Organizations still receive substantial amounts of mail. Non-profit organizations rely heavily on physical mail for donations, and many enterprises regularly receive correspondence from various stakeholders, including vendors, business partners, government bodies, marketers, and customers. Each piece of inbound mail is important. Mailed documents could be business proposals, legal documents, or even a customer's handwritten complaint. Any delay or mis-delivery poses a risk to the efficiency and reputation of an organization.  But managing inbound mail in an era of flexible working arrangements and remote teams is becoming increasingly challenging. Here is where technology offers a helping hand. Automated inbound mail processing can be a transformative strategy for many organizations confronted with ensuring that mail ends up in the right hands, at the right time.  Efficiency: An automated inbound mail solution eliminates human error and improves the efficiency of mail delivery within an organization. Accessibility: Digitizing inbound mail allows employees to access their mail anytime, anywhere, which is particularly useful for remote teams. Customization: Custom inbound mail digitization provides an added level of control over how companies sort and distribute mail, ensuring personnel receive their mail promptly. In the past, handling inbound mail was a critical task, requiring meticulous attention to detail, a keen sense of organization, and a dedicated team of mailroom staff. But with transitioning operational dynamics, including remote work environments and staffing challenges, linking employees with their mail has evolved into a more complex assignment.  When choosing between dealing with physical mail and digitizing inbound mail, several factors come into play. While physical mail prioritizes tangible delivery, a digital mail solution encapsulates the essence of timeliness, security, and accessibility. The decision ultimately lies in weighing the pros and cons, aligning it with organizational goals, work culture, and technological adoption strategies. Is Your Organization Ready for Automated Digital Mail Delivery? What if the daily task of sorting incoming mail and distributing it throughout the organization no longer relied on dedicated employees who relied on experience to make the routing decisions? Automated inbound mail is a more streamlined, efficient approach to dealing with your organization's mail. The process entails scanning and digitizing regular mail to be delivered electronically to the intended recipient within your organization.  However, it's not just about choosing to automate and digitize your inbound mail. It's about choosing the right solution to do so—a custom inbound mail digitization solution that's tailored precisely to your organization's needs and workflows. With the right solution, every piece of mail ends up exactly where it needs to be, regardless of where your team might be working.  Ultimately, preparing your organization for automated digital mail delivery isn't just about solving today's challenges. It's about future-proofing your operations and optimizing for the ways of working that are yet to come. Some indications that your organization might benefit from an automated inbound mail processing solution are: High daily volumes of incoming mail Multiple buildings, campuses, or worksites Subject to regulatory oversight Cost of third-party couriers Incidents of lost or mis-directed documents Tight deadlines Even as many organizations shift a good portion of incoming communications to electronic channels, internal physical mail distribution is still a challenge. Most companies rely on mail center staffers who, through their own experience or with the help of written memos and sticky notes, decide every day about the proper destination for every piece of incoming mail. With remote or hybrid work arrangements, uniting employees with their mail has become even tougher. The mail center might route urgent documents to unoccupied offices that employees only use a few days per month, with no way for them to know what mail is waiting for them at the home office. A Necessary Shift to Automation In today's fast-paced business environment, handling all inbound mail manually is no longer practical. With an automated inbound mail solution, traditional challenges associated with mail center management can become a thing of the past. Adopting an automated inbound mail system frees up your mail center team's resources and improves overall efficiency. Automation brings in more accuracy, cuts down processing time, and ensures critical communication is never missed or delayed.  This technological evolution impacts businesses aiming for fluidity. The need for an organized, efficient system to manage mail is crucial. Custom inbound mail digitization reduces potential delays in delivery and miscommunication, ensuring everyone has access to their mail, no matter their location.  An inbound mail solution is not just about catching up with the trend. It's about paving the way for operational efficiency, higher productivity, reduced costs, optimal resource utilization and a better, more streamlined communication workflow within the organization. Custom Inbound Mail Digitization Custom inbound mail digitization is an approach to automate inbound mail and streamline the mail handling process according to an organization's rules, policies, and requirements. Through this, a digital mail system converts physical mail into digital formats. The software delivers it to the proper individuals, regardless of whether they are onsite at the office, traveling, or working from home. It's like having an automated funnel that directs all your mail to the appropriate recipients.  