Few moves better calibrate a company to the speed of modern business than transitioning to an outsourced, off-site digital mailroom. They eliminate bottlenecks and better utilize resources while making paper and electronic mail receipt and routing more efficient. Businesses using them through third-party digital mailroom partners put themselves in position to be more competitive and, ultimately, successful. Because of this, continuing to rely on an in-house, paper-based mailroom no longer makes much sense.
But what, exactly, does an outsourced, off-site digital mailroom do for businesses? For mail received both electronically and via snail mail, it can be immensely helpful in the following ways:
Digital Mailrooms Efficiently Handle Email Processing
A digital mailroom can make any documents received electronically compatible with workflow automation software. Digital scanning partners will set up a dedicated email account that is monitored regularly by their staff, and once a day received emails will be imported and stripped of any attachments. Depending on what file type the necessary documents arrive in, they will either first be converted to TIFF image files for optimum processing, or, if they arrived as a TIFF file, will move on to the next handling stage.
Once everything is ready, the documents will either be uploaded to workflow automation software for automated routing, approval and processing, or data will be uploaded to a company’s line-of-business software via direct data entry by the scanning partner. The outsourced digital mailroom handles email receipt and attachment conversion procedures much more efficiently and capably than the company would be able to otherwise, saving time, money and a great deal of hassle along the way.
An Outsourced Mailroom Does a Better Job with Paper, Too
Documents arriving by snail mail can be handled more efficiently by an outsourced mailroom, as well. Once a day, a document scanning partner will pick up your mail from a dedicated post office box and open, prep, scan and index all necessary documents for workflow automation processing. This can include invoices, purchase orders, membership applications, employment applications, insurance appeals and legal documents.
Companies that don’t take on an outsourced mailroom scanning partner have to receive and route these documents manually themselves, via an internal, on-site mailroom. This requires more personnel and higher operational costs while also opening up the organization to handling errors that can lead to lost documents and other inefficiencies. Letting off-site professionals handle this aspect makes documents flow more smoothly through an organization, especially during periods of increased volume that might otherwise overwhelm staff members with other responsibilities.
Digital Mailrooms Are the Way of the Future
Paper-based, in-house document receipt and processing leaves businesses vulnerable to problems that have elsewhere been outmoded. Instead of dealing with unnecessary inefficiencies and frequent error management, companies that set up an outsourced, off-site digital mailroom with a third-party document scanning and digital mailroom partner enjoy faster, more accurate mail handling. This speeds up invoice and other document processing to better situate companies in today’s fast-paced digital marketplace.
For more information on digital mailrooms and how they might help your business, read our blog post, How an Outsourced Mailroom Speeds Up Your Invoice Processing.
