About the customer
The customer, working in pharmaceutical business, has 230 buildings at their campus. In the area, there are more than 12 000 employees.
The postal department handles daily over 15 000 shipments. Most of it, over 12 000, is mail which is delivered to mailbox frames in floors. Parcels are delivered personally.
Additionally, there are pallets, thermal and chemical shipments, and registered mail. The customer works globally so they have an agreement with a shipment carrier. Employees are allowed to send shipments using the carrier when needed.
Starting point
The customer had an outdated and unstable Track and Trace system which had been customized so that they could not update it to a new version.
Address and person data were outdated because the vendor was unable to update data interfaces to retrieve daily data from the HR system. Postal staff was strained because of bad data quality and a large amount of manual work.
Delivery of mail was awkward and even humiliating to the postal personnel since delivery point addresses were not maintained and finding recipient mailboxes was difficult.
In outbound shipments, manually entered cost center and sender information caused errors in shipment carrier invoicing and caused delays and other problems. Also, the carrier tracking data was lost after three months since the carrier does not keep the data available longer than that. Also, the quality was insufficient and the price too high.
Solution
Mailroom Assistant customizations are implemented modularly and using configuration sets which prevent incompatibility with the main product line. This way the system core can be kept up-to-date and new functionalities are available also for old customers.
Address and person data interfaces were built and the address and person data consolidated from two different sources daily. Registrar OCR -stations help the staff to handle incoming material more efficiently.
Easy-to-use delivery assistance tools were installed to help the personnel in delivery. Delivery points are maintained in a centralized system and couriers can do updates in real time using a mobile app. Correct delivery point is printed on a shipment label already in the mailroom during registration.
Using Mailroom Assistant web-based sending wizard, employees can register their outbound shipments with the carrier operator and print waybill documents easily on their desk.
Mailroom Assistant was integrated into existing IT infra so that users log in using single sign-on. This way sender details are set correctly automatically and manual errors are avoided. Tracking data is synchronized for carrier operators system to Mailroom Assistant so that the sender can trace if from desk to desk using the same system.
Mailroom Assistant support response times are very good. Typically issues are solved on the same or the next business day.
Result
Cloud-based server backend is always up to date and security patches and fixes are installed regularly.
Mail department is able to register up to 1600 mailpieces per hour using two Registrar OCR stations. Customer complaints have decreased significantly. The time used in registration has decreased by 40%.
Employees are more motivated and their stress level has dropped because of better usability and support in their work. Errors in delivery have decreased by 80%.
Invoicing between the shipment carrier and the customer is running smoothly and a lot of work time is saved because there is no longer need to manually look for the correct cost centers for senders. 500 000 – 800 000 CHF of overdue bills from the carrier operator is now history.
Over 90% of all issues have been solved during the same business day.
Benefits
Mailroom Assistant perfects the usability and ergonomics of mail handling. User-oriented design combined with state of the art system architecture and seamless compatibility makes Mailroom Assistant a future proof solution for postal processes. Accurate OCR combined with intelligent software results in class-leading performance.