One of the crucial advantages of custom inbound mail digitization lies in its flexibility and adaptability. Organizations can tailor the solution to match their business requirements and adapt to changes quickly. Organizations can sort and organize mail based on customized rules allowing for targeted delivery to an individual or department. This ensures that nothing falls through the cracks, and everyone gets their mail right on time.  A custom inbound mail solution doesn't just optimize operational efficiency but also profoundly impacts customer relationships. By efficiently dealing with customer mail, response and resolution times improve, enhancing customer satisfaction and deepening relationships.  This process of digitizing inbound mail also provides a secure way of handling sensitive items. With advanced encryption and approval-based access, your mailroom becomes a fortress, protecting your valuable communication–a far cry from delivering mail to cubicles scattered throughout the enterprise. Digitizing Inbound Mail With Tritek's custom inbound mail solutions, organizations can choose between two basic approaches to processing and routing inbound mail. A one-pass approach relieves the mail center from carrying inbound mail from the mail center to each of the organization's employees or departments. The mailed items remain in their original envelopes, awaiting pickup from the addressees. With a two-pass arrangement, a digital system notifies employees when the mail center has received an item and routes a scanned image of the outside envelope to the employee. The employee then decides how to further process the mail. For more information about one-pass and two-pass inbound mail, see “Give Employees the Mail How They Want It”. Solving the Inbound Mail Problem Faced with modern business challenges, automating inbound mail becomes a necessity. This shift from traditional to digital not only streamlines mail distribution, but it also eliminates the risk of mis-deliveries and delays. By implementing an automated inbound mail solution, organizations can ensure that every piece of important mail reaches its intended recipient on time, whether the employees are in the office or working remotely.  The ability to customize inbound mail digitization, such as the solutions available from Tritek, brings remarkable benefits. Such solutions not only ensure the systematic processing and sorting of physical mail, but also provide an edge in operations. Businesses benefit from the flexibility to tailor their inbound mail system according to their unique needs. This leads to enhanced productivity and effectiveness in mail management.  Digitizing inbound mail enhances communication channels within the organization. Besides the faster distribution of documents, digitization also provides an accessible record for auditing and tracking purposes. Pivoting from traditional mail handling to inbound mail automation is an investment in the future. Taking the leap ensures smoother operations, improved organization, and highly efficient, secure processing. Fusing technology with daily mail handling operations not only streamlines the process, but brings an extra dimension of effectiveness in an organization's communication network.

Digital transformation is not just the latest business buzzword. Companies are quickly migrating analog and manual processes into the digital realm. You might think the mailroom is one area unlikely to be affected by digitization, but you would be wrong. The transformation from an analog mail room to a digital one involves implementing digital technologies and processes to improve efficiency and productivity. General Trends in Mail Center Transformation Electronic messages are replacing traditional paper-based communication with digital alternatives. Document scanning and storage allow companies to convert physical documents into digital formats through automated envelope opening, document extraction, and scanning. Implementing a document management system for efficient storage, organization, dissemination, and retrieval of digital documents eliminates the need for physical storage space and allows quick access to archived information. Inbound Mail Digitization and Delivery Digital email delivery of physical documents has been a practical technology for a decade, but its acceptance was limited. That is no longer the case. Remote work is the new normal; teams need technology to stay on top of their postal mail as they work from a home office. Digital mail delivery solves this predicament. An organization configures digital mail for their specific needs. Business rules control who gets what mail pieces and security protocols. How digital mail delivery works: Insurance Company ABC’s main mail center receives an envelope addressed to Ted in Human Resources via sent First Class Mail. There is still an HR office onsite, but Ted works remotely and visits the office monthly. Since the envelope is an HR communication and may have legal consequences, waiting for Ted to visit the company office building is not an option. During their digital mail system implementation ABC would have created business rules dictating how to handle mail addressed to remote employees. They could decide to open and scan such mail. Alternatively, they may choose to physically deliver mail to the HR department, even employees were away. A third approach might have the mail center scan the front and back of the envelope without opening it. The mail center staff opens the envelope, then extracts and scans the contents. Ted’s email address is selected from the company database; the scanned document is attached and sent to Ted for action. The process