The 4 Hidden Risks in Document & Customer Communications Management
Over the past decade, I have worked with banks, insurers, fintech’s and ERP driven enterprises across the globe. On paper, many of them are sophisticated, they have invested heavily in core platforms such as Temenos, Thought Machine, Mambu, Finastra, SAP, Oracle, IFS and Infor. They have modernised infrastructure, they have cloud strategies, and they have transformation roadmaps. And yet, when we start looking closely at document management and customer communications, the same issues surface time and again.
These are not edge cases. They are not niche technical oversights. They are fundamental structural gaps that quietly erode customer trust, revenue, and operational efficiency. This is what I consistently see in real world projects.
1. No single view of customer communications
Most organisations believe they have a customer view. What they actually have is a collection of departmental perspectives.
Billing sends statements, marketing sends campaigns and operations sends confirmations. All whilst compliance sends disclosures and customer support sends follow ups. Each function operates with its own templates, workflows and in many cases, its own data. The result is fragmentation.
Research backs up what we see on projects. Half of digital experience professionals say they do not have a clear view of customer behaviours online, and 62% say they lack visibility into customer attitudes because data is siloed. A third report having no single reliable source of truth for customer data.
The consequences are measurable. One in five consumers worldwide switched providers in 2025 due to poor communication experiences. Among younger customers, that figure rises to one in four. In North America, 15% of consumers said they would leave after a single poor communication experience. In contrast, organisations with mature omni-channel communications strategies achieve customer retention rates of up to 89%, compared with just 33% for those without. Revenue growth can be around 41% faster where communications are integrated and consistent.
These numbers are not theoretical, they are a direct reflection of what happens when customers receive conflicting messages, outdated information, or disconnected responses.
From a project perspective, this typically shows up in subtle ways. A customer updates their address in one system but receives correspondence to the old one from another, a payment arrangement agreed with a support team is not reflected in a statement, or a marketing message contradicts a recent service interaction. Technology is rarely the only problem and more often than not, it is the absence of a unified communications architecture.
In our work at Holly Grove, particularly in banking environments with complex core systems, we often establish a centralised communications framework. This ensures that all document generation and outbound messaging draws from a governed, consistent data layer and shared templates. It is not just about creating documents. It is about orchestrating the customer conversation across every touchpoint. Without that orchestration, no organisation truly has a 360-degree view.
2. They do not know where all their data lives
Closely linked to the lack of a single communications view is something even more fundamental… Many organisations do not fully know where all their customer data resides.
Over years of platform changes, acquisitions and incremental upgrades, data spreads. CRM systems hold one version of a profile, ERP systems hold another, core banking platforms hold transaction data, loan origination systems hold additional attributes, all whilst legacy applications quietly retain historical records. Executives are acutely aware of this problem with 83% say their companies suffer from data silos whilst 97% believe those silos have negatively affected the business. IDC estimates that organisations can lose up to 20 to 30% of annual revenue due to inefficiencies caused by disconnected data.
This is not just a strategic concern. It is an operational one. On average, employees waste 5.3 hours per week hunting for or reconciling data because systems do not communicate effectively. That equates to more than six working weeks per employee per year. In customer service teams, six in ten agents say that lack of customer data often causes negative experiences.
When we begin a consultancy engagement, one of the first exercises is often a data mapping and discovery phase. We ask very simple questions. Where is customer identity mastered? Where are communication preferences stored? Which system governs address updates. Which platform is authoritative for regulatory disclosures. The answers are rarely straightforward.
In ERP driven environments, particularly those using SAP, Oracle, IFS or Infor, data ownership can be distributed across modules. In banking environments using core systems from Temenos, Mambu, Thought Machine or Finastra, additional complexity arises from integration layers and third-party services. The instinctive response is to buy more tools. In fact, more than 95% of customer experience leaders have invested or plan to invest in data integration technologies, yet 54% still cite siloed data as their biggest barrier to leveraging customer insight.
The problem is not only integration, but governance. You need a clear inventory of data assets, a defined ownership and a master data strategy that determines what constitutes truth. Only then can you feed reliable data into document composition engines, CCM platforms, and digital channels.
Without this foundation, even the most advanced communications platform will produce inconsistent outputs, personalisation fails, compliance risks and unreliable analytics.
3. Accessibility compliance is not optional
One of the most underestimated areas we encounter is accessibility. The European Accessibility Act has fundamentally shifted the regulatory landscape. From June 2025, digital products and services provided to EU citizens must meet defined accessibility standards. This includes customer facing documents such as statements, invoices, disclosures, and policy documents.
