Landschaftsverband Rheinland (LVR)
Ensuring reliable communications with citizens across the Rhineland and preparing for e-government innovation with OpenText™ Exstream™
About LVR-InfoKom
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Employees:22,000
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Population served:9.8 million
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Founded:1953
Summary
Challenges
- Sent 1.5 million letters, approximately 20,000+ pages, to citizens, across its catchment area each year.
- Unable to convert XML to printable formats at scale.
Solution
- Deployed a central solution to build, manage and render customer communications.
- Implemented high reliability for individual mailings of up to 20,000 pages.
Results
Delivers 1.5 million letters on time every year
Ensures fast, efficient template design
Enables future e-government innovation
Challenges
- 1.5 million letters sent to citizens each year
- 20,000+ pages rendered for individual mailings
- Unable to convert XML to printable formats reliably at scale
The Landschaftsverband Rheinland (LVR) is a municipal association in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. With about 22,000 employees, the LVR delivers public services to 9.8 million people. Operating 41 schools, ten clinics, 20 museums and cultural institutions, the LVR provides important services across the region. The organization is also one of the largest service providers for people with disabilities in Germany.
LVR-InfoKom is the IT service provider within LVR and delivers digital solutions that underpin the region’s public services. As well as providing IT helpdesk services for LVR employees, LVR-InfoKom implements digitization projects that enable efficient, citizen-oriented business processes.
Ralf Leenen, service owner – output management at LVR-InfoKom, said, “One of our key objectives is to enable business units within LVR to communicate effectively with their stakeholders across the area we serve. This involves sending around 1.5 million letters every year, including certificates of insurance, pension statements, tax documents and more.”
Today, LVR sends almost all communications on paper. In the future, the organization plans to explore opportunities to transition away from printing and embrace online and mobile channels. By minimizing paper communications, LVR will speed communications, mitigate environmental impact and save on postage.
Leenen commented, “When it comes to public-sector communications in Germany, it’s clear that the future is digital. At LVR-InfoKom, one of our long-term goals is to lay the foundations for the expansion of e-government services by ensuring that we can deliver communications on digital delivery channels and formats.”
Reliability is one of the key performance indicators, and with OpenText Exstream we have the peace of mind that we can deliver communications to stakeholders across the LVR catchment area in a timely manner.
Solution
For more than 20 years, LVR-InfoKom has relied on OpenText to support reliable and cost-efficient customer communications with millions of stakeholders across its catchment area.
Products deployed
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OpenText™ Exstream™
OpenText Exstream gives organizations one secure, cost-effective, efficient and reliable solution for all customer communications
Services deployed
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OpenText Professional Services
Improve client and team collaboration, streamline content management and expedite eDiscovery with OpenText Professional Services solutions
Selecting a dependable, centralized solution
Because LVR-InfoKom plays a key role in delivering important information to citizens and public servants across the region, an effective approach to customer communications management (CCM) is essential.
Prior to the deployment of OpenText Exstream, the organization relied on a third-party Java application to convert XML files created by LVR into a printable format, ready for printing and mailing via an external partner.
Leenen recalled, “One of the big challenges with our previous approach to CCM was reliability. The previous third-party application was often unable to properly render the XML files supplied by LVR. The tool also made it difficult to work at scale. When generating several thousands of pages of health insurance receipts for several thousand pensioners, we found the application would cut out halfway through the render due to memory issues. So, we decided to look for a new approach.”
Delivering high reliability at scale
With Exstream, LVR-InfoKom can build, manage and render customer communications from a single point of control—eliminating the need for third-party applications to convert its XML files into printable formats.
“Ever since we migrated our documents from the pensions payment batch job for the Rheinische Zusatzversorgungskasse insurance provider to OpenText Exstream, we’ve had no issues at all with reliability,” said Leenen.
“The OpenText solution can render mailings of 20,000 pages with ease, a volume that our third-party Java application was simply incapable of handling. Based on the excellent performance of OpenText Exstream, we soon decided to use the solution as our standard CCM platform for several business units at the LVR, including the Rheinischen Versorgungskassen insurance agencies and the departments for social, children, youth, and family services.”
With OpenText Exstream, we’re in an excellent position to embrace digital channels in the future—improving the speed, environmental sustainability and cost-effectiveness of customer communications for the good of all citizens in the catchment area of the LVR.
Results
Today, LVR-InfoKom uses OpenText Exstream to support practically every aspect of the CCM process at the Rheinischen Versorgungskassen insurance agencies—from building and managing templates to rendering and distributing documents to its print provider.
1.5 million letters delivered on time every year
Every year, a dedicated team within LVR-InfoKom leverages OpenText Exstream to help mail more than 1.5 million documents to local citizens—including pension and benefits statements, certificates of insurance, and statements of accounts.
“Reliability is one of the key performance indicators, and with OpenText Exstream we have the peace of mind that we can deliver communications to stakeholders across the LVR catchment area in a timely manner,” commented Leenen.
Ensuring fast, efficient template design
Through its collaboration with OpenText, LVR-InfoKom is continuing to enhance its CCM capabilities.
“We are very pleased with the support we’ve received from OpenText Professional Services since the initial deployment of OpenText Exstream and beyond,” said Leenen. “OpenText provides us with technical assistance whenever we require it. The OpenText team keeps us up to speed on the product development roadmap, and we greatly appreciate the improvements we’ve seen over the years—especially around designing and editing templates.”
Enabling future e-government innovation
As it looks toward the future of e-government services in Germany, LVR-InfoKom is confident that it has the optimal platform to help deliver secure digital communications to millions of citizens.
Leenen concluded, “With OpenText Exstream, we’re in an excellent position to embrace digital channels in the future—improving the speed, environmental sustainability and cost-effectiveness of customer communications for the good of all citizens in the catchment area of the LVR.”