is straightforward. But ABC receives thousands of inbound letters each day. Scalable technology beyond an office supply store scanner and an opener is needed. The Tritek Oasis inbound mail system offers a solution for companies with significant mail volumes. The scan area provides imaging of the front and back of each mail piece or document and is stored in a .tiff, .jpg, or .pdf file format. Each document receives a digital time/date stamp for retention and look-up. The system features an optional opener/extractor, scanner, imaging and archiving software, and duplexing in a single workstation. Digital Mail Delivery Onsite So far, our discussion has focused on remote employees. How does digital mail work for onsite employees? Essentially the same, but like delivery to remote employees, business rules dictate the disposition of mail. Let's say that Insurance Company ABC has 16 floors and 900 employees. The mail center begins delivery to onsite employees at 3:30 p.m. Inbound mail is scanned, identified as an onsite employee, and an email is sent to that employee. The employee can respond with "recycle," "I will come to pick it up," "deliver," or some other response. Some companies no longer deliver mail onsite. They send the envelope scan to the recipient, and the recipient decides if they want to travel from the 16th floor to the mail center to pick up their mail. Security and Privacy Consider that First Class Mail may be opened by someone other than the addressee. Robust security measures must protect digital mail and sensitive information. Build business rules to identify envelopes that should remain sealed, the disposition of the mail piece, and if local and remote employee mail is treated differently. Security measures include encryption, access controls, and regular security audits to ensure compliance with data protection regulations. Training, Support, and Implementation                The digital mail center is a paradigm shift. It significantly changes how people think and work in the mail center and replaces 50-year-old business practices. Initial training and ongoing support are crucial for employees implementing the new system. Tritek will provide a detailed plan to familiarize the mail center team with the digital mailroom processes and tools. Ongoing support addresses issues or questions during the transition and ensures smooth adoption of the new digital environment. Digital Mail Center Master Plan Tritek engineers patented field-proven mailroom automation and document imaging solutions to improve productivity and mailroom efficiency. Besides the inbound mail solutions described here, Tritek's outbound mail processing equipment and software allow organizations to weigh, label, manifest, barcode, print reports, and build trays and bundles of mail. Tritek’s expanding menu of mail services includes Threat Detection, Digital Email Delivery, Database Management, Returned Mail Processing, Inbound Mail, Presorted Mail, and Parcel Processing. Tritek’s clients include Fortune 500 companies, government, educational institutions, financial services, healthcare, insurance, and fulfillment.

In today's business world, mailrooms are facing several challenges and one of the biggest is staffing. Seasoned employees are retiring, or they resign, seeking positions more aligned with revised personal priorities. Whatever the reasons, staffing the mailroom today can be difficult. The answer to this problem, as it is with many modern business issues, is technology. In corporate mailrooms, Tritek is the company businesses rely upon to provide the technology they need to handle their organization's new demands for incoming and outbound mail. Tritek offers a wide range of mailroom solutions, including equipment and software that can help mailrooms prepare outbound packages faster and route incoming mail more efficiently. More Work, Fewer People There’s no doubt about the remote working trend spurred by the pandemic being a lasting phenomenon. Companies were resistant at first but now recognize the advantages remote work can offer, and more employees are seeking fully remote or hybrid positions. Besides the effect work-from-home preferences have on the ability to recruit and retain mail center employees, a decentralized work force across the enterprise makes the mail center’s job more difficult. Company mail centers have operated with procedures that worked well for them for decades. Now, managing incoming and outbound business mail have become come logistical challenges for organizations that may handle thousands of mail pieces every month. Transitioning to a system that supports offsite employees, while continuing in their role as a hub for a company’s communications with the outside world, can be a real problem. Critical Business Processes Depend on Mail Some documents typically received in corporate mailrooms, such as legal notices, customer complaints, or last-minute claims documentation, require swift action. A system slowed by the limitations of physical distribution to a widely scattered group of recipients won’t do, especially when that system relied heavily on the knowledge and experience of mail center staffers who may no longer be employed by the organization. Automated Mail Processing Solutions Now that human-dependent legacy solutions are untenable, mailroom managers are turning to automation to bring their organizations up to speed with the rest of the business world. Mailroom automation has many advantages. Efficiency – Manual tasks such as scanning the mail, sorting, and routing can be accomplished by specialized hardware and software that can perform these operations quicker than humans, without taking breaks, getting sick, or going on