LANHAM, Md., Nov. 29 -- Group 1 Software, Inc., a Pitney Bowes company, today announced that New York-based Matrix Imaging Solutions, Inc. has selected Group 1's Customer Communication Management (CCM) solution in order to further expand its customer communications strategy. Matrix Imaging was seeking a solution that could offer CCM with three major objectives: taking in customer data from many sources, creating personalized communications for more efficient and effective production and distribution, and finally storing an archive of customer communications that can be automatically updated and retrieved to help answer customer service queries and provide the client with electronic payment and online account management options. "Prior to selecting Group 1, our staff developed a homegrown solution that -- while good for a period of time -- began to stifle our ability to grow our business," said Alan Olivero, president, Matrix Imaging. "The added weight and burden of writing and maintaining custom code negatively impacted our bottom-line and limited our ability to respond to customer requests. We realized that in order to better service our clients, we needed a more flexible solution." In order to meet their current customer requirements, Matrix Imaging relied on their application development staff to write custom scripts to create variable documents. Moving forward, Matrix Imaging did not want to hire more staff and continue to force their staff to jump through technological hoops to keep up with their growing demand. Today, Matrix Imaging produces approximately 10 million customer communications per month -- ranging from collections letters and direct mail to bills and statements. "Our plans are to produce 100 percent of our documents using DOC1. We fully expect that DOC1 Series 5 will enable us to double or triple the amount of volume that we can produce today," said Walt Krzystek, director of operations. An integral component of Group 1's CCM solution, DOC1 Series 5 is an award-winning document composition solution used by industry leaders worldwide to create high-volume batch, real-time and on-demand personalized communications. Since the mid-90's the DOC1 brand has been synonymous with quality and reliability and has helped organizations like Matrix Imaging reduce operational costs, increase customer satisfaction and revenue. "When we originally evaluated DOC1, we compared it against a number of competitive products. We thought that on its own, it was a great solution. With a Word-like interface, it is a very easy product to use and would allow us to have a less technically savvy end-user utilize it. DOC1 definitely met our requirements. We then took into consideration how we wanted to grow our business, and that made the decision easier: one company could provide us with a solution that was absolutely critical to growing our business. We were also thrilled that Group1's e2 Mobile Vault could enable us to provide our clients with an easily searchable, permanent record of their archive on CD. It is relatively easy to archive to a CD, but it is very difficult to find the information that you want on it. Mobile Vault impressed us because it makes searching and finding your information very easy," added Krzystek. "The Group 1 Software Users Conference and the Pitney Bowes Document Messaging Technologies Customer Conference were eye-opening events for us. They were 1st class events that provided us with a quick education on Group 1's solutions and helped to convince us that DOC1 was our solution. We were impressed that one company could provide us with a solution that covered everything from data acquisition and document composition, to archiving and electronic bill presentment and payment," said Olivero. "We are excited that Matrix Imaging has selected our CCM solution to provide end-to-end data acquisition, document creation, document storage and security, electronic presentation and online account management capabilities," said Alan Slater, president, DOC1 Division, Group 1 Software. "A growing number of organizations have looked to us and our CCM solution to help them provide their clients with effective and efficient communications and an exceptional customer experience." Designed for seamless, one-to-one customer communication, Group 1's CCM solution, simplifies the gathering and manipulation of data, streamlines document creation and distribution, and ensures information is accessible and secure. The solution is designed to achieve additional return on investment from existing legacy systems, taking multiple data sources, processing those inflows into a consistent format, and then applying that data to billing, marketing communications, analysis or management information applications.