Print and Mail Changes You May Not Require, But Will Want—And the ROI to Boot

Today is a normal day; as you read the BCC Newsletter, and this article, processes are happening around you on the print production and mailing floor. And those processes are, hopefully…if it is a good day, happening just as they happen every day. So why look at changing it…in the immortal words of Burt Lance from the May 1977 issue of Nation’s Business: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

What you may not know about that article is that he went on to say, “that’s the trouble…fixing things that aren’t broken and not fixing things that are broken.”

When things work, it is understandable not to want to mess with the process, but in the print and mail industry the pressure to reduce costs, deliver faster with less errors and report on the entire process means that you could be, at the very least, leaving valuable money on the table. Recently, our Chief Relationship Officer (CRO), Dan Adler, semi-retired from Solimar Systems (more on that if you are interested here); wrote about the result of switching out of the fast-lane and exiting for a more scenic country road was the realization of what it means to take a step back from what you are doing (his full epiphany in this article here). To summarize, our now Relationship Consultant (RC), discovered that there is a huge benefit to hitting the pause button and reviewing what is going on in your daily processes.

It leads to things like, “When did we/I start doing that?” or “How long has that process not been functioning right.”

It is actually kind of interesting how people will just persevere to get things done and done on-time even if the process is broken. Simply put, maybe it ain’t broke, but could benefit from a touch up.

That is how we uncover ways to benefit our combined BCC Software and Solimar Systems’ clients. We talk to them, understand what they are doing and show them things that, while not broken, could benefit them positively in the long run. That could be through worker efficiency, the time it takes to onboard or complete a job or set of work or the hard costs of production and mailing through postal discounts and promotions.

We have actually written about our customer successes in these areas previously in the BCC Newsletter and spoken about some jointly at conferences. Consider how these areas could help your environment save costs and do more for increased opportunity and business:

• Implement an automated process for your onboarding, print file enhancement, address cleansing, postal discount groupings and production. You could save 10 minutes a job like our client ViaTech did with their new solution. (Details in the previous BCC Newsletter article). The automation and mailing optimization created the opportunity to leverage valuable talent in other areas, drive better discounts and open the door to being able to onboard additional work. Win-Win.
• For some, you might be passing your print and mail files to a pre-sort house and then running it when you get it back. Or you might be using a home-grown system that has worked for decades. There is so much savings to be had and security. The State of Colorado in-plant saw this when they implemented BCC and Solimar Systems. “A benefit of our relationship with Solimar is that they brought us BCC Software. The address cleansing software is much better than the software we were using before. I believe we get more accuracy and [it] allows us more visibility, which is what we want. The address cleansing has been very good and being able to integrate it into the dashboard with [BCC Software’s] Track N Trace® software gives us the ability to track anything from our shop to delivery. We can hold the USPS® accountable for getting the mail piece to the recipient and we have visibility into where every job is in our shop.” Be sure to discover all the details of this real-world example in our previous BCC Newsletter article.

The above are just two examples of why we believe any current customer or future customer of BCC Software should take a moment and look at their print and mail processes. As Pat McGrew of Keypoint Intelligence says, make sure you can walk your workflow from beginning to end. Understand where your works have pain points and where they are using workarounds they might have neglected to mention. Then talk to you vendors (that is where BCC and Solimar come in) to fill those gaps and improve your end product, working environment, profitability and customer experience.

If you would like to learn more, please don’t hesitate to contact our team at Solimar Systems or ask for an introduction from your BCC representative.