Mailroom Automation Accelerates Digital Processing

Enterprise-size companies are organizationally complex

It isn’t uncommon for an enterprise to provide services in a number of different and disparate areas. In the example of insurers, car insurance, homeowners' insurance, and health insurance all are distinct from one another in terms of what they cover, each with their own set of rules and regulations as to how documents can be processed. Within each of these segments, there are additional, parallel operations happening simultaneously in sales and administration. And documents coming into multiple disparate departments. 

Manually sorting and distributing all this information, even if it’s done over electronic channels, can be exceptionally complicated and prone to errors in a traditional mailroom setting. Those who do the actual sorting need to be trained, which on its own isn’t so bad but becomes worse when you factor in seasonal spikes in the amount of work to be done. 

There’s no standard of communication or formats

Organizations need to be flexible enough to deal with whatever kind of document gets sent their way, regardless of how it's sent. Today, documents can be received in any number of ways—email, postal mail, smartphones, mobile apps, online portals, fax, and chat tools are all fair game. Enterprises are coordinating with their customers, but also with other stakeholders, landlords, investigators, appraisers, partners, banks, service providers and contractors.

Each of these stakeholders has their own method of communicating, and their own document and content formats. Some of these entities may want to fax a document copy, while others want to email a few image files like JPEGs or PNGs. Even non-traditional content like video has crept into the inboxes of human resources staff. Somehow all of this needs to be consolidated into a single customer, employee or partner file, too, to provide an accurate depiction of any given stakeholder record.

There is a staggering volume of content to process

To manage the incoming documents of an enterprise-sized organization is to speak the jargon of several different professions all at once. Every day mailrooms receive customer-completed forms, contracts or applications. These forms often arrive in multiple variations, as required information could vary by region, service, request or product. More complex forms are accompanied by a huge variety of supporting documents from customers, which could be anything from a receipt for replacement of a product to a multipage medical diagnosis including x-rays and imaging files. This is in addition to new customer forms and all their attending documents, as well as legal contracts. Additionally, seasonal spikes in documents, like those for subscriptions, renewals and cancellations, mean that large volumes can enter the organization all at once. This overwhelms staffing and means delivering critical business information to the necessary departments is delayed. All of which can lead to poor financial planning and a drop in customer satisfaction, for example. 

Controls and compliance are key to daily business operations

Compliance is so integral to organizations that most have an executive-level role to cover this: Chief Compliance Officer. The mailroom—with its multiple input channels, multiple documents per communication, various document types and human error processing issues—is a compliance nightmare. In the perfect scenario, every document received is recorded, along with any operator actions taken, data generated, and customer record associated. Processing must be consistent and audits reliable and readily available. All of the information—and the aforementioned issues—must then be compiled and organized into a file. This is what representatives must work from when customers or applicants call or email. Any slowdown in the process leaves a representative without answers, and any mistake in the data is blamed on them.

Bear in mind, too, that there’s no limit on the number of times a customer may need to contact an organization. Every contact made is another opportunity for the organization to delight or disappoint.