Mailing Systems Technology - July/August 2008 - (Page 17)

which distracts the staﬀ from processing the expense reports in the ﬁrst place. There are labor savings possible as a result of this; whether they are signiﬁcant largely depends on the size of your operation. At Sprint, we don’t try to pouch items other than documents. Pouching larger items makes the process more complex because of additional packaging and perhaps additional paperwork. Reduced Shipping Expense Although Sprint has negotiated rates with our preferred carriers, it’s still less expensive to send 10 envelopes as a single shipment than it is to send all 10 of them as individual shipments. Employees who send AIOM also save internal dollars for their own departments because the Mail Services group pays the freight for all pouch mail shipments. One of the ﬁrst tasks in planning the AIOM service was to ﬁgure out where the most intracompany traﬃc was coming from and going to. We did this by analyzing our overnight carrier bills to identify which Sprint sites generated the most shipments to other Sprint sites. As a ﬁrst cut, we identiﬁed which ZIP Codes are the largest sources or destinations of Sprint shipments. While there are other destinations in these ZIP Codes besides Sprint oﬃces, this technique does provide a great starting place for a more detailed review. Based on this information, we decided which routes to support for our AIOM service. Service Levels We considered what service levels are appropriate and achievable for our accountable interoﬃce mail service. On the one hand, the service levels must be attractive enough to employees that they will use the service. On the other hand, they should not be so aggressive that they are too diﬃcult or expensive to achieve on a daily basis. We can’t provide better service levels than the carriers because our service will be built on top of carriers to move mail pouches from site to site. The exception to this rule is that your geography may allow for an internally operated local or metropolitan courier service between your sites. We set cut-oﬀ times that guarantee that interoﬃce mail will meet the service levels. We needed to allow suﬃcient time for couriers to return to the shipping department after sweeping all the mail centers and for the pouches to be prepared in time to meet the arrival of the carrier’s afternoon pickup. Processing Accountable Interofﬁce Mail The processes for handling accountable interoﬃce mail during the “ﬁrst” and “last” miles are almost identical to your processes for handling inbound and outbound shipments. An outbound piece of accountable interoﬃce mail is just like handling an outbound private carrier (DHL, FedEX, UPS, etc.) shipment from the sender’s mail center until it reaches the shipping department. At this point, private carrier shipments are handed over to the driver. On the other hand, accountable interoﬃce mailpieces are scanned into a mail pouch for the proper destination. We use our internal tracking system to quickly handle this process. When all items have been scanned WWW.MAILINGSYSTEMSTECHNOLOGY.COM | JULY-AUGUST 2008 17 http://www.mailingsystemstechnology.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Mailing Systems Technology - July/August 2008

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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