Thunderhead Upgrades Enterprise Communications Platform with the Release of Thunderhead NOW 4.0
New version drives customer engagement by empowering organizations to create and deliver personalized communications
London, UK - April 28, 2008
Thunderhead, the enterprise communications company, has announced the release of Thunderhead NOW 4.0, the next version of its award-winning enterprise communications platform. NOW 4.0 extends the functionality of the NOW platform to the edge of the enterprise, integrating communications with customer-facing business processes and enabling organizations to dramatically improve customer service and end-user experience.
Thunderhead NOW, based on the company’s one-platform-for-all-communications paradigm, provides a complete solution for the creation and delivery of personalized, multi-channel business communications. NOW 4.0 provides a complete Web-based enterprise solution for managing high-volume batch and real-time interactive communications and documents, ensuring context and consistency, two critical components for successful customer engagement.
NOW 4.0 offers role-based functionality, designed to be easily integrated with key business processes and applications. This integration is facilitated by NOW’s services-oriented architecture, enabling NOW to easily combine with CRM and customer service applications as well as leading BPM and ECM products to extend the business value of an organization’s existing infrastructure technology.
"Customer engagement is a key strategic issue and organizations need to think beyond just producing output for customers," said Thunderhead CEO Glen Manchester. "Forward-thinking organizations understand that communications must be delivered in the context of business processes. Each communication should deliver value to the customer and produce outcomes that enhance customer retention and acquisition."
The latest version of Thunderhead NOW introduces two innovative new modules:
Based on the X-Forms standard, Interview NOW brings a whole new level of intelligence to interactive document creation. Interview NOW is a Web-based solution that enables Thunderhead users to provide data, in real-time, via an interview-style process to power highly personalized, one-off communications. Unlike other interactive technologies in the market, Interview NOW interacts directly with the underlying NOW Production Engine meaning that users are only queried for the data necessary to complete the intended communication. Further, Interview NOW makes full use of Thunderhead’s rules-based architecture and is capable of modifying subsequent inquiries based on the information provided by the user in previous responses. Interview NOW combines seamlessly with existing Thunderhead functionality, including Correspond NOW for interactive ad hoc correspondence creation and with Review NOW for exception and review case management.
Approve NOW brings critical enhancements to Thunderhead’s Web-based approval workflow capabilities, enabling increased management oversight and control over content, especially regulated content. Approve NOW furthers Thunderhead’s best-in-class business usability by enabling parallel review and approval processes, enhancing Thunderhead’s collaborative template creation and management capabilities.
The Thunderhead NOW platform is built on the XML stack. XML-based protocols have become essential to businesses needing to manage all aspects of the user experience, including the user interface, multi-channel devices, and integration with business processes and information sources. Thunderhead’s XML foundation enables it to lead through innovation, and NOW 4.0 sets a new benchmark for enterprise technology, facilitating context, personalization and multi-channel delivery to empower organizations to realize customer engagement strategies in today’s complex business environment.
A recent Forrester report on Document Output Management highlighted Thunderhead’s innovation, identifying the company as a fast-growing driver of innovation in the interactive segment. Another recent report by Celent , on Document Automation for the Insurance sector, named Thunderhead as a leading vendor based on its advanced technology.
Since its inception, Thunderhead has enabled its customers to gain competitive advantage by providing them with an enterprise solution that will allow them to manage and even exploit communication challenges for superior customer engagement. The business-to-customer relationship has changed fundamentally over the last decade, with the Web and multiple devices driving this evolution. Thunderhead pioneered the use of open standards in its market, realizing that business user control is key to agility and responsiveness.
|