Business organizations are facing increased pressure to deal with their incoming communication and sensitive documents in a timely, safe and efficient manner. With customers having so many choices, companies can no longer rely on dated manual processing of correspondence and must embrace automation to enable swift query resolution for its customers.
Businesses are also inundated with paper and electronic correspondence from various stakeholders, and each of them expects swift action. Reducing the time and effort it takes to process physical corporate mail is, therefore, the right way forward for a business to thrive in a competitive environment. This is where digital mailroom automation comes in, which helps a business safely and securely process its inbound correspondence. Here are five basic questions and answers to help you understand how this system works.
What exactly is a digital mailroom?
A digital mailroom is a cost-efficient and time-efficient way to manage your incoming physical mail. It typically works by digitizing paper communications and documents, which starts with setting up a PO Box to receive all mail sent to a business. Next, the mail is opened, sorted and classified as per preset criteria such as document type or intended destination.
The digital mailroom technicians then scan the document and assign it a reference number for easy identification. Once the digitized document is uploaded, your employees can log in and view it from any device. Email and faxed documents are handled in a similar manner. A digital mailroom, therefore, becomes the single entry point for a business to receive and process all corporate documents.
What types of information can be processed by a digital mailroom?
A sound digital mailroom automation solution is designed to process all types of incoming information, regardless of its format. This includes paper mail, email, XML, text messages and so forth. It classifies documents and sends them forward to the right department.
Sue Morton from DataDash.com explains that a digital mailroom can turn hours of sorting into just minutes of work. Based on the way it is programmed, the system can even raise an alarm when it encounters certain words that require swift action from a particular team (such as a customer complaint or a legal notice).
How does the intended recipient know that they have new documents to review?
As the entire system is automated, once a document is uploaded to the document management system, a workflow process is created to inform the intended department or individual of the new upload(s). This notification takes place with the help of indexing information that determines what route a document should take. Not only this, but the system can also be set up to notify the sender that the desired action is being taken.
What are the key benefits of digitizing mail processing for a business?
In a fast-paced business environment, there are several ways a digitized mailroom can help a business become more efficient. The main benefits of implementing a good digital mailroom solution are as follows.
- It reduces operational costs by eliminating tedious manual mail management processes. If you decide to outsource digital mailroom automation, you don’t need to have an entire in-house team for the job, save on precious office space and don’t need to deal with high volumes of paper correspondence.
- Digital documentation processing increases productivity and efficiency across the organization by using a standard system to identify, sort, distribute and store important documents.
- A seamlessly integrated mailroom automation product enables a faster flow of information, thus enabling a streamlined workflow and faster decision making at all levels. Employees don’t need to wait for long periods to receive documents and act upon them.
- Digital mail not only saves business paper costs, but it is also increasingly becoming the preferred way of mail management for environmentally conscious business enterprises.
- Mailroom automation allows for easier auditing, archiving and legal compliance.
- It allows an organization greater control over its documents and eliminates the risk of human error in handling sensitive data.
- Digitizing your mail processing enables faster response time to your customers, leading to greater customer satisfaction.
Can a digital mailroom be programmed to send automated replies to incoming communications?
Yes, with an advanced product it is possible to program automatic responses by setting certain parameters. In fact, email routing is an important part of a digital mailroom automation solution, with the option to set an auto-response to acknowledge the received mail. The digital system sends these replies by reading pre-specified data on incoming mail and can even send a personalized reply if so desired.