Five reasons to transform your mailroom with digital automation

As businesses advance, so should mailrooms

Physical mail remains an important part of day-to-day business for organizations around the world. From statements, legal notices and contracts to payments and customer communications, thousands of pieces of mail still move through mailrooms every day. And while numerous back-office functions have evolved to integrate automated capabilities, traditional mailrooms have been slower to modernize. That has increasingly made them a point of friction, slowing incoming documents from reaching the people, processes and systems that need to act on them.

Digitizing and automating mailroom processes can bridge that physical-to-digital divide, enabling organizations to swiftly convert incoming hard-copy documents into digital information that can be electronically routed to the right recipients, workflows and systems.

How a digital mailroom works

A digital mailroom starts with centralized intake. Whether mail is received at a dedicated processing center, an on-site mailroom or another designated location, documents are opened, prepared and scanned. Digital documents can also enter the process through electronic channels such as email, portals or electronic uploads.

From there, digital mailroom automation can identify and classify documents, extract relevant information and apply business rules to determine where that information needs to go. Documents and data can then be electronically routed to the appropriate people, workflows or enterprise systems for processing, review or action.

A digital mailroom is much more than a scanning operation that creates copies of paper documents. It’s a modern foundation for a digital flow of information that enables greater visibility, reduces manual handling and moves information through an organization more quickly and securely.

It can also create a more consistent process for handling mail across locations, departments and business functions.

Five benefits a digital mailroom can deliver:

A transformed mailroom offers benefits that extend well beyond faster document processing — from greater efficiency and security to stronger resilience and connectivity across the enterprise. 

1. Faster, more reliable mail distribution: Digitizing physical mail enables automated classification, routing and multichannel delivery, helping critical documents reach the right recipient, workflow or system when they’re needed. When recipients can receive and act on mail through their channel of choice, organizations can improve response times and efficiency while reducing the delays and errors associated with manual mail handling.
2. Enhanced data access and security: With digital mail, organizations can more readily integrate mail-based information into workflows and enterprise systems for timely access and distribution to specified parties. Secure access controls can help ensure sensitive information such as legal or financial records is delivered only to authorized recipients, while digital processes can provide greater visibility into how information is handled and where it goes.
3. Significant cost savings: A digital mailroom solution can reduce many of the costs associated with physical sorting, storage and distribution. It can also reduce or eliminate expenses tied to postage, courier services and re-shipping mail to remote employees or other offsite locations. By automating repetitive, manual processes and consolidating mail handling, organizations can improve efficiency and better manage costs as mail volumes change. The cost of a digital mailroom can vary depending on mail volume, processing requirements and the level of integration needed, but the potential savings extend beyond postage and paper.
4. Business continuity and resilience: Relying heavily on physical mail operations can make it harder to maintain critical processes when a disruption affects a location, workforce or other parts of the business. A digital mailroom provides a way to capture and electronically distribute information into established workflows, helping organizations maintain communications and compliance, access to critical documents and keep essential processes moving when circumstances change.
5. Greater integration and connectivity across the enterprise: A digital mailroom enables faster collaboration between departments — facilitating the flow of information into other systems and workflows. For example, a misrouted customer payment can be scanned and rerouted to accounting for processing. Legal notices or insurance documentation can be securely routed into relevant systems for quick review and action. By reducing manual handling and delays, digital mailrooms can enhance efficiency, compliance and overall business performance.

Mailroom modernization helps organizations connect an often-overlooked physical process to the digital workflows that power the rest of the business. By reducing manual requirements and moving information more efficiently, a digital mailroom supports greater productivity, responsiveness, security and resilience.

A new path forward

As businesses continue to modernize, mail operations should evolve alongside other digital advancements. If your organization still relies on a traditional mailroom, inefficiencies may be compounding in a world that prioritizes speed, security and digital workflows. Advancing forward requires a considered approach to how mail is received, digitized, processed and connected to the rest of the organization. 

Transforming your mailroom doesn’t have to mean replacing everything at once. A thoughtful approach can help you modernize processes over time, introduce automation where it can have the greatest impact and create a more connected flow of information across your organization.

The path to a digital mailroom will look different for every organization. For many, working with an experienced partner can help accelerate the transition, bringing together the technology, processes and expertise needed to modernize mail operations and connect them with the broader enterprise.

Learn more about Conduent’s Digital Mailroom Solutions and how we help organizations across industries transform and modernize their mail operations and connect information to digital workflows.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

How much does a digital mailroom cost?

The cost of a digital mailroom can vary depending on factors such as mail volume, the mix of physical and digital channels, the level of automation and the extent of integration with existing systems. Organizations evaluating the investment should consider the total cost of their current mail operations — including labor, storage, postage, courier services and other manual processes — as well as the potential efficiency gains of digitization and automation.

What is mailroom automation?

Mailroom management automation uses technology to streamline administrative and operational tasks involved in receiving, tracking, sorting and distributing mail. Digital mailroom automation takes that a step further by digitizing the content of incoming documents and using automation to classify, extract and route information to the appropriate people, workflows or systems. An automated digital mailroom can combine these capabilities to create a more efficient, connected process for managing incoming information.

How can a digital mailroom benefit regulated industries?

A digital mailroom can help organizations in regulated industries, including insurance companies, healthcare payers and health plans, financial services organizations and government agencies, process high volumes of incoming documents more efficiently and securely. Digitizing mail at the point of entry can provide faster access to information, greater visibility into document handling and stronger controls over sensitive information. Automated routing can reduce manual handling and rekeying, while integration with established workflows can help organizations meet compliance and service-level requirements.