Replacing Your End of Life Equipment? Check out the M Sorter
Mail handling may not be at the top of a company’s process improvement agenda. Business executives give little thought to how their company handles mail. But they appreciate that mail is an important component of their organization’s communication pipeline. For companies seeking to streamline daily operations, Tritek offers a way to automate both incoming and outgoing mail and update a critical business function that has remained unchanged for decades. This two-fold automation, enabled by a single piece of equipment, offers a strategic and cost-effective automation solution.
Achieving operational efficiency through automation is a critical goal for any business, and the selection of the right mail sorting equipment plays an instrumental role. Firms stand to gain a dual benefit, as new machines seamlessly manage both incoming and outbound mail. A combination of hardware and software from Tritek lowers floor space requirements and results in significant cost savings, contributing to overall operational productivity and profitability.
Every business day, companies collect incoming mail from the Post Office. Some organizations may segment their incoming mail by paying for multiple permits and box numbers, but most do not. All the mail arriving for distribution to company employees arrives together in bags, tubs, and trays.
In a typical environment, mailroom employees sort through the mail one piece at a time. They use some version of the centuries-old “pigeonhole” method and their own knowledge of the organization to divide the mail according to internal or external courier routes.
The sorting process depends on employees who somehow keep track of where to deliver each piece of mail. Senders do not always print a current employee’s name, building, or mail stop number on the envelope. Some mail is addressed to a position like “Marketing Manager”. Other senders include only the business name in the address block, with no indication of the mail’s relevance to a specific internal department. Lots of mail comes addressed to former employees or people who have changed departments. The mailroom employees must interpret the information on the envelope and decide where to route the mail. They use their memory, sometimes augmented by written notes or Post-it stickers.
Ideally, the organization informs the mailroom when new employees are hired, dismissed, or transferred, but that is not always the case. Often, this information is gathered informally from the couriers as they return from their routes. Mailroom employees must research any mail for which they cannot determine the recipient. A series of phone calls or emails ensue before the staff can deliver those mail pieces.
The prevalent method of sorting and delivering incoming mail features no logging, tracking, or accountability. The organization has no record of receiving an individual mail piece and no way to know for sure where it was routed. If a piece is mis-delivered, it could be days before it returns to the mailroom to be re-processed – if ever. When a key mailroom employee leaves the company, they take a great deal of valuable internal distribution information with them.
This approach, repeated every business day in countless organizations across the country, has some serious drawbacks:
Tritek’s advanced sorting equipment streamlines mail center operations. The hardware handles the complex task of sorting mail for internal distribution. As mail arrives from the Post Office each morning, mailroom employees feed it into the equipment. The machine’s superior capabilities allow for rapid and accurate sorting of this incoming mail to the delivery routes of the company’s internal or external couriers.
Tritek’s software solutions provide an innovative layer to the sorting procedure. The software identifies and categorizes incoming mail without human intervention. By scanning and analyzing various features, such as barcodes, printed addresses, or other unique identifiers, the software sorts the mail according to pre-established rules and prepares it for distribution. Invoices, for instance, may always be sent to Accounts Payable, tax documents to Finance, etc.
The business rules retain the delivery information, lowering the organization’s reliance on the experience of individual workers.
Tritek’s hardware and software solutions work in harmony to sort incoming mail. Automation not only reduces manual labor, and any errors associated with it, but ensures every piece of mail reaches its intended destination in the most efficient way possible. The Tritek system will retain a time-stamped scanned image of each mail piece, providing proof of the mail’s arrival at the facility.
Undeliverable mail is a problem for nearly every mail operation. The USPS will return mail to the sender if they cannot deliver it to the address printed on the mailpiece. They call this mail “Undeliverable as Addressed”, or UAA. Purging UAA addresses or correcting them prevents companies from wasting money by repeatedly attempting to mail to the same bad addresses.
Software from Tritek allows organizations to deal with their UAA mail, using the same machines they use for processing inbound and outbound mail. The software reads the notification messages printed on the yellow USPS stickers and takes appropriate action, according to rules the organization has established.
After completing the morning activity of distributing the incoming mail, the mail center employees turn their attention to handling the outgoing mail. Some outbound mail arrives at the mailroom via the internal couriers who pick it up from the departments along their routes. Employees throughout the organization may drop off more outbound mail at the mailroom throughout the day. The mail center processes jobs for various departments that may require printing, folding, inserting, or addressing. Most of the outbound mail comes from items generated by the company’s print and mail facility.
The mail center organizes the outbound mail into logical batches. To qualify for the most favorable postage rates, mail must be sorted and grouped. The mail pieces must feature an intelligent mail barcode (IMb). Mailers seeking postage discounts must furnish the USPS with reports and documentation that describe the mailings. Tritek’s equipment and mail sorting software takes care of all the preparation work, allowing businesses to take advantage of favorable rates and lower their postage spend.
At the end of the day, outbound mail is delivered to the Post Office along with the documentation. Once the outbound mail has finished processing, the equipment is re-configured to process incoming mail and is ready for work the following morning.
This strategic arrangement, achievable only with the dynamic capabilities of Tritek solutions, ensures the machines are effectively used throughout business hours. Such diligent usage reaffirms the return on investment and maximizes operational efficiency.
A double-duty strategy paints a compelling picture of cost efficiency and operational excellence, offering businesses a persuasive argument to invest in Tritek solutions. These machines represent a forward-thinking approach to maximizing institutional resources while streamlining mail operations. The result is a smooth, efficient, and effective mail handling process that positively impacts daily operations and contributes to overall business performance.
An investment in Tritek’s sorting equipment gives organizations double the automation, enhancing the functionality and efficiency of the mailing process — all without needing two separate machines. It’s the epitome of cost and process optimization.
Replacing Your End of Life Equipment? Check out the M Sorter