Every day, whether at home, on the road or at work, we’re inundated with the sheer volume of data that comes our way. At work, organizations that are equipped to give their employees access to the information they need — when they need it, and in the format they need it — are the ones who will ultimately keep their staff happy and succeed.

Yet, throughout these changes, we have seen little to no advancement in the mailroom, where traditional processes can be arduous and rely on employees working in one designated spot, not to mention that it’s time-consuming, staff-intensive and prone to human error. Opening the mail, sorting the mail, doing the data entry and distributing the mail should take as short a time as possible but usually doesn’t.

In some situations, employees need to respond to their mail by a certain date for compliance reasons, or to pay an invoice on time. This makes it difficult for those employees who travel or work remotely.   

Snail mail and the remote worker

It’s estimated that, by 2020, 50 percent of the workforce will be working from non-traditional locations¹. Most Canadian organizations have several locations across the country and some cases, globally. Many have multi-building offices, while others have shared cubes and desks that are occupied by different people every day. Then consider the trend toward reducing expensive square footage while increasing shared spaces – even as office vacancy rates in Canada continue to dwindle² – and what it means for critical mail delivery. 

What happens if you’re traveling to your office in Toronto, but your mail is being delivered back home, in your Calgary? Or your mail is delivered to a shared space location where you no longer work. Does it get lost? Does it sit there for days? Or does it get placed into the wrong hands?

Even more concerning is if you need to respond to your mail by a certain date but won’t be back in your home office by that deadline, or worse yet, you never received that important piece of mail in the first place.  Some mail pieces that include personal or secure information need to be shredded to reduce the risk of identity theft.  Apart from the obvious security risk, there are additional costs related to this disconnect:  wasted time, lost revenue and missed opportunities.

There’s a better way — and it’s streamlining your mailroom management


With an intelligent mail service, you can gain insight into your organization’s mail journey, which is the first step in being able to improve your inbound mail processes. As mail flows through your organization, you can collect data and use analytics that help define the journey and efficiency of your mail’s movement. In fact, you can collect data and analytics on each step of your mail’s path. This will allow you to gain insight into who looks at their mail and ultimately, what’s being done with it. Armed with this knowledge, you can start to reduce the costs associated with unwanted, misdelivered or lost mail, and the space utilization related to it.

Take a look at this infographic that puts it into better context:

 


With Ricoh’s Intelligent Delivery solution, a first-pass scan is done of all inbound mail, which enables the receiver to decide how they want their mail delivered — scanned and delivered as an image, recycled, or delivered as physical mail. Employees are notified via email that they have mail, and then decide the best course of action. So now your employees can access their mail on the go from their mobile device in the same way they can access other critical information.

If you’re heading to the IFMA World Workplace event this October in Charlotte, North Carolina, be sure to drop by and say hello to our friendly team at the Ricoh Booth (#318) to find out more from the Intelligent Delivery experts as well as all our Digital Workplace Solutions.

Learn more about how Ricoh can help you empower your digital workplace by streamlining your inbound mail management.  For more than 80 years, Ricoh has helped companies of every size to not just imagine change but realize it as well.


1 “By 2020, 50% of Workforce Will Be Remote. Here’s How.”
SectorWatch, MarketWatch, 19 Apr. 2017. http://marketwatch.com/video/sectorwatch/by-2020-50-of-workforce-will-be-remote-here-how/EC18E212-D8F5-493E-9602-7E5E5D980ABD.html
2 JLL Canada Office Outlook – Q2 2018 – http://www.jll.ca/canada/en-ca/research/678/can-office-outlook-q2-2018-jll