To say that 2020 has been a turbulent year would be putting it incredibly mildly. From the uncertainty surrounding Brexit and Covid-19, this year has felt like a season finale for civilization itself.
Entire industries have been decimated – shut down for months. Many businesses closed their doors in March, never to re-open. Those that managed to remain open have been forced to embrace a new normal. Working from wherever. Commutes traded for conference calls. Collaborating remotely.
This year has forced businesses of all sizes to streamline operations and run as efficiently as possible. And staff working remotely still need to access resources that may only be available at their offices – such as the office mail. A solution that solves both these pains is a digital mailroom service. Once you know what a digital mailroom service is, it’s easy to see how they’ve become the ultimate outsourced service of 2020.
Digital Mailroom: What is it?
As the name implies, digital mailroom involves digitising physical post so that it can be more easily disseminated throughout an organisation. This usually involves a company’s post being redirected to the service provider.
Letters, statements, bills, invoices, etc. are sorted, scanned, and indexed. The digital images are then made available to the relevant parties. If required, any cheques could be banked on the customer’s behalf.
What are the benefits?
Deploying a digital mailroom will save a business time. A digitalised mail handling process could allow your team to access crucial correspondence far quicker than if they were restricted to handling paper – especially if they’re working outside the office.
And it’s not just receiving new correspondence that’s faster. By employing optical character recognition technology the content of the mail becomes searchable, enabling staff to search for a letter by whatever text it contains.
Data Capture
A digital mailroom service can be enhanced through the implementation of data capture software. More than just recognising text, data capture can extract important data from documents, such as addressee and sender information, or monetary values from bills & invoices.
Security
Your digital mailroom service provider would be trusted with your company’s private correspondence. You should be careful when selecting a digitalisation partner. Look for certifications and accreditations – especially in the areas of document management, information security, and data protection.
Good service providers in this industry will have a dedicated secure facility for processing and scanning your mail, and a secure method of providing access to the digital images. Their staff will be honest, competent and experienced. They should have a secure storage area for your mail items once they have been scanned, and a fully compliant confidential destruction service should you need it.
File Management
The digital files will most likely be held in a secure document management system, which is accessible online. The files could be sorted into folders based on a company’s specific requirements: Such as by date, recipient, category.
A good system will allow for metadata to be applied to files for tagging and categorising, which facilitates easy searching. Metadata could be applied manually or automatically assigned based on the content of the files. These metadata fields could also be used to set retention periods on certain types of documents to fulfil applicable legal requirements.
The file management system should also provide controlled access and an audit trail. This ensures that users are only able to access files that are relevant to them, and provides information regarding who has accessed which files.
For more information regarding Digital Mailroom, feel free to get in touch with us, or read more here: Digital Mailroom.