vacation. Accuracy – Cameras and software for text and image recognition have advanced to the point that systems, such as those offered by Tritek, can read nearly any text regardless of skew or  orientation, whether typed, computer-printed, or written by hand. Systems to sort outbound mail or process incoming pieces are less likely to make errors compared to human mailroom staffers. Security – Business rules and permission levels embedded in document processing systems can prevent sensitive information from being seen by unauthorized individuals. Mail pieces can be tracked and accounted for. Compliance with privacy laws can be controlled. Lower Cost – The labor savings are obvious, especially when considering the extra work necessary to correct mis-routed inbound mail, or extra postage if outbound mail is not optimized to take advantage of all the postage discounts the USPS offers. Automated mailroom solutions also offer organizations the opportunity to find and correct previously unrecognized inefficiencies that may never have come to light in a manually dependent operation. Automated systems can collect and report data about mail volumes, throughput, shift performance, mail piece status, and more. Ideal Time to Upgrade Many of Tritek’s clients have been challenged to continue managing their corporate and university mail centers since the pandemic. The changes in the employment market have only made matters worse. Mail centers do not always share in the technology and innovation investments companies have made in other areas of the business, but the time has come to do some upgrades. An updated, technology driven mail center will be more attractive to job candidates who may view mail processing as “old school”. Investing in mailroom automation solutions now is a good long-term strategy for supporting the requirements of modern businesses. Learn More About Automated Mail Processing: Pandemic Increases Inbound Parcel Obligations Robots In Your Mailroom? The Future of Mailroom Automation The Changing Role of Corporate Mailrooms

Corporate and campus mail centers are continually challenged to deliver mail to the correct recipients even as they change jobs within the organization, move to a new building, relocate, or are replaced when they leave for other opportunities. The work-from-home workplace model and other changes brought about by the pandemic have made these tasks even more frequent and problematic. Traditionally, companies have informally tracked employee moves and changes using sticky notes, a 3-ring binder, or mail center employee memories. Temporary and permanent staff shortages and increased worker mobility now make manual methods of re-directing mail risky. Fortunately, user-friendly technology reduces errors and improves productivity by automatically creating new address labels and re-directing mail to a recipient’s current location according to pre-established business rules. The benefit is three-fold: Mail center employees spend less time processing inbound mail. The organization lessens its reliance on tribal knowledge. Remote employees receive their mail faster and with less chance of mis-delivery. The Mail Forwarding Dilemma Digital mail seemingly solves the problem of mail forwarding to remote or relocated employees. See this video about Tritek’s Oasis digital mail delivery solution. With digital delivery, mail center staff opens employee mail, scans it, and then forwards PDFs to the addressee’s email. Digital mail has its place and offers a certain level of convenience. It creates a digital archive of all incoming mail. However, many companies do not want mail center staff opening and scanning everyone’s mail. This practice could reveal confidential or protected information to unauthorized parties. Tritek’s 2-step digital mail delivery option lowers the risk of unintentional privacy breaches, but forwarding unopened mail is a better solution in some situations. Hardcopies with wet signatures are a part of doing business in many industries like legal, healthcare, and insurance. Forwarding these documents unopened to the intended recipient is a sound business practice that documents the chain of custody for critical communications. Rules governing the disposition of specific documents may make physically re-routing certain mailpieces the only choice open to some organizations. Fiduciary documents, for instance, may require delivery to a corporate address, not the home of an employee. Digital Mail Delivery Solutions Why This is Happening Now The remote employee phenomenon was well underway when the COVID pandemic occurred. Video conferencing was already in place by several vendors, territorial salespeople had worked from home for decades, and real-time workgroup software was common. COVID just made the inevitable shift in work processes happen faster and on a grander scale. Manual mail forwarding worked for many organizations for many years. Eventually though, they would have adopted a standardized mail forwarding technology to improve efficiency and reduce the chance of error. COVID made the technology adoption more urgent. Technology Finds Nomadic Employees The good news is that employees working at home or at another office will not miss out on their mail. A mail processing workstation and intuitive software make mail forwarding simple. You may never touch a keyboard or a mouse in the process. This is how it works: Incoming mail is separated into two bins: One for delivery to on-site employees and one for remote employees. Further sorting may take place after the initial “rough sort.” A mail piece for a remote employee is placed under a scanner. The name and address are scanned. Mail forwarding software determines the forwarding