The stories we hear from organizations in the market follow a familiar pattern: A print service provider required close to three months to accommodate client change requests. Despite managing just over one hundred distinct letters, when state and regulatory variations were applied, their team ended up with thousands of individual templates, all of which needed to be manually updated one by one.

A large mortgage servicer had to update their correspondence to accommodate a TTY number and spent over nine months updating thousands of letter templates.

A large health insurer spent more than six months correcting errors and inconsistencies in member materials. Siloed teams, disconnected systems and files scattered across various servers made it nearly impossible to trace and fix errors efficiently. Staff edited outdated versions, so even when they thought issues were resolved, new ones emerged, forcing them to carry out the process repeatedly.

These cautionary tales are all too common and are a direct result of using outdated technology to manage these communications and the inefficient processes those systems necessitate. Systems developed decades ago, when print was the sole channel, required technical teams to update individual versions of communication and document templates to accommodate changes. Communication teams today are being asked to support an expanded number of communication channels and to move faster and more cost effectively than ever before. Meanwhile, regulators at both federal and state levels are adding new requirements that mandate not only what must be communicated and the specific regulatory language used, but also the formats and languages businesses must support.

Organizations need to modify change management processes to ensure updates are fast, consistent and compliant across all channels. This change requires organizations to view communications and content in a completely different way.

The most common barrier to effective change management is the document-centricity of many customer communications management (CCM) platforms and approaches. In this paradigm, every communication has a unique template tied to a specific version of the piece. For example, the same letter with varied state level disclosures or other details will require a template for New York and one for Texas. This approach leads to a proliferation of templates — one for every communication variation — creating redundant work and resulting in a complex, unwieldy template library that's difficult to manage and update.

To overcome this obstacle, organizations need to break free from traditional page-based thinking and embrace modular content management. This involves deconstructing documents and communications into individual content components — such as logos, offers, product descriptions and disclosures — that are managed separately from the presentation layer, making them shareable and reusable across different variations of a communication and channels. Consider a letter which has different state level disclosure requirements for New York, California, Florida and Texas. These letters would share a single template that contains a common layout and any common content across all variations of the letter. The letters for the state variations are dynamically driven by rules that identify where the recipient is located (in this case) and dynamically drives the generation of the right variation of that letter for that recipient using the correct state disclosure.

Managing content modularly enables a much more efficient approach to change management. Content components should be reusable across templates and channels. When this is in place, instead of implementing changes to documents one template at a time, teams only need to update a single shared content component, and the change will be instantly reflected in every document or communication where it’s in use.

Modular content management also makes it easier to establish consistency and compliance. A shared content component creates a single point of control that ensures approved language, disclosures and other sensitive content are uniform across all communications. Compliance teams need only review and approve a single piece of content rather than hundreds of documents, reducing the risk of human error and version-control issues.

Whether your organization today creates variations for different operating brands, state regulatory requirements or promotional offers, managing content in a modular way enables content curators to select the correct messaging and deploy it across multiple touchpoints and channels effortlessly, so teams can remain compliant without overwhelming resources.

Lastly, because content is managed separately from the channel where it’s presented, it becomes possible to repurpose content developed for one channel for another. This makes it much easier to drive digital transformation to offer customers more channel options without having to develop an entirely new library of communications for each channel.

While adopting modular content management is a significant step forward, it's not sufficient on its own to meet modern change management demands. To truly optimize processes, document professionals need to harness AI. The question is: How can they do so effectively and securely?

The ease with which standalone AI tools like ChatGPT or Google's Gemini can be accessed might make them seem like a logical starting point, but they come with significant downsides and risks. First, these tools are disconnected from the systems used to manage communications, forcing users to spend time manually copying and pasting content, a hassle that can quickly negate any efficiency gains. Second, there's a substantial security concern. Having teams input proprietary information or worse, sensitive customer data, into public AI models risks data breaches and unintended exposure, potentially leading to compliance violations and damaging data leaks.

Some modern CCM platforms are integrating AI directly into their systems, allowing document teams to leverage AI capabilities within the same secure environment where they manage their communications. This approach can offer significant benefits, enabling users to apply AI consistently across the entire communications library rather than just for isolated use cases. AI can reveal where duplicate or highly similar content exists, facilitate consolidation and identify inconsistencies in branding that can be rectified. It also supports content optimization by detecting hard-to-understand language or content that strikes the wrong tone. Furthermore, AI can rewrite content to address these issues or develop channel-specific renditions that match the style and tone appropriate for short-form digital communications.

However, it's critical to closely evaluate how AI is implemented within CCM systems. Does the company provide pre-packaged prompts that deliver high-quality results consistently or do they leave the burden of guiding the AI to the user? The latter can be time-consuming and ineffective, especially if your team lacks AI expertise and is unfamiliar with prompt engineering.

Does the AI integration preserve content formatting and variable data? Given how complex formatting can be and the prevalence of variable content, reapplying these elements can quickly erode any time saved using AI. Lastly, control and governance are vital. How does the solution ensure customer data can’t make its way into public data models? Does the CCM provider have safeguards in place to ensure that corporate information isn’t being used to train models? CCM providers should have a defined wall that makes it impossible for customer data to reach public AI models while also providing safeguards around the content being optimized.

Embracing modular content management and thoughtfully navigating AI integration is no longer optional — it is essential for managing change and transforming old methods into a competitive advantage. Those who recognize the need for change and adapt swiftly will lead the way in delivering exceptional customer experiences, while those who hesitate risk falling irreparably behind.