alter and phase out support for older
technologies, open standards have
demonstrated their resilience to this
pressure. Open standards last longer
as they can be more reflective of the
demands of the users, and are not
subject to a single vendor’s interests.
3. Conclusion
Using open standards in customer
communications can decrease your
costs, reduce time-to-market, improve
communications, reduce risk and create
future-proof solutions. Obtaining these
advantages begins with the decision to
declare open standards a high priority
in your organization’s IT strategy. Begin
to build the process of understanding
how open standards can improve your
decisions and impact your business.
If you open discussions on open
standards in your organization, you
might be surprised where this dialog
might take you!
Scriptura Engage is a software solution of Inventive Designers | © 2015. All rights reserved.
Reach. Connect. Engage.