The traditional mailroom was a thing of the past. The digital mailroom is efficient and easy.
A digital mailroom is quickly becoming the new normal for many businesses. Indeed, unlike a traditional paper mailroom, digital mailrooms can improve business processes and save time and resources that would otherwise be wasted.
They make it easier for companies to share documents within the organization and with the right people without risking the information being seen by people it is not intended for.
Many EU businesses use a digital mailroom service to help them run their business more efficiently.
Before we can explain the benefits of going for digital mailroom operations, we must first explore the role of a traditional mailroom within a business and the potential issues with legacy paper mailrooms.
What is a Traditional Mailroom?
A traditional mailroom is usually some sort of hybrid paper system with a low level of email processing.
The role of a mailroom in businesses is to manage all incoming and outgoing mail within a company. Mail (and emails) are sorted and distributed to the proper departments or people within an organization.
These are usually manual processes where companies employ post office workers to do the physical work of sorting and delivering documents.
An email has dramatically reduced the workload of paper-based systems, but email only works if you know the correct email address to send a document to.
There are some inherent issues with a more traditional, manual mailroom setup. Some of these issues are:
- Sorting and distributing documents can be slow, depending on the volume of copies to be processed.
- Mistakes can happen; it’s human nature. Sometimes the false documents can end up in the wrong department or be sent to the wrong person. This can lead to the loss of documents, which end up at the post office after a certain period.
- Sensitive documents are not as secure as a physical hard copy; they can be easily read by anyone within the company and seen by people who do not have the management level required to receive them.
- Filing documents and paperwork can take up vast space in a building. Once documents are delivered, they tend to clutter office space, kept in bulky storage boxes or filing cabinets.
- Finding and retrieving information once it has been delivered is highly dependent on the organizational skills of the person or department for which the documents are intended.
As you can see from these few examples, more traditional paper mailrooms with multiple different manual processes are highly inefficient and can even risk your company’s data.
What is a Digital Mailroom?
A more modern digital mailroom handles all incoming and outgoing mail but is done much more securely and efficiently. Mailroom employees should still work in a digital mailroom; however, their workload can be much lighter and even automated in many cases.
This saves time by reducing the number of employees needed to manage a mailroom. It is ultimately saving time and money for the business.
All documents in a digital mailroom are often stored in a cloud-based document management system or, in some cases, in a central information system within an organization.
What are the benefits of Digital Mailroom?
All paper documents entering the digital mailroom are scanned and digitally archived. The original paper document can be archived (usually off-site) or destroyed and disposed of.
However, a digital mailroom is more than just scanning and archiving documents. Modern digital mailrooms are run by sophisticated computer software systems; using the software; businesses often see the following benefits:
- Using technology, all data can be captured as soon as it arrives in the mailroom; this data is then validated against a pre-determined set of data management rules and automatically emailed to the correct department or right person at the time of scanning! This removes one of the more traditional manual processes of physically sorting documents and delivering them.
- Incoming emails can be automatically sorted and redistributed instead of getting lost in a sea of spam or non-commercial emails.
- All documents can be stored in a central location; they can be stamped with the date of arrival, which makes finding information much easier and more efficient.
- Documents can be password protected, and only interested persons can access the information they contain. Improve data protection and compliance.
- Documents can be viewed by multiple people, reducing the need to create multiple copies to send to all team members in a department.
- Document delivery is instant; with just one click, the right people can access all the relevant documents they need.
- The office environment can enjoy less cluttered workspaces by not keeping hard copies of documents on-site. The physical floor space can be used for other things, such as other desks for employees.
- Less risk of data loss: Since digital mailrooms often store their data in the cloud, a company’s data is much more secure. If documents are kept on-site, it can pose a considerable risk to data in the event of a fire or flood, where traditionally, documents can be lost and unrecoverable.
By going digital, businesses can save vast amounts of time and money by reducing manual processes seeing the multiple benefits of using a digital mailroom over a more traditional setup.
They can become more compliant in how they handle their data and documents. All documents are quickly and instantly accessible by anyone with the appropriate level of access. Customer service may also see benefits, where you can access customer information much faster.
Companies are turning to more modern solutions by outsourcing their processes and using cloud-based document management systems. The traditional mailroom will soon be a thing of the past as more EU businesses embrace digital mailroom technology.
Docbyte Services:
Docbyte provides digital archiving services as well as Digital Mailroom services.