Every challenge, every adversity contains within it the seeds of opportunity & growth - Roy Bennett

Coronavirus presented a massive challenge for businesses across the world. The severe and unavoidable restrictions forced people to work from home—working from remote locations became the new normal. Enterprising organizations used this challenging situation fruitfully to speed up their digital technology adoption initiatives. They used the lockdowns to transition from traditional paper-based processes to digitized, automated ones that supported remote work. 

The corporate mailroom—where external mail enters a company—is a process that many businesses still handle manually. But not so after the pandemic! To ensure business continuity in a remote working environment, all incoming information needed to be within reach of remote workers. That meant all incoming mail must be digitized and made available on cloud-based document management systems so remote employees could process invoices, contracts, applications and transactional documents in real-time. If paper mail remains trapped in a mailroom that employees can't access, business operations will be adversely affected. 

Can you afford to have critical incoming documents lying inaccessible on your mailroom floor?

Have you automated your mailroom yet? In this blog post, we cover the most significant business benefits of switching to a digital mailroom. Read on to judge whether a digital mailroom is the right solution for your company.

What is a Digital Mailroom? 

A digital mailroom service refers to digitizing inbound and outbound mail and automating the processing and distribution of incoming mail. A digital mailroom service collects all incoming physical mail and converts it from paper format to electronic format using document scanning and data capture technologies. 

Every incoming document is scanned and indexed to facilitate the classification of mail and make it easily searchable. The digitized documents are routed to a document management system so that employees can access them remotely. They also integrate with other business systems such as CRM or ERP. In addition, notifications and alerts are set up to route the right information to the correct department and people based on their roles and responsibilities.  

Why automate mailroom services? What are the benefits of digital mailroom services?

Digital mailroom services are beneficial for companies that need to process a high volume of documents and have stringent regulatory compliance requirements. For example, accounts payable teams must ensure timely payments to avoid penalties and ensure a healthy cash flow. Companies in the healthcare and insurance domain require fast claims processing and see huge benefits from mailroom automation.

Switching to a digital mailroom has several benefits, as explained below:

• Centralized mailroom operations

Setting up a digital mailroom ensures that every piece of mail is gathered at a single central location, converted to digital format at the point of entry, and then circulated within the organization. 

• Preservation of documents & information

Digitizing physical documents, indexing, and storing them in a document management system eliminates chances of loss or misplacement, prevents ageing-related deterioration, ensures data storage as per document retention policies, thus ensuring compliance with industry regulations.

• Instant information access

A digital mailroom provides information to employees in near-real-time and makes it easy to share, distribute and access incoming documents at the click of a button, anytime, and from anywhere. 

• Eliminate manual errors

Opening, sorting, and distributing physical mail is a time-consuming activity that is prone to human errors. Digitizing mail and automating rules for their classification and distribution decreases chances of mistakes and requires minimal staff for mail processing.

• More visibility & complete control

Transitioning to a digital mailroom ensures that you have complete information about the volume of mail received, the amount of time required for processing and helps identify and eliminate any bottlenecks, thus improving workflows.

• Improved security

Some documents contain sensitive customer or company data. Automated workflows in digital mailrooms ensure secure transmission of information only to the concerned departments and personnel, thus improving security and meeting regulatory compliances. 

• Speed up processes

A digital mailroom provides easy search-and-retrieve features. Employees can fetch information quickly without having to look through paper files and archived documents. This ensures faster invoice processing, quicker customer service responses, and prompt processing of critical documents like medical claims or banking transactions.

• Improved customer experience

Faster processing and improved accuracy mean enhanced customer service and improved customer experience. These eventually result in happy customers and aid in customer retention.

• Focus on core activities

Outsourcing your digital mailroom activities frees up your employees' time so they can focus on their core business activities instead of mundane or administrative processes.

• Cost savings

Digital mailrooms save costs involved in paper stationery, printing, or courier charges. Besides, it saves you real estate costs as a digital mailroom occupies less space than a physical one. Outsourcing digital mailroom activities can offer significant savings on real estate costs if you are moving to a smaller office.

Revolution Data Systems: The digital mailroom services experts

Outsource your mailroom processes to a firm like Revolution Data Systems to reduce costs and give you instant access to information.  

We handle the entire mail cycle from opening, sorting, indexing to routing and distributing incoming mail. We provide a robust mail management system and help you to automate the collection and distribution of mail into business process workflows. 

We set up a dedicated PO Box, retrieve your daily mail, and scan every document received through physical mail. Automated rules for metadata fields are used to index every document. Intelligent capture automatically identifies information for data extraction and routes it to the correct party using intelligent process automation and machine learning. Pertinent data is transferred to business systems such as an ERP, CRM, or accounting system. In addition, we can set up e-approvals with alerts and notifications for each step of the workflow process. This provides complete visibility and an auditable trail of activities during all stages of the process. 

Our expertise in document capture technologies and intelligent process automation make us your ideal mailroom automation partner.  

Are you ready to switch to a digital mailroom and reap the benefits of mailroom automation? 

Contact us for more information on our Digital Mailroom service today