As the pandemic altered our everyday lives, organizations raced to implement digital transformation initiatives to facilitate Work from Home (WFH) policies and procedures in order to minimize business disruptions and ensure their employee’s safety. But in the haste to get digital initiatives implemented, were critical paper-based processes overlooked? How was the volume of ad-hoc or small batch correspondence that still needed to be physically mailed handled?
In most cases, employers provided their WFH employees with the technology and materials needed to generate, print and mail the correspondence. While this solved the immediate need, it uncovered a number issues related to ad hoc/small batch correspondence. Employees struggled with the hassles and lost productivity of processing this correspondence, employers saw additional costs to provision and reimburse their remote employees and arguably the most concerning issue – increased risk of security and compliance breach. This is most evident based on a recent study:
- 39% of IT Decision Makers consider employee-owned printers a potential security risk
- 80% of CISOs are most concerned about security breaches resulting from home printing.
- During 2nd half of 2020, 74% of organizations surveyed in the US experienced data losses due to unsecure printing practices
- Mean cost per data breach: $1.3M ($1.6M in US and $1M in Europe)
With more and more businesses either delaying return-to-office dates or planning to move their workforce to permanently remote positions, not only is WFH is here to stay, but so is print. According to that same study, 73% of IT Decision Makers expect home printing to increase. So just as it was critical to get digital initiatives in place, now is the time to look into a hybrid mail solution that eliminates the hassles, reduces the costs, and ensures compliance for your paper-based correspondence.
A hybrid mail solution enables ad hoc/small batch correspondence to be generated from remote desktops and digitally “printed” to a virtual “printer” that then leverages centralized production print facilities and processes to automate the printing and fulfillment via physical mail or electronic delivery. It allows remote/WFH employees to simply generate the correspondence while a production print and mail operation does the heavy lifting to get it printed, inserted, and delivered.
Eliminate the hassle for your remote/WFH employees
Your employees will see immediate gains without the hassle of having to generate and deliver correspondence to the post office. They simply submit the necessary documents from any location to the “virtual printer” and they are done! No more printing, manual insertion or lost productivity driving roundtrip to the post office. It really is the “Easy Button” for your employees.
Ensure accuracy and compliance for all Ad-hoc/Small Batch correspondence
Not only can the right solution be set up to ensure that correspondence is brand compliant, but rules can also be set to ensure the any required attachments or inserts are added, release dates are specified, documents are archived, and any required authorizations are obtained before the documents are submitted to production. The status of each and every document is securely tracked throughout the entire production process providing proof of mailing for audit purposes.
Reduce costs
A hybrid mail solution will eliminate the hidden costs typically associated with individually printing and mailing ad hoc correspondence – desktop/MFP printers, consumable supplies, forms, postage, and time. Leveraging a centralized production facility will ensure greater processing efficiencies, maximize postal discounts, and minimize compliance audit costs.
If you are you ready to check out the “Easy Button” for ad hoc/small batch correspondence, Crawford Technologies has recently introduced our own hybrid mail solution, Smart MailHub. Smart MailHub empowers remote employees and WFH staff to securely submit documents for printing and mailing in the production print shop. This is the ideal solution to help organizations gain visibility and control over their ad-hoc, small batch business correspondence. Check out Smart MailHub today and call us for a demo.