address by referencing an up-to-date database of corporate address changes. A mailing label is produced with the forwarding address and placed over the existing address. If an employee is receiving many pieces of mail in various formats, such as #10 envelopes, postcards, and folded self-mailers, accumulate them and mail everything in one envelope. This saves considerable postage over forwarding each piece separately. The mail forwarding software standardizes addresses to USPS specifications to speed delivery and reduce the chance of mishandling. Mail arriving at the recipient’s current address could be delayed by as little as one day, depending on internal processing and the final destination. Putting it into Practice Since 1988, Tritek has engineered patented, field-proven mailroom automation and document imaging solutions to improve productivity and mailroom efficiency. The Tritek Mobile ACE workstation and Mail Forwarding System assures an organization their employees will receive important documents, even if the employee has moved to a new location. See this short demonstration video of The ACE Mail Forwarding System, which joins Tritek’s growing family of mail center automation solutions. Our lineup includes inbound mail sorting, imaging and archiving of mailed documents, parcel sorting, and the industry-leading Correct Elect Vote-By-Mail technology. Tritek’s clients include Fortune 500 companies, government, educational institutions, financial services, healthcare, insurance, and fulfillment. Learn More About Digital Mail Delivery Start Giving Employees Mail How They Want It Why Your Business Benefits From Digital Mail Delivery Keep Up With Work from Home Employee Mail Delivery Digitally Deliver Incoming Mail

Is your corporate mail center ready to enter the digital age? Most organizations are considering it. Those that are implementing digital mail delivery are looking to reduce costs and increase efficiency. It is necessary for a dispersed workforce. But some organizations are slow to adapt. Perhaps digitization seems too complicated or too expensive, but that’s not the case. Any organization with a dispersed workforce, which now includes a lot more companies than pre-COVID, should probably consider the benefits of a digital mail system to handle incoming mail. What is Digital Mail Delivery? Digital mail delivery is a postal mail and scanning process that converts incoming paper mail into digital form. A digital mail system delivers mail to addressees electronically. Digital delivery solutions create a digital record of each incoming mail piece, and track the progress, history, and delivery methods. Employees receive e-mails with links to the images of the physical mail pieces. Organizations can digitize mail and automate indexing, classification, and distribution. Establishing Business Rules The worst of the pandemic may be behind us, or further challenges could be ahead. Regardless, processes that businesses changed in response to COVID remain in place today. As the health threat came on fast, no organization had a Plan B to get hard copy documents to transient employees. Today, companies are dealing with postal mail and parcels intended for employees that will stay remote, but those methods were conceived in times of crisis. They were not meant to be permanent solutions. It is time to update the mail center procedure manual. Write formal business rules to ensure consistency and avoid misunderstandings. Document how to sort the mail and parcels. Determine the criteria to open some items while others stay sealed. Decide when to forward some mail and shelve others. Set the standards for recycling vs. delivering. Procedure updates require input from managers in many departments, not just mail professionals. Confirm that everyone agrees about how and when the mail center handles mail and parcels for on-site and remote employees. These documented standards, updated to address new business processes, are helpful regardless of whether or not an organization adopts digital mail delivery. What Probably Cannot be Digital Some documents may never be converted to digital delivery. This includes formal documents requiring a wet signature and anything that changes the trajectory of a business. Certified Mail, Registered Mail, and confidential items are examples of mail not opened by staff but delivered to the addressee as-is. Benefits of Digital Mail Digital mail allows users to receive an immediate notification of an arriving document. Employees can examine the document before walking or driving to the mail center to retrieve the physical piece or waiting for the mail to be delivered to them. Digital mail improves the management of high-value and time-sensitive mail Employees on the other side of town or the other side of the planet receive mail just like employees on-site. Digital mail reduces labor By delivering only the mail employees must have in physical form, organizations can reduce the number of couriers and routes. Digital mail is trackable Digital mail systems send a confirmation e-mail when an employee picks up their mail, thus closing the custody loop. Digital mail improves efficiency A worker on the 17th floor or at home can decide if the mail piece they just viewed on their computer is worth visiting the mail center on the 1st floor. They can reply with a message to hold for pick up or to recycle. Doing Digital Mail The main hardware ingredient for a digital mail center is a scanner. Because of diversity in mailpiece sizes, shapes, thickness, and orientation, mail centers intent on a do-it-yourself solution rely on labor intensive flat-bed scanners. A team member must place items in the scanner by hand and determine the distribution of