In the digital era, post will remain key to customer communication say UK businesses
New research has found that, despite the rise of digital technologies transforming business processes, significant numbers of UK companies are still managing large volumes of post. According to a survey by EDM Group, around a quarter (23%) of UK businesses handle more than 5,000 items of inbound mail every month. The same number (23%) receive between 2,000 and 5,000 items and month while 35% get less than 2,000 items a month.
However, the survey also found that just one in five companies (19%) operate fully automated digital mailrooms, with just 3% of companies using them across all locations and the remainder (16%) using them in some locations only. Digital mailrooms allow businesses to digitise post on entry and can radically improve data and information management and processes.
In addition, the research by EDM, a leading provider of information and business process management technology and services, found that more than half (55%) of senior personnel at UK companies believe the ‘paperless office’ is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. And despite these volumes of mail and post, only a quarter of companies (25%) are currently running paperless office initiatives. Almost a third (30%) said they had never run a paperless office initiative within their companies while 20% had discussed the option but never put it into action.
Commenting on the findings, group CTO at EDM Group, Spencer Wyer, said:
“The death of physical mail has been much discussed over many years. The nirvana of a truly paperless office is unlikely to arrive in the near future because so many customer communications still need to be exchanged in paper form for legal or other regulatory reasons.
“In our view organisations can achieve enormous cost-savings and business process improvements by digitising their inbound mail operations with a digital mailroom, eliminating paper at source and incorporating it into a single, smart platform that can automate routing and decision-making using robotics and artificial intelligence. Paper may never truly disappear, but using the right technologies it can be easily absorbed into digitised processes alongside email, web forms and other communications formats – enabling organisations to reduce the risk of non-compliance through lost or misplaced documents.”
EDM Group, which has pioneered the use of digital mailrooms since 2004, operates digital mailrooms for some of the largest companies and organisations in the UK and US. Clients include HMRC, Nationwide, Legal & General and many of the UK’s NHS Trusts. The firm has a proven track record of transitioning and transforming complex services and offers the flexibility to scale up and down as required. Its solutions are certified to the highest levels of compliance: ISO9001 / ISO27001 / BS10008 / PCIDSS / ISO14001.
