Transition of the Mail Room from the Basement to Off-site Information Hub

Post modern

As post becomes digitised, mailrooms can move offsite, bringing cost savings and better compliance, and positioning themselves firmly as the information hub of the organisation
by David Darling

The mailroom is one of those facilities that some companies give little thought to. They need one, obviously, but its role is seen as limited — a transit point for incoming and outgoing post.

Well, not any longer. Like most other aspects of business, the mailroom is undergoing a revolution. For one thing, it is no longer squirreled away in the basement — in fact, for many companies, it is not even on the premises. Larger businesses in particular are now often supported by offsite mailrooms which serve several purposes and, as the era of digital mailrooms and information hubs dawns, are set to become even more important.

Ask yourself, do you actually need your mailroom on site? For businesses with multiple buildings, having several onsite mailrooms can be inefficient. A single centralised offsite mailroom can provide process, space and equipment savings — for example, you can consolidate outgoing post, with the larger volumes potentially reducing postage costs. It also allows for a flatter structure where audit trails are easier to set up and follow, and limits the burden of compliance and Service Level Agreement delivery measurement to a single operation.

If you are on a single site, some of these issues will be less important. But mailrooms take up valuable space and if you occupy an expensive location, having the post sorted nearby but in a cheaper area could save a lot of money. As digitisation becomes ever more prevalent, the location of the mailroom will become less important, however many — or few — offices you have. Similarly, using an outsourced mailroom provider removes the need for businesses to struggle with a competency they may have neither the experience nor time to invest in. The provider not only offers dedicated offsite facilities, but has specialist equipment and trained staff to handle the work.

Increasingly there is also the issue of security. Certain types of businesses nowadays can be the potential target of suspicious items through the post, and an offsite mailroom can have more comprehensive and safer facilities to screen and deal with incoming mail and packages. This minimises the impact on business continuity and can also eliminate the possibility of unwanted publicity if any suspicious items are discovered on the client’s premises.

A linked benefit is the help an offsite mailroom can give with business continuity and disaster recovery planning.

Further efficiencies can be gained by combining other offices services with the mailroom, such as courier bookings, ordering stationery and other office supplies, archiving, centralised print and dispatch and data destruction. Benchmarking exercises show this can lead to significant process improvements resulting in an enhanced service deliverable and cost savings for the business.

Digitisation is driving the transformation of the mailroom from a logistics hub, with physical mail moving in and out, to an automated, digital information hub that puts the mailroom at the heart of the organisation.

Information drives the profitability of a business. To increase profitability it is essential that an organisation not only has all the information it requires, but that this information is accurate, easily accessible and delivers a competitive edge. The mailroom has become the nucleus for such information handling; it is now capable of receiving mail in traditional paper, email, fax and data, for processing into classified and consolidated workstreams for electronic delivery to the individual or departmental business user.

Put simply, digitisation involves sorting and classifying incoming mail — for sorting, scanning or re-formatting, indexing, validation and electronic distribution to the business user or department. This places an even greater emphasis on the operations policy any mailroom should have, digital or not, imposing a strict process on how incoming mail is handled to assure quality, compliance and more often than not, delivery against a strict SLA.

A key benefit is that the recipient and other authorised personnel can view the documents wherever they are — in the office, at home, offshore, or on the move — thereby removing previous geographical constraints.

The other advantages are that the recipient receives high quality data, there is better compliance, clearer audit trails, and an improvement in data protection and security, and a reduction in lost post. It also means documents are archived electronically, reducing any paper mountain and the delay in retrieving those files at a later date.

Some of the cost savings are clear — reducing the need for physical archiving and probably the number of staff — but equally this is not a cheap alternative. High-end scanners, content management systems and a detailed understanding of the associated operational and technical processes will be required and so it may be that only businesses of a certain size can make this work financially.

At the same time, larger organisations may already have invested in both for other purposes and will be able to leverage this existing infrastructure to embrace the mailroom too. There is, of course, the option to outsource.

To get the best out of digitisation, it is vital to bear in the mind that this is not simply about scanning the mail so that it is in email form. There are four stages to digitisation — consolidation, extraction, classification and delivery.

Businesses need to see the mailroom as the place where their workflow process begins and integrate it into the organisation-wide document management system.

However, none of this will deliver what it should without buy-in from all departments and senior management. Perhaps the biggest hurdle is changing the way the mailroom is seen.

As with any change, you need to assess current performance and be sure that what you plan will make measurable improvements. At the end of this process, however, the mailroom should operate like every other department — not simply a cost to be borne, but an operation that adds value to your business.

CASE STUDY — THE INVESTMENT BANK

In 1999, a major international bank outsourced its mailroom and messenger services. It had around 10,000 staff working out of 21 buildings in central London, and the mail and 650 or so courier items (both in and out) were handled by four standalone mailrooms. Some 67 staff were employed. The contract was renewed in 2003, and shortly afterwards it was proposed to centralise the offsite screening of mail in line with the client’s wish to increase its security measures.

There were two main drivers: the client was concerned about the threat to business continuity posed by mail being used as a means to disrupt and potentially harm staff; and there were opportunities for introducing service efficiencies and in turn cost savings.

The offsite facility was opened within two miles of the London building campus, and complied with guidelines covering possible terrorist acts/evacuations. All items are now securely screened there prior to delivery, and unknown/undeliverable mail is opened. The business continuity threat has been removed. The bank also revised its business continuity plans to include making greater use of the offsite mailroom space in the event it was required. The latest development is to accommodate the printroom business continuity solution at the mailroom. This is primarily to save space and reduce cost within the bank’s current disaster recovery area, and also to bring together all the document services in one location. Staff numbers were reduced by three as a result of the new, more efficient operating model and there has been a 20 per cent saving in the office space previously committed to mailroom operations.

By moving offsite the client achieved savings in excess of £100,000 in the first three years of the move.

David Dorling is a director of MailSource UK