Mailroom automation is a game-changer for businesses that manage large volumes of incoming mail. By automating the flow of mail throughout your organization, you can cut down on manual labor, minimize missed communications, and speed up customer response times.
However, every business is different, requiring a customized approach to mailroom automation that suits its specific needs.
To help you get the most out of our mailroom automation service, we’ve compiled a list of nine key questions to consider before starting your mailroom automation project. By answering these questions ahead of time, you’ll have a clearer idea of what your business needs, helping both you and us plan your project more effectively.
By gaining a clear understanding of your business’s mail processing needs from the start, you’ll be able to make smarter, more informed automation decisions for your business.
1. How Much Mail Do You Normally Receive?
To determine the scale of services your business needs, you should have a general idea of how much mail you expect to receive on a daily basis. Whether it’s 10 pieces of mail a day or a million pieces of mail per month, a ballpark figure will help you estimate costs ahead of time, and serve as our blueprint to ensure taht we dedicate the necessary resources, equipment, and staff to manage your project.
If possible, anticipate fluctuations in volume, whether due to seasonal variations or business growth, and plan accordingly. Our mailroom automation service is built to be flexible, seamlessly adapting to your business’s needs as they change.
2. What Is the Average Number of Pages in Each Envelope?
When we receive mail at our facility, we scan each document inside the envelope, creating a single PDF or TIFF image for your records. Each mail item is represented by a single index for easy organization, allowing you to search for and retrieve the entire mail item quickly.
While we can accommodate different types of mail and varying page counts, knowing the average number of pages per envelope will help you better understand your business’s needs. This information not only affects scanning time but also impacts your digital storage requirements, as larger documents will require more space.
3. Do You Need the Envelopes Scanned?
Including the envelopes in the scanning process provides a complete digital record of each mail item. This can be especially useful for tracking purposes, as it allows you to retain details like sender information, postmarks, and any handwritten notes without keeping the physical envelope.
For industries like legal, financial, or compliance-related sectors, having a complete digital record, including the envelope, can be useful for auditing and recordkeeping purposes. If maintaining a complete, traceable digital mail history is important for your business, scanning the envelopes is a valuable option.
4. What Kind of Indexing Do You Need?
Indexing plays an important role in making your mail easy to retrieve and manage, but the level of indexing you need can vary depending on your specific requirements. Typically, each digitized mail item is named based on a single piece of data extracted from the document, such as a date, customer ID, or vendor name, making it easy to locate any mail item with a simple text search.
If you require more advanced search capabilities, we can extract multiple index fields from each item. This allows you to search by sender, recipient, or category for example, making it easier to find what you’re looking for.
Effective indexing keeps your digital archive organized and accessible, which is essential for maintaining productivity and compliance.
5. Do You Need OCR?
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) turns scanned documents into searchable, editable text. Using specialized software, OCR analyzes both printed and handwritten text from your scanned images and converts it into digital characters.
This is especially helpful if you need to search for specific keywords or phrases within a document, rather than relying solely on indexing. While OCR adds a minimal cost, it can greatly enhance the functionality of your digital documents, allowing for more detailed and precise searches. If your needs are met with basic indexing, OCR may not be necessary, but it’s a valuable tool if you require more in-depth searches.
6. Where Will You Store Your Digitized Mail?
Once your mail has been scanned, it’s important to choose a secure and accessible location for storing your digital files. Whether you prefer to use a secure FTP, our cloud-based document management system, or integrate the files into your existing system, we can handle it all.
We organize and index your files to your specifications, ensuring they’re ready for immediate use. Once organized, we deposit them in your chosen storage location, so your digitized mail is secure, accessible, and ready for your team without any extra effort on your part.
7. How Do You Want to Distribute Your Mail?
It’s important to plan how you will distribute digitized mail throughout your organization. You may need to sort mail by department, priority, or other specific criteria, depending on your business needs.
By defining these requirements ahead of time, we can set up a system that ensures the right documents get to the right people quickly and efficiently. Additionally, different departments or users might require varying levels of access to your mail. Setting up the appropriate permissions from the start helps protect sensitive information, ensuring your business stays compliant with data protection regulations and reduces the risk of unauthorized access.
8. Do You Receive Mail That Requires Special Handling?
Some types of mail may need special handling instructions. For example, items addressed to specific departments or sent by certain individuals might require extra care or custom routing.
If your business receives sensitive or confidential mail, we can provide a dedicated HIPAA-compliant mailing address to ensure it’s handled securely from the moment it’s received. You can also choose how physical mail is managed, whether it needs to be forwarded, stored for a set period, or processed according to your internal procedures. By setting these preferences in advance, we make sure your mailroom automation process runs smoothly and every piece of mail is handled properly from start to finish.
9. How Long Do You Want to Store Your Physical Mail?
After digitization, you may still need to store physical mail for a certain period, especially if industry regulations or your internal retention policies require it. Planning ahead for how long you want to keep physical copies is essential for both space management and compliance.
By knowing your storage needs in advance, we can provide secure storage solutions that ensure your physical mail is kept safe and accessible for as long as necessary. This way, you can maintain compliance while having access to original documents when needed.
Get Started with Mailroom Automation
With over 22 years of document scanning experience, SecureScan is a trusted leader in mailroom automation for businesses of all sizes. Our services help reduce costs, streamline mail management, and support your paperless initiatives, leading to greater efficiency and productivity.
We understand that every business has unique needs, which is why we tailor our service to fit yours. Whether it’s handling high volumes of mail or implementing specialized sorting and storage solutions, we have the expertise to make your mailroom operations seamless and efficient.
To start automating your mailroom, get a free quote from one of our automation experts or contact us for more information about our services. There are plenty of reasons to automate your mailrooom, let SecureScan help you take the first step towards a more efficient, cost-effective, and paperless future.