the image. Mail center staffers send notifications to the employees to inform them they have received postal mail. Specialized solutions for handling incoming mail make digital mail delivery workable. Systems like Tritek’s Oasis solution are built to take most of the manual and decision-making tasks out of the hands of mail center employees. According to your business rules, Oasis can separate important mail from not-so-important correspondence, locate the printed address block, and notify employees about their mail. Employees can then decide if the mail should be opened and scanned, delivered to them in physical form, or discarded. These are exactly the features mail centers need when dealing with incoming mail addressed to a widely distributed workforce. Making changes in the mail center isn’t easy. It’s not usually on the top of the list when organizations consider strategic advances. But companies that believe digital mail delivery isn’t for them are putting their employees at a disadvantage. Without a digital mail delivery solution, everything takes longer to do. Employees are always waiting for old-fashioned physical mail delivery or a home-grown solution to get them the information they need to do their jobs. Customer experience will suffer when delays that could be avoided are built into the workflow. This is a good time to decide how corporate mail centers can best serve their organizations by permanently addressing the significant organizational changes most companies have undergone. Digital mail delivery is in the future for many organizations.

Business disruptions and delays during the pandemic stem from social distancing measures, staff illness, and people working from home. Adding to the difficulties has been a downturn in the speed of mail delivery because of postal employee illness and mail transportation delays due to cancelled commercial airline flights that normally transport mail.   Unprecedented Challenges When combined with increased mortgage activity triggered by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) act and refinancing movement sparked by low interest rates, the workload and unusual conditions have made it more important than ever for mortgage servicers and lenders to track and account for loan documents received through the mail. Manual methods of recording when documents arrive at lender facilities and how they are delivered to departmental recipients won’t work in this environment. Employees working on customer mortgage transactions from home need to have immediate access to documents received via the mail. Mortgage industry companies are turning to systems that can turn postal mail into electronic documents they can distribute to their teleworkers. COVID-19 presents unusual challenges for mortgage lenders and servicers. They must respond to rapidly evolving regulatory requirements and could face future oversight actions. Implementing measures now, such as investing in an inbound mail processing system, could provide these institutions with vital information, should they need to document their actions. Much of the communication connected with loan restructuring, forbearance, and refinancing will take place via the US mail—an institution that has experienced its own COVID-related problems. Companies don’t want to compound mail delivery issues with slow or inaccurate processing once the documents arrive at their facilities.   Risk Mitigation If history is any indication, companies with inadequate handling and processing procedures risk exposure to future class action lawsuits. This happened a decade ago during another economic crisis when large amounts of borrowers attempted to restructure loans via the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). To protect themselves from future legal issues, mortgage servicing companies will be wise to ensure they can account for all transaction details, such as verifying when and where payments and other documents were received. The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) recommends mortgage industry companies adopt some pandemic-specific strategies. Recommendations include taking steps to prevent operational disruption in the event of widespread employee infection. Automated systems that transfer mail handling and tracking duties from staff members to equipment and software would fall into this category.   Digital Mail Digital inbound mail systems, such as Tritek’s Digital Email Delivery Solution feature document feeders, scanners, and sorting components. Paired with Tritek’s powerful rules engine, this system logs the receipt of mail, records images, tags mailpieces with unique ID numbers, sorts for delivery, or allows employees to receive the mail electronically. Such a solution is ideally suited to address the revolutionary changes that COVID-19 forced on the mortgage industry. Installing a digital inbound mail system helps companies control physical documents when volumes are rising and staffing levels are uncertain. Lost documents, late payments, or other issues associated with the handling of paper documents will be reduced, along with the organization’s exposure to legal or regulatory compliance enforcement. Simultaneously, a system that enables mail centers to distribute hard copies, with options to open and scan documents to make them accessible to de-centralized workers, will yield benefits even after the pandemic subsides. Many experts believe the work-from-home model made necessary by COVID-19 will become a prevalent work scenario even when health conditions improve. Mortgage lenders and servicers should take this opportunity to invest in technology that will be necessary to remain competitive when business conditions stabilize.

