For organisations with several departments, the simple process of opening mail could take hours! Not only does our digital mailroom save employees time and resources, but also improves the visibility of information entering the business. Offering a same-day mail scanning service, we will collect, digitise, and upload the scanned mail into dedicated employee or department folders within your chosen document management system for instant and secure access.
Cull’s Digital Mailroom solution automates the capture of all incoming mail and delivers structured electronic information to workflow processes, business systems, and content repositories. A digital mailroom solution replaces manual processes for managing high volumes of information from a wide variety of sources – it provides touchless processing solutions that reduce the effort to understand incoming information and decide what to do with it and where to send it within the organization.
So, where do we start?
Let us look in more detail at Cull’s Digital Mailroom solution, the technology, and processes required.
When opening mail, inbound documents in most businesses arrive in either paper or digital format. An effective process must encompass both, treating mail in a uniform way, following the same classification, action, and routing process.
It arrives, it needs opening! And this is the starting point for the technical revolution. Automated envelope openers and separators will help speed up this part of the process, working up to 100 times faster than manual workers. And whilst envelopes arrive in all manner of shapes and sizes, the technology exists to cope with this variation.
Separation
The task of separating the mail into its component parts is still a manual process. Each piece of mail needs sorting according to the number of documents in the envelope to ensure multi-page documents are scanned and classified as one. QR codes or barcodes act as separators to automate the separation process when feeding documents into scanning machines. Physical attachments such as staples and paper clips will of course need to be removed prior to scanning.
Scanning
Advanced scanners, which are designed for handling huge volumes of mail, have robust paper feeds that can handle paper that is up to A3 in size. Both sides of a sheet can be scanned simultaneously, and any blank pages can be removed.
Scanning to a high-quality resolution is imperative to allow for accurate optical character recognition (OCR) required for the next process of classification. Speeds of up to 200 pages per minute can be expected. Scanned documents are now in electronic format, just like emails, and, at this stage, all mail is handled according to set company protocols.
Classification
Classification of correspondence is required to aid the routing and distribution process, in order to identify which department the correspondence should be sent to.
Classification needs to mirror the structure of the company i.e. it must be departmentalised according to whether it is destined for the accounts department, sales, marketing, HR, and so on. Rules are set up so that the software treats incoming mail according to its content and OCR technology will identify certain parameters to help it direct mail accurately.
For example, it can be programmed to search for the word ‘invoice’, ‘order’, ‘job application’ etc. It is helpful to introduce a system of document coding, using reference numbers that can be easily associated with a department, or even an individual within a department. The more sophisticated this area of the process is, the more accurate the routing of mail will be.
Verification
Inevitably, there will be items of mail that cannot be recognised, though over time this will diminish as the system ‘learns’ new key identifiers. Classification technology allows for setting confidence thresholds in which any documents of concern are sent to the verification team for human intervention. This ensures a high degree of accuracy to ensure documents are not misrouted or stuck in the wrong queue.
Routing
The distribution process can be programmed to consider the workload of everyone in a department carrying out the same role, to distribute work evenly, and to allow for employee absences. This ensures minimum time delays in dealing with the correspondence. Cull’s Digital Mailroom technology can be designed to integrate at this stage with existing business systems. Emails can be sent, databases updated, and queues fed evenly.
Electronic Storage
With the intelligent recognition working out what all the documents are, and with the routing making sure the documents are sent to the right people, the next step is to ensure the documents are kept secure in a central location. A document management system installed as part of a Digital Mailroom solution provides a secure repository for inbound documents. It also enables fast retrieval at any point in the future of any of these documents using a simple search.
COVID-19
Digital Mailrooms provide an additional benefit during the current COVID-19 pandemic in that all mail is instantly available to staff who are working from home. Even when staff are in the office, digital mail is available on your computer so aids social distancing and reduces touch points.
Contact Us Today
Digital Mail has long been a smart move for businesses looking to save time, improve efficiencies and develop a competitive advantage, but with the COVID-19 pandemic, you can now protect your staff and better enable remote working practices.
Contact us today to find out more about Cull’s paperless solutions and discover how our Digital Mailroom can transform your business.