A digital transformation gives your business so many opportunities to benefit from immense flexibility. If you’re considering this opportunity in the coming year, you’ve probably come across the concept of a digital mailroom.
What exactly is a digital mailroom and how does it yield benefits for your business? To answer these questions, we have to take a deeper look at mail practices within corporate organizations and how many of those are still fairly outdated.
What Is a Digital Mailroom?
Paper-based mail is still a major factor in everyday corporate practices. Unfortunately, such mail can create clutter and it’s often wrongfully allocated.
A digital mailroom is a way to solve such problems and then some more.
Put in simple terms, a digital mailroom is a way to process paper-based letters, turning them into digital copies.
Usually, document scanning is the first part of the process. Once this happens, a digital mailroom can be created. It’s a centralized database that can be accessed from any location. The mail is indexed and sorted in a personalized way, helping employees view the specific information they require to get the job done.
Which Businesses Can Benefit from It?
The answer to that question is simple – every business out there can reap the benefits of putting together a virtual mailroom.
Having a digital mailroom in place is especially important for companies that are considering increased flexibility in the years to come.
Over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, we found out that work could be done in numerous ways that don’t involve office visits. Remote work, work from home and hybrid models all proved to be highly effective. For remote work to take place, however, employees will need access to the company’s database (including mail).
If people aren’t going to the office, they cannot receive their letters. Hence, any company that still receives paper-based letters can benefit from the creation of a virtual mailroom. The digital copies of letters are easy to access and use. In addition, they’re much more difficult to lose than their paper-based counterparts. Once a letter is entered into a cloud-based database, information loss becomes much less of a possibility.
The Benefits of a Digital Mailroom
Most benefits of having a virtual mailroom are very easy to understand. Still, let’s recap some of the most important advantages:
– Flexibility: if you’d like to give your employees flexibility, you need a digital mailroom. People are more likely to be engaged and loyal if they’re provided with opportunities to work in a way that’s convenient for them. Hence, added flexibility can result in more productivity and enhanced employee retention.
– Faster turnaround: having letters added to a centralized database and properly indexed reduces the risk of information loss. When people can sort through letter effortlessly and access the ones that they need, the amount of time required to complete tasks will go down. A virtual mailroom makes it much easier to have all data needed for project execution within reach.
– Better customer service: increased productivity and faster turnaround times will obviously contribute to better customer service and enhanced client satisfaction.
– Less waste and clutter: these are fairly simple benefits but they happen to be very important. Paper-based mail can be wasteful. It’s a highly outdated way to communicate, yet it’s still prevalent in the business world. In times, letters can pile up and create a lot of clutter. And due to retention requirements, many companies have to keep such information around. A virtual mailroom maintains the needed copies in a digital environment, reducing (or completely eliminating both waste and clutter).
– Lower costs: digital document management is much more affordable than the maintenance of a paper-based archive.
– Competitive advantage: all of the benefits mentioned above contribute to one very important thing – competitive advantage. Is your business operating in a very intense field? Are you trying to compete against well-established brands? If so, you need faster and easier processes that improve outcomes. A digital mailroom allows for the creation and establishment of such processes that are easy to follow and integrate into everyday corporate routines.
It’s Time to Start Thinking about Reducing Paper
It’s almost 2022 and if your business is still heavily reliant on paper, you’re missing on amazing opportunities to modernize and upgrade.
Something as simple as a switch to a digital mailroom is a good start.
Setting up such a mailroom is fairly easy and it’s an affordable modernization project. In addition, you’ll easily find reputable service providers that you can outsource virtual mailroom creation to.
Employees will get used to this brand new method of accessing mail quickly. And finally – the creation of a virtual mailroom is cost-effective and affordable. If you’re seeking one simple way to move towards a paperless office, a digital mailroom would be an excellent choice.