The Shift to Consolidated Print and Mailing Finishing Operations
By Brian M. Baxendale, President, Pitney Bowes Production Mail and Software
Systems

High volume mailers everywhere continue to automate and integrate print and mail finishing operations as they seek to lower costs, boost performance and create truly world-class mailing centres.

Now a new trend is emerging: the consolidation of dispersed print and mail finishing resources into one state-of-the-art facility managed by a single entity. And the benefits to the mailer, in terms of reduced cycle times, better integrity more efficient, flexible and responsive production, and better control and reporting capabilities are immense.

Here's some strong evidence:

• A major US insurance firm recently compressed 27 separate data processing, print and mail finishing sites into three mega sites, each encompassing the full range of data, print and mail finishing capabilities.
• A large UK-based utility recently consolidated eight separate and dispersed print and mail finishing sites to two much larger and more comprehensive facilities.
• A giant Japanese telephone company recently switched from maintaining six dispersed locations for data processing and print and mail finishing to just two larger, more efficient and more up-to-date facilities.
• The State of Tennessee upgraded and merged the mailing operations of five separate state agencies into a single, state-of-the-art mailing centre that immediately boosted efficiencies and yielded substantial savings to taxpayers.

The bottom line? Every one of these consolidated sites now handles a greater volume of mail with more effectiveness and at lower unit cost than before the switch.

Why Consolidation is Better
On a physical level, consolidation permits economies of scale, better utilisation of staff and equipment resources, tighter integration of related processes, and a higher quality output that is also more easily and fully tailored to customer needs. For example:

• Transporting finished print materials from a print shop that is located apart from the mail finishing operation is an unnecessary disruption in the production process. It is also an unnecessary exposure of partially finished materials to damage, loss or disorientation.
• Maintaining separate print and mail finishing facilities may also expose paper and printed materials to unnecessary extremes of heat and humidity, which may adversely impact processing efficiency, particularly as equipment speeds increase.
• On an operating or management level, consolidation enables a single entity to be responsible for the entire production and distribution of the organisation's message, from print spool through web and inserting to eventual drop-off with the postal service or directly to the Web digitally.

Connecting Your Organisation and Its Customers
Here's the rationale and some benefits: Print and mail finishing are part of the same process of connecting an organisation with its customers. Any mail piece - whether account statement, confirmation, bill, policy, or targeted promotional message - begins as a stream of digital messages and it is inefficient to separate or split the message process.

• Print and mail finishing equipment have different performance profiles which need to be fully analysed and coordinated to optimise the entire work flow process.
  
• A combined print and mail finishing process enables messages and documents to be created efficiently and distributed in either electronic or hard copy form as evolving customer preferences dictate.
  
• A consolidated facility provides one efficient point of contact for the internal customers who are increasingly initiating 1-1 messages and need cost effective as well as valued-added service and execution.
  
• A consolidated facility enables managers to better balance people and equipment resources to meet the organisation's cost-per-message or value added goals. .
  
• A single print and mail finishing centre reduces conflicting or competing demands on scarce IT resources and facilitates the rapid deployment of innovative technologies such as client/server, browser and print stream manipulation.
• A single facility also has the capability to compete effectively against the low-cost and high-value offered by the leading outsource providers, and to select from among those providers when unanticipated demands require quick access to supplemental processing capacity.

Toward The Document Factory
The Gartner Group, a respected consulting firm specialising in information technology, has defined a strategy for organisations seeking to cope with the significant technological and customer-driven changes occurring in output processing. Called the Automated Document Factory the Gartner model is comprised of four modules - input, transformation, delivery and preparation, and control and reporting. Each module is connected by a series of interfaces that hold it together.

Pitney Bowes Production Mail and Software Systems has also recognised and is facilitating the shift to automated and integrated processing, as well as consolidated facilities, with the launch of a newly-organised and bolstered Document Factory Solutions (DFS) group.

The DFS offering encompasses the industry's most comprehensive array of hardware and software products, services and financing options tailored to the Document Factory concept.

In the reality of the dynamic business world, new technology advances rapidly and various functions within organisations respond differently to initiatives related to quality and other customer-oriented demands. So it is not surprising that printers, inserting systems and other equipment in print and mailing finishing centres may be underutilised or poorly coordinated.

High-speed printing and mail finishing equipment, for example, possess fundamentally different performance characteristics. Generally, the ratio is two mail finishing platforms for each high-speed laser printer especially since printing technology has advanced to where images are produced at a rate exceeding 60,000 sheets per hour.

But printers frequently have advanced functionality such as multiple-up, duplex printing and highlight colour. And intelligent inserting systems support advanced barcode technology, such as code 3 of 9, code 2 of 5, file~based processing, data glyphs and two dimensional barcodes. How can mail centre managers be assured they are tapping the full potential of their equipment?

Additionally, conflicting objectives within an organisation often impede efforts to improve efficiency and decisions about how documents are created or what they look like can be made by executives outside the print and mail finishing area. For example, it is not unusual for a promotional piece, created solely for high impact, 1 - 1 marketing, to possess physical characteristics that are costly or time consuming to process in a highspeed print and mail finishing environment.

Plus, innovative managers, hampered by legacy applications that are costly and time consuming to change, may already be implementing portions of new technology, such as the capability to alter and manipulate documents in the print stream, as a prelude to optimising the production process.

The goal of every print and mail finishing manager today is to create, produce and distribute high-quality documents quickly, cost-effectively and in a manner that is capable of responding rapidly to the changing priorities of the organisation. They are also at the helm of an emerging effort to boost the effectiveness of documents via personalisation and 1 - 1 marketing initiatives.

To achieve the goal, print and mail finishing managers need to organise and control the entire production process from print spool through final distribution. Once this is achieved, the mail centre manager will be able chart progress, control costs and redeploy resources to meet ever-changing needs. And they'll also find it easier to boost productivity and improve quality.