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