Working with many organisations, we’ve seen that they often have complex legacy systems and processes in their mail and print room real estate that need to be more transparent, centralised and enhanced. Therefore, the challenge facing CIOs, Finance Managers, and Procurement Managers is this:

How do you rationalise expensive real estate, centralise mail operations, and overcome legacy systems?

This is essential to enhancing the service delivered to internal and external stakeholders.

We have observed several transformation trends that companies are acting on to optimise their mail and print rooms to achieve just that. They are: 

• Enhancing their data integrity and compliance to address government legislation and investor pressure. 
• Improving efficiency through consolidation to mitigate rising operational costs.
• Focusing on environmental efficiencies to achieve ESG obligations.

By recognising these trends, they have overcome many common challenges, such as underutilisation, little or no integration, suboptimal sustainability strategies (which are impacting profit), and difficult-to-access or poorly secured data. 

Driving transformation in your mail and print room real estate

Below are three instances where we’ve helped a large UK Financial Services organisation to successfully transform and optimise their mail and print rooms.

1) Addressing integration, consolidation, and optimisation issues

Key objectives were to drive efficiency and optimise the use of resources — particularly for the mail room and print room real estate. This was complicated by the post-pandemic working landscape, which has moved largely towards hybrid working models and impacted physical occupancy. 

Here’s the challenge as described by the Finance Director:

“Our mail and print rooms across the UK are expensive, overstaffed, and underused. We have legacy systems and processes we don’t fully manage or control.” 

Our solution

Collaborating with our customer, we created a centralised mail and print hub that consolidated their workflows. We did this by conducting multiple site visits and facilitating alignment across 32 sites by holding 17 workshops. Following these meetings, we provided a detailed (80-page) report of findings and recommendations, broken down into short, medium, and long-term goals.

As a result, the organisation minimised inefficiencies, implemented cost savings, and freed up staff and real estate by taking control of legacy systems. 

2) Meeting ESG targets and minimising environmental impact

An efficiency and sustainability strategy can boost operating profits by as much as 60%. Similarly, investors, customers, and potential employees are now more attuned to the appearance of greenwashing. So, it was vital for our customer to demonstrate a tangible ESG commitment and keep costs down. 

Here’s what the Head of Real Estate had to say:

“Excess real estate has led to higher energy costs, increased emissions, and a larger carbon footprint. This does not align with our company values and prevents us from meeting our sustainability goals. Firms are no longer seen as a good prospect for investors if they don’t take sustainability seriously.”

Our solution

We helped our customer design a data informed ESG strategy by providing them with key insights including accurate paper and energy usage figures. Consequently, they’ve made their mail and print rooms more energy efficient and have lowered emissions and cut costs. 

3) Maintaining data integrity across processes, while ensuring effective data access management

Failure to comply with regulatory requirements can result in prohibitive legal penalties. Under GDPR legislation, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) can now issue fines of up to 4% of a company’s annual turnover, or £20 million (whichever is greater) for the worst data breaches. 

So, it’s not surprising that our customer wanted to protect their organisation’s data, while simultaneously streamlining access and use for authorised employees. Their IT Director explained:

“Our customer data is held in multiple legacy systems. We are at risk of non-compliance to data privacy regulations which can lead to fines, reputational damage, and loss of customer trust.”

Our solution

We integrated their processes and systems to move beyond the legacy issues that put them at risk of non-compliance. Using Ricoh’s centralised document retention and archiving, they now maintain a secure and accessible repository of customer communications, ensuring customer data is secure, traceable, and compliant.

Rationalising your mail and print room real estate

Leveraging Ricoh’s Business Process Management (BPM) consultancy and solutions will help your organisation optimise its processes, cut costs, help you reach your ESG goals, and ensure compliance. As a result, you will build organisational and reputational trust. If you’re unsure where to start, Ricoh can help you enhance your digital maturity and identify areas for growth and improvement.

What to do next?

By identifying your strengths and areas for improvement, you can make better-informed decisions. Doing so will help you drive operational efficiencies and make significant process improvements. Complete our 5-minute multiple-choice survey to instantly receive a personalised report. We’ll explain your current digital maturity across key areas of your organisation, and provide tangible, actionable recommendations.

Complete the Digital Services Maturity Indicator

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The post What mail and print room transformation trends are businesses embracing? appeared first on Insights - Empowering Digital Workplaces.

Public transit systems are remarkable. They have the ability to move large numbers of people throughout a city efficiently. For instance, the subway system in Tokyo, Japan, moves nearly 7 million people during business days. The system works for several reasons. There are established routes, connection points, and schedules. There are timetables and route maps that clearly show how to use the system. Even tourists can quickly grasp where to go, and how to get there. These same lessons can and should be applied to job onboarding in your print production workflow. So how can you futureproof your workflow with job onboarding?

 

Your workflow solution is simple…

How do customers submit order requests? Do their requests include supporting artwork and data files? There is no single path. But there should be clear instructions and directions on how to make those submissions. This will improve your job onboarding and futureproof your workflow. Customers may use a branded, online storefront to order products. But many will still come through your sales channels, most likely using email. The key is to get the minimum amount of information to accurately quote and produce the job using the minimum effort required by the customer and your staff. The side benefit is increased customer and employee satisfaction.

Start your job onboarding transformation…

The best place to start is by evaluating your current set of print applications and documenting the specifications required for each. With criteria in hand, build processes and solutions to accurately and repeatedly capture the information needed for quoting and production. Two commonly overlooked solutions for capturing and standardising customer requests are your web-to-print solution or the online customer portal of your Print MIS. These systems act like checklists for your customer support representatives (CSRs) and sales staff to submit orders on the customer’s behalf.

The customer’s artwork and data files also need documented methods for submission. Using email, FTP, or online file transfers is inefficient since your staff must locate, download, and transfer the files into your print production workflow. A better option is to use software solutions that are secure and can insert the customer’s files into the workflow for further procession and automation. Web-to-print solutions streamline job onboarding. Other workflow management solutions, like Ricoh Process Director, can also monitor network locations to pick up files for routing and processing.

Think of it this way…

Your workflow should look like a subway map. Multiple job entry points with the ability to automatically route work to the final destination via multiple processing stops, some common and some unique, based on the requirements of the application. Streamlining and automating job onboarding decreases the costs associated with receiving customer orders and the likelihood of introducing costly errors. It also increases the amount of time your CSRs and sales staff have to focus on serving your customers. This is key to building a workflow that is futureproof.

Be sure to check out our 6-part ecosystem series for in-plant and print service providers for more information on each stage of your print production. We can improve your job onboarding and futureproof your workflow. So contact us if you have any questions.

The post Futureproof Your Workflow: Job Onboarding appeared first on Insights - Empowering Digital Workplaces.