In practical terms, PDFs must comply with ISO PDF UA standards and meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA requirements. Documents must have proper tagging, logical reading order, alternative text for images and semantic structure so that assistive technologies can interpret them correctly.
The scope is broad. Banking and financial services are explicitly covered with ecommerce, media and other digital services also included. Importantly, the regulation applies to any business serving EU customers, regardless of where it is headquartered. Despite this, preparedness is low. Only 25% of European businesses report being fully prepared for the Act. Nearly one in five were not even aware of it shortly before implementation. Around 87 million people in Europe live with a disability. That represents roughly one in four adults.
Inaccessible documents exclude a significant portion of the population and also expose organisations to legal challenges and financial penalties. Retrofitting thousands of legacy templates at scale can become prohibitively expensive if left too late. In forward thinking organisations, accessibility is embedded directly into document generation workflows. Automated validation checks ensure that every PDF generated meets required standards and template design incorporates tagging and structure from the outset rather than as an afterthought.
We have seen firsthand the difference between reactive remediation and proactive design. When accessibility is built into the CCM architecture, compliance becomes repeatable and auditable. Without it, teams scramble to correct individual documents, often manually, which introduces further risk.
Accessibility should not be treated as a compliance burden. It is a design principle and it aligns with inclusive customer experience and future proof digital strategy. For global organisations, particularly those in regulated sectors, it is now a board level consideration.
4. Brand consistency quietly drives revenue
The final issue is less technical but equally significant: many organisations underestimate the commercial impact of inconsistent branding across communications.
Brand guidelines may exist. In fact, 95% of organisations report having them, yet only 25 to 30% actively enforce them. From a revenue perspective, consistent brand presentation across channels is associated with revenue increases of 23 to 33%. Trust is at the centre of this and research indicates that 88% of customers who trust a brand will buy again and trusted companies can outperform peers by up to 400% in market value.
Now consider the communications environment within a typical enterprise. Statements are generated from one system, letters from another, emails from a marketing automation platform, and SMS messages from a third-party provider. Each may have its own templates, tone, and design standards and without central governance, drift is inevitable. We often see subtle inconsistencies such as different logo treatments, variations in legal disclaimers, divergent tone of voice between digital and printed channels, outdated product names lingering in older templates.
For multinational organisations, complexity multiplies when you deal with regional adaptations, local legal footers and language translations must align with global brand standards.
A robust CCM or document management framework should incorporate centrally managed templates, controlled brand assets, and approval workflows. Marketing and compliance teams must collaborate rather than operate in parallel silos, and version control and template governance should be embedded into the platform itself.
When communications are unified visually and linguistically, customers will start to notice. They feel confidence and they recognise professionalism, and over time, that consistency compounds into loyalty and advocacy.
The cumulative effect
Each of these issues is significant in isolation, together, they create systemic risk. Fragmented communications lead to poor experiences and churn and disconnected data erodes efficiency and insight. Accessibility gaps invite legal exposure and exclude customers whilst inconsistent branding undermines trust and revenue potential. And yet, none of these problems are unsolvable.
At Holly Grove, our consultancy and delivery work often begins not with software selection but with architectural clarity. We examine the communications landscape end to end, we map data flows, we assess compliance exposure, and we review template governance and brand controls. Only then do we align technology, whether that involves enhancing an existing CCM platform, integrating with core banking systems, modernising ERP document outputs or implementing a more structured document management approach.
The goal is simple! Turn communications from a liability into a strategic asset. Organisations that achieve mature omni channel communications retain significantly more customers. They respond faster. They personalise accurately. They meet regulatory obligations confidently. They present a unified, trusted brand.
The commercial implications are substantial. The global CCM market is projected to grow from 2.31 billion dollars in 2025 to 5.29 billion dollars by 2032. Investment is increasing, expectations are rising, and customer tolerance for poor communication is shrinking.
In every project I have led, the pattern is consistent. Once the organisation gains a true single view of communications, understands its data landscape, embeds accessibility into design and enforces brand consistency, the transformation is tangible. Document and customer communications management is not merely an operational function, it’s a strategic capability that sits at the intersection of data, technology, regulation, and brand.
If any of this feels uncomfortably familiar, you are not alone. These are patterns we encounter regularly across banking, financial services and ERP driven organisations of every size. The difference is not whether challenges exist, but whether they are addressed deliberately. If you recognise your own environment in any of these scenarios, it may be time for a more structured review of your communications architecture.
At Holly Grove, we work alongside leadership, technology, and operations teams to bring clarity, control, and confidence back into document and customer communications. A conversation costs nothing, continuing with fragmented systems and hidden risk usually does.
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