I met Amy Machado of IDC earlier this year in Chicago and knew right away we would have a great conversation. So I was really looking forward to sitting down with her for this episode #27 of Above the Treeline.

Partly because Amy is an industry analyst. A true market researcher. Someone who has spent years doing the disciplined work of tracking markets, briefing vendors, asking better questions, and separating signal from noise.

I like to believe I do some of that too. But if I am honest, I am probably more observer and commentator than traditional analyst. I watch, listen, and ask questions. I look for the patterns and try to make sense of what is changing before the industry has fully agreed on what to call it.

Not only do Amy and I share a stylish taste in eyewear, but we also share a real interest in the future of customer communications and how data, governance, content, and AI are changing what this market is becoming.

That is why I wanted to talk with Amy. Two CCM nerds talking about the market without much of an agenda.

We agreed on a lot, but also brought different perspectives. Hers is grounded in real market data and structured research. Mine is shaped by a lifetime of experience across nearly every corner of the business.

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From Print to Something Bigger

The conversation started with a simple question. Where was the CCM industry 15 or 20 years ago?

Amy’s answer was immediate. Print.

We were both there. Xplor 2002 in Anaheim, California. Disneyland. The Angels had just won the World Series. Amy was working for InfoTrends. I was there with IKON Office Solutions demoing a web-to-print platform called WebPrint.

Yes, we had the internet. Yes, digital was already part of the conversation. But it was mostly on the edges, and certainly not the way companies interacted with or informed customers.

Bills, statements, notices, and most regulated customer communications were still deeply connected to paper and mail. That is where much of customer communications management aka “CCM” came from, a fixed, linear, output manufacturing process.

For many years, that has been the gravitational center of the customer communications market, and in many ways, in certain sectors it still remains. But that center has moved especially in markets outside of the U.S.

That is where Amy’s perspective became especially useful.

From Output to Enterprise Information

For years, customer communications were often treated as the final step in a business process. The job to be done was to compose the document correctly, produce it reliably, archive it properly, and deliver it through the right channels.

In regulated industries, that matters a great deal. But the role of those communications is changing inside the enterprise.

The documents, archives, metadata and customer histories that sit inside CCM environments are not just operational outputs. They are being recognized as part of the enterprise information layer and corporate memory.

That is why this market is getting more interesting, not less. CCM is no longer just about the document, composition or even print. It is about the data, governance, orchestration, and intelligence that surround the document.

The Lines Are Blurring

Amy also described a market where the old category lines are getting harder to defend.

CCM, ECM, file sync and share, capture, intelligent document processing, enterprise search, content services, workflow, archive, and analytics have historically been treated as separate functions.

That structure made sense when the business process was linear. But the enterprises no longer operate that way. Customer interactions now move across channels, teams, systems, and moments. The information going out to a customer is increasingly connected to the information coming in from a customer.

The full content and document lifecycle is becoming more connected, and the next phase of the market will not be defined by who can generate the best-looking document or manage the most efficient print stream. It will also be defined by who can connect context, data, governance, and delivery in a way that supports the future enterprise.

Why the U.S. Still Talks So Much About Print

One of the recurring questions in my own work is why the U.S. customer communications market still talks so much about print and mail compared with other parts of the world.

Amy pointed to a mix of history, compliance, regulation, legal risk, and legacy adoption patterns.

In other markets, particularly in parts of Asia, the path was different. Populations were significantly larger, but a much smaller share of people had checking accounts, credit cards, or the same legacy banking and billing infrastructure that shaped the U.S. market.

As a result, many of those markets did not have to unwind decades of paper-based customer communication habits. They were able to move more directly into mobile-first and digital-first models.

The U.S., by contrast, has been carrying the weight of its own history. Its legacy infrastructure worked well enough for long enough that replacing it has become more complicated than simply choosing a better channel.

In the U.S. paper remains because it is familiar, provable, and perceived as lower risk than the alternatives, even if it could be accomplished digitally.

That does not mean print and mail will remain the future center of the U.S. market. Rather, it continues to operate as a risk-management mechanism.

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AI Is Not the Strategy

No conversation about the future of customer communications can avoid AI, and ours did not. But one of the things I appreciated most about Amy’s view of AI is how grounded it was.

AI is not the strategy, and AI should not be used for its own sake. It has to solve a real problem. It has to produce measurable value such as reduced cost, increased revenue, improve productivity or support better outcomes.

That sounds obvious. It is also often missing from the current AI conversation.

For the last couple of years, many organizations have been under pressure to answer a boardroom-level question: what are we doing with AI?

The better question is: where can AI create value without compromising accuracy, compliance, explainability, or trust?

Amy’s point was not that companies should avoid AI. It was that they should be careful about using AI simply so they can say they are using it.

If the core of your business operation has not changed, or does not need to change, then the role of AI should be considered carefully. It has to solve a real problem, support a measurable outcome, or improve a process that actually matters.

Amy made another point that should matter to every CCM leader: modernization and migration still come first. That may not sound as exciting as AI, but it is probably more important.

Many enterprises cannot fully take advantage of AI-enabled capabilities because their underlying systems, repositories, and workflows are not ready. Before many organizations ask what AI can do with their communications, they may need to ask whether their content, metadata, archives, and workflows are ready for AI at all.

The Knowledge Layer

The industry has long talked about a single source of truth. I have never been completely convinced that phrase captures how enterprises actually work.

The future may be less about a single repository and more about a trusted, accessible, governed knowledge layer that can support secure and accurate outcomes across the enterprise.

Collecting, rationalizing, governing, and coordinating enterprise knowledge may be one of the most important future roles of CCM. It is also an area that could potentially be delivered as a service.

The future is not just producing the communication as output. It is managing the knowledge, context, rules, evidence, and governance that make the communication reliable in the first place.

The Competitive Set Is Expanding

CCM vendors are no longer only competing with other CCM vendors.

The competitive set now includes ECM vendors, content services platforms, intelligent document processing providers, data platforms, enterprise search providers, marketing technology platforms, CRM systems, workflow platforms, and AI-enabled enterprise software companies.

CCM is no longer operating in a contained category. It is being pulled into a much larger technology conversation, and that larger conversation is increasingly about data, orchestration, governance, and customer intelligence.

If Salesforce, ServiceNow, Adobe, Snowflake, OpenText, Box, Hyland, and other enterprise platforms move closer to customer communications, then the CCM industry has to decide whether it will defend its historic footprint or expand into adjacent territory.

Amy framed the issue clearly.

Other platforms may come after CCM’s piece of the pie.

The question is whether CCM vendors are prepared to go after theirs.

You May Not Be as Far Behind as You Think

But the part of the conversation I hope people hear most clearly came near the end.

Amy said that IT teams and enterprises responsible for CCM may not be as far behind as they think they are.

That should come as welcome news to a lot of people dealing with the pressure of digital transformation, AI modernization, migration, governance, and the never-ending expect...