Untapped Opportunities

Every month or so, a webcast or article about digital mail – converting paper mail into digital – catches my eye.  The discussions are usually about the benefits of digital mail and how wonderful it is to work with images instead of paper. The discussions, however, often leave out many of the realities involved with implementing an effective system.  One reality is that most companies do not have a mail opening policy that permits the mail center to automatically open, scan, and deliver (route or deposit in a content management database) the mail.  So, if your organization does not have a mail opening policy, how do you implement digital mail if you want to realize the benefits of converting paper to digital?  The answer is to launch a true digital mail system – one that actually addresses this problem and provides more than just scanning software with routing capability. 

A true digital mail system gives you the "open/do-not-open" safeguards.  It provides the collaboration between the mail recipient and the mail center in that the recipient makes the decision for the mail center about what action to take.  These actions include open and scan/route; do not open, deliver via interoffice mail; destroy, this is junk mail; or this is not my mail, please re-route etc.

Digitizing inbound mail and suppressing unwanted mail is a great idea.  Implementing a solution for all inbound mail, not just for pre-sorted mail via a PO Box, is the challenge. 

What do you think?  Can automation meet the policy challenge?  To learn more about how electronic mail management and other document management strategies can help your organization succeed, feel free visit http://www.ocesolutions.com