The ultimate guide to the digital mailroom: How to streamline your business operations

Introducing a digital mailroom will not only deliver your organisation significant cost savings and efficiencies but also offer enhanced auditability and compliance across your outbound communications. By offering your customers the choice to receive their correspondence online, you will increase customer satisfaction, and response rates and minimise the need for manual intervention by introducing automation.

Challenges of traditional mailroom management

Sorting, distributing, and managing physical mail is a labour-intensive task for mailrooms. Manual processes such as printing letters through franking machines can be inefficient, especially when producing time-critical documents.

Traditional mailrooms can also be costly to maintain, when you consider the cost of purchasing or leasing franking machines; managing physical storage space; consumables; postage; and labour costs. Furthermore, storing paper documents requires robust data management.

To achieve efficiency and excellent customer service, it’s essential for organisations to have quick access to information.

The downside of fragmented practices

Using numerous outsourced mailroom services may not offer you the best solution possible. The identifying characteristic of fragmentation is a lack of a single solution that unifies all your other solutions which is problematic for your workflows.

SMS only providers

It is important to keep in mind that SMS only providers often charge for their services in packages, which may result in higher delivery rates. They may also offer one price for messages up to 160 characters, with additional fees for longer messages or two-way texting options.

Portal only providers

Despite sending documents to an accessible portal, correspondence is still printed and posted by hand to accommodate those who may not be digitally accessible. Sending physical documents through a separate solution to the portal takes extra time and is simply inefficient.

Hybrid Mail only providers

In some cases, it may be necessary to send your post through traditional methods for those customers not online. However, relying solely on a hybrid mail provider may not always be the most cost-effective, efficient option or guarantee to receive the best postal discounts available. ‘Hidden’ fees can make the service more expensive in the long run, with extra charges for additional pages, inserts, and colour printing.

Email only providers

Large volumes of emails can be sent daily, a simple email service may lack proper tracking features or human errors can lead to disastrous outcomes. A single click can send an email to an unintended recipient, possibly leaking confidential data and sensitive business details that violate data protection policies.

Benefits of digital mailroom automation

An automated digital mailroom is a key element of your digital transformation journey.

Responsible for processing and sorting incoming letters alongside monitoring and sending outgoing letters, owning an organised system to improve workflow efficiency is essential to reach departmental targets and organisational goals.

At Publisure our goal is to keep your outbound correspondence under your control. We offer a centralised, all-in-one platform that incorporates our own or your preferred hybrid mail, SMS, email, secure file sharing, web portal and app-based document delivery channels within a single management interface.

Publisure is your middleware application for digital transformation, and we support the seamless integration of your preferred in-house or third-party digital solutions, if required.

Cost-effective

Publisure prioritises digital document delivery to maximise your return on investment for your digital transformation strategy. We deliver efficiencies, enhanced audibility, and compliance to reduce the cost of printing and posting letters.

Our platform integration offers a cost-efficient solution that eliminates hidden charges, allowing organisations to increase their cost savings. With our service, companies have the freedom to securely send documents to an online portal, obtain customer consent, and notify them via encrypted email and SMS communications before sending out posted letters. This approach ensures that costs are kept low while maintaining the highest level of security for sensitive documents.

Document management

Our automated document management platform integrates existing data from your legacy software and applies intelligent features to automate and extract metadata related to the recipient. We introduce a conversation between your organisation and your customers, seamlessly linking your outbound and inbound correspondence to help you manage your important data quicker and easier.

Automating manual tasks introduces a complete solution for inbound and outbound content management, saving time for high-value tasks and preventing a fractured workflow from multiple software.

By managing your workflow in-house, you retain complete control over your data and can handle your documents internally with ease. Our user-friendly integrated platform empowers your team to manage data in real-time where you can monitor document statuses alongside our efficient mailroom scanning to keep your customer information in one safe space. You have the flexibility to schedule and recall letters as needed and track individual documents for added convenience.

The integration between our platform and your organisation is simple. There’s no need to install new software or run manual updates. We will provide you with a secure web URL which will direct you to your own, branded platform.

We prioritise auditability and compliance throughout the creation, submission, and receipt of your critical business communications. Our extensive accreditations reflect our commitment to secure software and protecting customer data.

Efficiency

The cost in time, effort and efficiencies to print and post a letter by hand is significant – typically this simple activity can take up to 2 minutes for each document. Multiplied by the number of letters posted each day, these hidden costs can significantly add up to more than the physical costs of printing and posting the letter itself.

Our digital mailroom is the solution for you. Publisure provides a simple, intuitive workflow that integrates, optimises and digitises your outbound communications. Our digital-first methodology is quick to implement, easy to use and offers improved data accessibility and compliance for your organisation. Designed to improve your team’s efficiency, you can meet tight deadlines and access online documents with the utmost security.

Carbon footprint

By implementing an automated digital mailroom, your company can significantly reduce its carbon footprint by eliminating the need for paper, envelopes, and postal vans, as well as reducing the energy consumption of printers.

Our software enables your organisation to operate in a more sustainable manner.

Key features for digital mailroom software

Many providers claim that they offer full automation, but not all solutions are created equal or offer the same capabilities that you may need in line with your goals.

Automated publication of documents through various communication channels.
Intelligent data extraction which automatically updates.
Workflow automation with predefined rules that efficiently route information to the appropriate departments and personnel.
Low-code or no-code platform for employees to easily navigate and implement.
Integration with other systems for a flexible workflow.
Secure storage.
User-friendly interface to facilitate easier adoption within the organisation.
Availability to scale with growth.

Publisure offers multiple communication channel options, making it ideal for organisations looking to streamline their document processing workflows.

How do you implement a digital mailroom?

By utilising multi-channel software, your organisation will have a comprehensive print room approach offering SMS, Email, online portal, and mail options to your customers. Being notified of any new documents through their preferred method, your customers need never miss a deadline or important information.

To ensure that you choose the right solution that aligns with your goals, we have created a simple 4-step process.

Evaluate your mailroom processes: Monitor your inbound and outbound volumes, the main document type and your current manual document management procedures.
What are your mailroom goals: Reduce processing times, improve data compliance, or cut overall costs?
Choose the right solution: Compare features against your goals and explore whether there is availability for organisational growth.
Implementation: Introducing new technology can be daunting to your employees, so it is important to ensure that they are sufficiently trained before, during and after implementation.

To achieve maximum results, you must thoroughly evaluate your specific business needs to ensure that the solution is right for you.

Make the most out of your internal digital mailroom

Upgrading to our digital solution will give you better control over data storage and template management, bringing departments together with ease.

Our user-friendly platform offers value and empowers you to deliver engaging communications across multiple platforms whilst ensuring secure two-way connections.

With over 28 years’ of experience across local government and the NHS, Publisure is tried, tested, and trusted in successfully delivering digital transformation strategies.