The Corona virus caused companies to change how they conduct business, and analysts predict some of those changes may be permanent. Much has been written about the adjustments employees made to attend meetings via Zoom or other online solutions, but what about the physical documents that fuel important business processes? How will work from home (WFH) employees get access to those paper communications that continue to arrive at corporate mail centers? When health experts are discouraging physical contact that can spread the virus, do you really want extra traffic in the mail center from remote employees coming in to pick up their mail? Is sending company couriers out to deliver mail throughout a large campus a good idea? What if addressees aren’t in the office? How long will mail sit in their in-boxes before the employees know it’s there?   Temporary Solutions In the short term, customers will accept slower service from companies that rely on paper documents. Companies can set up temporary measures to get critical mail to the employees, even if it slows productivity. Consumers know the pandemic-forced business shutdown is affecting everyone. Many organizations are struggling to keep business functioning as their workforce suddenly became 100% remote. As the health threat lingers however, customers will expect organizations to get a better handle on how to conduct business in this challenging environment. And, if companies transition permanently to a WFH model, they will need to solve the problem of how to get critical paper documents to the employees who need those materials to do their jobs. This is an issue that didn’t exist when workers received hard copy documents delivered to cubicles by the corporate mailroom twice a day. Because of the Corona virus and changing corporate attitudes about a distributed work force, a fresh way of thinking about mail delivery is in order. Technology solved the staff meeting challenge with easy access to video conferencing platforms. Uniting mailed documents with WFH employees will also require some technology investments.   Mail Forwarding Services The tough part about forwarding incoming mail is deciding about the disposition of each mailpiece. The mail center should forward some mail as unopened physical documents, open and scan certain pieces, and shred other mail without forwarding to anyone. An enterprise can set up rules about forwarding incoming mail, but exceptions will always exist. Often, only the addressee can decide how to handle a mailpiece. No mail center wants to mis-direct sensitive mail or send important documents to the shredder! In a large corporation or a university that receives thousands of mailpieces every day, the only answer to the mail forwarding challenge is using technology to speed delivery and reduce human intervention. An institution may already have inbound mail sorting equipment, but when the workforce is scattered as it is today, they need more capabilities. First, set up the incoming mail rules. Typical everyday mailpieces like bill payments, for example, are easily identified and the destination for the mailpieces is clearly defined. Mail addressed to individual employees, however, probably require their evaluation before the mail center can take action. The employee should be able to view images of unopened mailpieces and decide if the piece should be trashed, forwarded to them, or opened and scanned.   In-house or Outsource? Technology developed by Tritek can scan and record images of mail regardless of size and shape. Our user-friendly rules engine captures data from scanned images and uses that information to route the images to the addressees. If employees have left the company or changed jobs, the system can route the scanned images to their replacements. For some organizations, installing and operating the scanning and sorting equipment is the right answer. They need to establish and maintain control over the mailpieces from the moment they arrive in the corporate mail center. Tritek’s Digital Email Delivery Solution includes our versatile feeding, scanning, and sorting equipment paired with the Tritek rules engine. The system notifies employees, delivers mailpiece images via email, and allows employees to decide how to handle each piece. Tritek’s equipment labels each piece with a time stamp, assigns a unique ID number, and logs the activity. In other cases, an outsource arrangement makes more sense. With this solution, the outsource company picks up their client’s inbound mail every business day and runs the Tritek systems that handle the scanning, forwarding, and employee notification tasks as a service. Tritek Technologies operates such outsource mail forwarding service bureaus in selected cities in the United States.   WFH Employees Need Modern Tools The work-from-home transition has forced organizations to re-think how they operate. The pandemic made it impossible to continue business as usual. Workflows that depend on daily delivery of physical documents are one of those areas likely to change as companies abandon the centralized office model. Technology like video conferencing, VPN’s, and digital mail forwarding will play important parts in the transition.