Introduction The 2008 Red October meltdown of the financial markets and the continued economic downturn has forced most financial services firms to make tough budgetary decisions and focus priorities on developing the most cost effective business strategies across the enterprise.

Increasing the adoption of e-Delivery of printed communication with clients is one such source for cost savings. Cost savings due to adoption of e-delivery have already been accomplished by many financial services firms, according to Dalbar’s e-Delivery Benchmarks Study, conducted in October of 2008.

Financial firms have reported savings that range from several thousand dollars to, in one case, $18 million. The bulk of the cost reduction is in the obvious arenas: print, postage, and fulfillment. However, companies also report reduced labor expenses and improved efficiencies in both delivery and archival of these important documents.
That being said, there is enormous opportunity to improve upon the current cost savings, as overall adoption rates have not increased markedly during the past half- decade with 65% of financial services firms stalled at less than 10% adoption.

Dalbar’S e-Adoption Strategy Services  Dalbar’s e-Adoption Strategy Services draws on more than a quarter century of research, evaluation and implementation of customer support activities in financial services.

Dalbar has developed a set of processes and techniques to convert customers to using electronic services in place of printed communication. The primary goal of the e-Adoption Strategy Services is to identify the customer segments that are most appropriate for electronic services, ensuring the services are compatible with customer’s offline behaviors, and effectively promoting the services to those customers.

Benchmarks and Best Practices in e-Delivery The Benchmarks and Best Practices for e-Delivery of Communications report summarizes findings, identify hurdles to success, and share examples of best practices. It also profiles several recommendations – based on the principles of behavior-centric communication strategies for overcoming client objections to adoption of e-delivery.

Promotion of e-Delivery on the Web Promotion of e-Delivery on the Web looks at Internet users’ utilization of e-Delivery, the concerns of those who don’t use it, and compares them to promotional messages currently found on consumer Web sites.

The report includes:

• e-Delivery utilization by Internet users
• Triggers for election of e-Delivery
• Current e-Delivery Promotions
• Effective and non-effective promotional practices

Adoption AssessmentThe current state of an electronic service’s adoption is assessed to determine where there are strategic gaps in both technological design and promotion.

The usability, functionality, tools, flows, e-mail and other technology surrounding the e-delivery adoption process are detailed. This includes identifying changes to existing design and navigation, need for new capabilities and awareness of on-going maintenance conflicts.

The Adoption Assessment delivers recommendations for immediate adjustments that can be made to the existing technology and promotion to improve adoption.

Implementation of e-Delivery Adoption CampaignDalbar will implement any or all of the components outlined above, including identifying those clients who should be targeted for e-delivery, to the actual execution of the promotion and incentive campaign to ensure success.

CostThe cost structure of the Dalbar e-Adoption Strategy Services is entirely flexible and allows you to tailor the scope of the engagement to meet available budgets and/or limited resources: