September 27, 2004—A recent Pitney Bowes Management Services survey has revealed the business departments that are obtaining high value from document management systems.
Increasingly, document management is a business function that is being outsourced to specialist providers, reports Pitney Bowes. The value of a fully integrated archive, retrieval, and distribution system is recognized, but for many companies the skills and resources are not in place to maximize the potential of this business-critical technology. Outsourcing can instantly provide this skill-set and expertise.
The Pitney Bowes survey was conducted among representatives from the UK’s top 1000 companies. Responses show that document management is now providing true value across the board, with the result that any companies not seeking expert guidance when implementing and operating such technology stand to quickly lose competitive ground and return on investment.
Ross Dorras, Director—Client Business Development, Pitney Bowes Management Services, states, “One would expect ‘Billing and Statements’ and ‘Accounts pay/receive’ to feature strongly. Certainly, in the case of accounts pay/receive, this has been the traditional area for document management sales for over 15 years.
“Billing and statements is a business critical, highly-regulated area. Obviously, the technology used to handle this business process will ultimately determine a company’s cash flow, so it is no surprise that document management solutions are focused towards this function. Arguably, sophisticated document management is even more important to this area now. For example, the trend towards mergers and acquisitions may mean that data flows from disparate systems need to be integrated. And the rapid rise in the use of marketing messages on bills and statements also serves to make data-flows more complex. Document management solutions must be used to ensure that such marketing activity is incorporated without interruption to the time-critical bill production and arrival process.
“It is also vital that the bill/statement function integrates fully with the call center to ensure fast, accurate customer service. The integration of the call center through sophisticated document management is a relatively recent development. There are clear benefits here for both customer service and marketing response handling. Document management enables call-center personnel to rapidly access information ‘as rendered,’ giving them the same view of a document as the customer and expediting query resolution.
“Also, there has been a drive to improve the efficiency of replies to marketing response. Through document management, caller responses of this nature can be handled quickly, via email or post. This might involve having a template letter with specified fields that the agent can tailor. Another solution might provide the ability to assemble, process and activate the sending of a bespoke pack of relevant documents to answer the call. Here, the physical processing of the documents would be handled remotely at the mailing site, but the document design, print stream, and enclosure instructions would be generated electronically by the call center agent.
“The high response for marketing/direct marketing is unexpected. This can perhaps be attributed to the trend for centralized marketing document libraries. Here, brochures, creatives, etc., can be stored in one location, enabling each branch or country to tailor to a local design, and to either print locally or order through a centralized print and/or mail facility. Such a facility is important to the business in terms of a) retaining brand/marketing control, yet b) empowering local operations to reflect local color, and c) saving production costs through centralized production.”