Mailing Systems Technology - July/August 2008 - (Page 14)

Trends VIRTUAL and employees. Employers can slash real estate costs and dramatically reduce their carbon footprint. They can attract and retain the best talent without requiring them to relocate. Cutting commute times can improve employees’ quality of life while relieving stress on the local infrastructure. Most gratifying of all are the productivity gains, with some companies documenting increases from four to 15%. But Who Delivers The Mail? The mail center is one of the biggest impediments to deploying these new workforce solutions. Remote and mobile workers still need to get mail, yet most traditional mail center operations can’t accommodate this new workforce environment. Traditional mail delivery practice within most corporations mimics that of the U.S. Postal Service: universal and uniform delivery. In virtual or mobile employee environments, this is a frustratingly ineﬀective proposition. These workers aren’t in company locations frequently enough to make physical mail delivery an eﬀective or economical option. Alternatives such as express carrier-to-home delivery are expensive and limited in their eﬀectiveness. While management and IT have created secure, remote access to enterprise platforms such as email systems and corporate intranets, employees still need timely delivery of inbound and inter-oﬃce physical mail. This has been the last remaining obstacle to realizing the full beneﬁts of a virtual workplace — until now. mailstream management The solution for today’s changing workforce By Terrence M. Doeberl oday’s workforce is changing in response to changes in the economy, business and the environment. Rising fuel costs, corporations that are reducing their real estate footprint to cut expenses, the need to attract and retain the best talent in an increasingly competitive marketplace and growing environmental concerns are all driving a new phenomenon in 21st century business: the remote and mobile workforce. A Growing Trend More and more companies are implementing remote worker and virtual oﬃce strategies. A 2006 Boston Consulting Group survey noted that 85% of executives surveyed expected to increase the number of “location agnostic” workers in the next ﬁve years. By 2007, 73% of the Fortune 500 oﬀered “hot desking,” or unassigned work stations. Sixty percent introduced “drop in” spaces that year. And, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, about 20.7 million U.S. workers no longer report to oﬃce buildings on a daily basis. An additional 30 million people are expected to work from places other than company oﬃces by the end of 2008. One of the most eﬀective ways for organizations to meet these challenges is by utilizing a larger remote and mobile workforce that leverages home oﬃces, hotels and customer or partner sites, as well as oﬃce environments where employees may stop in for email, telephone and conference purposes while traveling. These approaches oﬀer several signiﬁcant beneﬁts to both employers T Virtual Mailstream Management Companies can now take advantage of Virtual Mailstream Management — a structured, comprehensive strategy that leverages the mail center to successfully serve out-of-oﬃce workers. Its goal: prompt and eﬃcient delivery of important business and customer correspondence and related documents to employees whose eﬀectiveness depends on it. There are three components to a Virtual Mailstream Management strategy: Digitization — Business correspondence mail that requires a prompt response, such as customer communications, sales inquiries and investor and shareholder communications, is of particular importance to remote and mobile workers. Inter-oﬃce mail that’s sent in physical form is also considered high priority for digitization when it drives a business process or carries a signature. 1 This type of correspondence is unstructured in format and content, unlike invoices and business forms that can easily be handled in an automated fashion. An operator opens the mail, removes the contents and uses separator sheets to create a set of documents that are scanned and digitized. Envelopes are also included, since they often contain important information such as legal postmarks. Once scanned, the images go to a work station where an operator selects their destination. The scan has automatically dated the correspondence, and the operator enters the postmark date, who the correspondence is from and the 14 JULY-AUGUST 2008 | WWW.MAILINGSYSTEMSTECHNOLOGY.COM http://www.mailingsystemstechnology.com

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Mailing Systems Technology - July/August 2008 Contents Editor’s Note Peer to Peer The Economics of Inkjet Addressing Virtual Mailstream Management Guarding Your Internal Documents Top It Off With Training Implementing Digital Mail Saving You Money Kate’s Slate Products & Services Advertiser Index Sho Time Who’s Who Company Profiles BCC Software BÖWE BELL + HOWELL Collins Ink Corporation Datatech SmartSoft Endicia Hasler, Inc. Kern, Inc. Kirk-Rudy Mail Quip, Inc. MCS, Inc. Melissa Data MidSouth Technologies, a NPI Company Neopost NPI Parascript Pitney Bowes Inc. Rena Systems Satori Software, Inc.

Mailing Systems Technology - July/August 2008

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