SUCCESS STORYCBM Christoffel-Blindenmission
Christian Blind Mission e.V.
Industry• Non-ProfitSolutions• OpenText Customer Communications
Management• OpenText Professional Services• OpenText Cloud Managed Services

Results
Accelerated efficiency andsavings with automated generationof thousands of letters
Increased user and donor
satisfaction with easy andpersonalized communications
Leveraged OpenText Cloud forflexibility, availability, and savings

CBM transforms donor relations
with cloud-based communications
solution from OpenText

International charity automates donor communications with OpenText Customer
Communications Management for increased efficiency, savings, and satisfaction“We send roughly 100,000 letters each year. At Christmas
time, there are a couple of thousand letters each day. We have
500,000 active donors, and if each one of them gets some kindof communication each year, then you can imagine the numberof documents we produce with OpenText CCM. Each document
is now generated by an automatic system with many rules andif-then connections. And it’s working pretty well.”Alexander Kindinger
Head of IT
Christian Blind Mission

CBM transforms donor relations with cloud-based communications solution from OpenText

CBM is an international Christian development organization,committed to improving the quality of life of people withdisabilities in the poorest countries around the world. Based on
its Christian values and over 100 years of professional expertise,
CBM addresses poverty as a cause, and a consequence, ofdisability. The organization works to create an inclusive world inwhich all persons with disabilities enjoy their human rights andachieve their full potential.

Building strong donor relations
From life-saving eye surgeries to helping children with disabilities
attend school, CBM relies on the generosity of its donors to provide
services in the fields of healthcare, education, rehabilitation andlivelihood development as well as organizational development ofpartner organizations. Recently, the organization undertook an
initiative to optimize its relationships with those valued donors.
CBM sought to automate the way it responds to the hundreds ofdonations it receives daily yet ensure that each communication iscustomized to the donor and the donation made. Alexander Kindinger,
Head of IT at CBM, explained, “We receive hundreds, eventhousands of single donations each day, and we want to say thankyou to every donor by sending them a letter. And in this letter,
we try to refer to their donation, what was the reason for themto donate, what is the purpose of the donation, and thus try to
get an automatically created document sounding as individualized
as possible.”

Automating personalized communications
with OpenText
To achieve a highly automated print output that would meet its
complex requirements, CBM assessed several solutions before
selecting OpenText Customer Communications Management (CCM),
a solution designed to improve customer experience through thepersonalization and automation of customer communications.
Customized documents are created through rules-based dynamic
assembly and presented in a variety of digital and print formats
and channels, from one-to-one contact to high volume, mass
production of documents.
Kindinger noted that a key driver in the decision to use OpenText
was CBM’s desire for a cloud-based solution. The CCM solution
is offered as part the OpenText Experience Cloud platform:“Once we had a look at OpenText CCM, it was a very clear
decision. The OpenText CCM solution fulfills our business
requirements, and we selected the OpenText Cloud option
because we are following an overall Software-as-a-Service(SaaS) strategy. This approach results in higher availability
with lower operating costs.”“The benefits frommoving to the OpenText
Experience Cloud include
much higher availability
than if we were operating
it on our own and thelower operating costs
connected to that. To havesupport 24 hours, sevendays a week—I can’t offerthat with a small team of
15 people, doing all theirother stuff around theworld. System downtime
is very expensive for CBM.
That was a crucial reason
for going with the cloud.”
Alexander Kindinger
Head of IT
Christian Blind Mission

CBM transforms donor relations with cloud-based communications solution from OpenText

To help implement the solution, CBM relied on OpenText Professional
Services for the experience and expertise needed to ensure thesolution met the organization’s complex requirements. Kindinger
explained, “When we needed support from technical experts,
we very often contacted OpenText Professional Services. They
helped us in different areas—developing the main architecture,
programming various parts of our solution, solving technicalissues, and finding bugs in our own programming. Even after ayear, they still help us, and it’s simply great.”

Generating savings and satisfaction
With the OpenText CCM solution in place, CBM has automated thegeneration of thousands of customized communications, including
postcards, tax receipts, and thank-you letters, for annual donations
worth 80 million euros. “We send roughly 100,000 letters each year.
At Christmas time, there are a couple of thousand letters eachday. We have 500,000 active donors, and if each one of them gets
some kind of communication each year, then you can imagine
the number of documents we produce with OpenText CCM. Eachdocument is now generated by an automatic system with manyrules and if-then connections. And it’s working pretty well,”said Kindinger.

Automating complexity for newfound efficiency
and quality
In the past, the complexity of donor communications required
significant involvement on the part of IT. Now, business users canquickly and easily access, personalize, and generate donor letterswithout relying on IT. Kindinger explained, “With OpenText CCM, ITbuilds the technical frame, but the input, the logic, and everythingelse can be done by an end user. The front end is much easier touse, and so we have a major efficiency gain in the business andbusiness processes.” He added, “We can see that we increased
the overall efficiency, especially around Easter or Christmas when
we typically had a huge backlog of letters to be sent out. Now, wehave no backlog.”
The flexibility of the solution has not only led to increased efficiency,
it has also improved user satisfaction. Kindinger reported thatbusiness users appreciate the ability to generate letters easily andindependently: “With OpenText CCM, users can decide to change
a letter and they don’t have to wait for another department. They
can do it on their own. A year later, they are quite happy with thesolution. I’m not hearing a lot of complaints, which is a very goodsign because usually I’m getting involved when something fails.
But it hasn’t. Our resource mobilization teams are happy, and ifthey are happy, I’m happy too.”CBM transforms donor relations with cloud-based communications solution from OpenText“Satisfaction with the solution even extends to valued CBM
donors who appreciate accurate, personalized, and high-quality
communications. With logic built in to ensure accuracy, donors
receive error-free thank-you letters. A critical measurement is that
we have no complaints from our donors and supporters about theletters they receive because those letters fit to what they would
expect from us,” noted Kindinger.

Getting value from the Cloud
The organization’s commitment to a cloud-based approach has
also delivered the benefits that Kindinger anticipated, including
lower costs and lower downtime: “The benefits from moving to theOpenText Experience Cloud include much higher availability than
if we were operating it on our own and the lower operating costs
connected to that. To have support 24 hours, seven days a week—
I can’t offer that with a small team of 15 people, doing all theirother stuff around the world. System downtime is very expensive
for CBM. That was a crucial reason for going with the cloud.”

Pivoting for a pandemic and the future
Flexibility and availability were critical to CBM when COVID-19
demanded a quick reaction. “The pandemic is a good exampleof how fast things change and how fast you have to react withtechnology. We had always thought that we couldn’t work fromhome at CBM, but once we decided we had to, we proved that wecould. The OpenText CCM solution made it possible to move tohome offices without interruption. We still had to physically printout the thousands of letters each day in our office, but only by asmall crew there while the rest worked at home,” said Kindinger.
As CBM looks to the future, the journey has only just begun andKindinger sees OpenText as an important partner in it: “OpenText
CCM is a key part of our strategy. It makes work more efficient andthat saves us a great amount of time and therefore money. All thiscontributes to CBM’s mission to change the lives of the poorest
persons in the world—to change them forever, to raise awareness,to leave something good behind. It is such a valuable goal.”

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