A well-functioning mailroom is a critical component of a successful business; fast receipt, processing, and delivery of companywide mail allows your employees to perform their duties efficiently. Unfortunately, a traditional mailroom may give rise to delivery delays, lost documents, and high overhead costs.
A Digital Mailroom service provides your business with a third-party option to accurately receive, process, and store your documents. By routing your physical mail to a P.O. box and implementing a processing interval you’re happy with, your digital mailroom partner will take care of your documentation for you.
Here are four key reasons your business should consider a digital mailroom:
1. Document organization
While standard mailroom clerks undoubtedly get the job done, intelligent data management software used by many digital mailroom partners can assess your documents with a high level of accuracy. This minimizes the risk of human error when classifying documents into categories or departments; a digital mailroom can scan your documents and automatically note which department or person should receive it.
In addition to this, many of these systems can learn and refine their processes as more mail is actioned. While a virtual assistant is also capable of assisting with mail, a digital mailroom provider can scale up or down with your business needs, no extra training required.
2. Reduced overhead
Not only are traditional mailrooms vulnerable to human error, they can use up a significant amount of your budget. A US mail clerk is generally paid between $14 and $18 per hour, which can add up quickly if you require more than one.
With a normal mailroom model, business owners may also have to flex their workforce up or down depending on workload. According to a study by the Society for Human Resource Management, it costs an average of $4,129 to hire an employee; if your business is hiring new clerks regularly these costs should be considered.
The labor cost associated with paper documents should also be noted. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers it costs around $20 in labor to simply file a document, and $120 to search for a misfiled one. Some research estimates that the average company with 1000 workers could waste up to $3.5 million annually on labor costs related to poor document management.
As a digital mailroom will digitize documents and store the virtual versions, the time it takes employees to find documents can be greatly reduced. When you consider that you are also not required to spend money on hiring or maintaining a mailroom workforce, digital mailrooms could be a smart financial decision.
3. Eco-friendly offices
Among the more popular draws of digital mailrooms is that they’re eco-friendly. Your company could go entirely paperless with the support of a reputable digital mailroom service, as all your documents will be digitized. This means less waste being produced in your office.
Along with the environmentally friendly paperless benefits, lack of physical documents can significantly free up your storage as well. It’s estimated that between 50 and 70% of office space is dedicated to document storage and filing. Interestingly, 45% of files are thought to be duplicated, and 80% are never accessed after being stored.
By freeing up your required storage space, you could expand your team or move into smaller, more energy-efficient offices. Reducing the need for physical storage space can save you even more money. Good quality storage cabinets can cost as much as $1000 for a standard five drawer container, and office space in the US currently averages between $15 and $20 per square foot. If you’re not accessing your documents regularly, you could be spending hundreds of dollars to store unneeded files.
4. Improved response times
Your customers can benefit from your digital mailroom in the form of faster response times. Recent surveys investigating the response times consumers expect showed that 77% expect a turnaround time of six hours or less when communicating via email.
Depending on the collection interval you select, a reputable digital mailroom provider will be able to process your mail quickly. If you select a daily mail collection interval, it’s likely that your mail could be processed, digitized, and delivered faster than traditional mail clerks could manage. This allows your employees to connect with your clients as fast as possible, reducing customer wait times.
Final thoughts
Whether you’re a startup or an established company, your business may benefit from utilizing a digital mailroom service. A start up may appreciate the low physical storage requirement and fast response times; an established company may be looking to lower their overhead and reduce the human error they’re experiencing with traditional clerks.
Whatever your business needs are, consider whether a digital mailroom could help you streamline your processes.
