Why is There a Growing Need for High-Integrity Mail Processing?

Ralph Mezzoni | Tuesday, Jun 28th 2022
Envelope over blue background with white arrow passing through

In the past if you sent the wrong document to a customer it was bad for business. But today it is often a violation of the law if a customer's private data ends up in the hands of a third party. This growing trend towards compliance has led to the need for high integrity
and transparency. And as Jannes Wiggerink, Strategic Marketing Manager at Neopost, explains “This involves having the ability to track each individual mail piece through the system on a sheet by sheet level.”

How to Achieve Document Integrity

In order to obtain document integrity throughout the entire mailing process we need to be able to understand the capabilities of each folding and inserting system in order to be able to properly assemble a document, ensure that the assembly process is reliable and that we can account for any variations in assembly. Kelly McManus, National Production Mail Sales Manager for Neopost USA, confirms that “Organizations today have tobe able to verify that everything that needs to go out, actually does go out,and in the right envelope. In addition they need to be able to keep a recordof every single page of every set of documents delivered.”

Take for example a medical center that is sending out patient correspondence. It may have to send a letter out to a veteran telling him he needs to come in for medical treatment. This could be an appointment letter asking the person to come in on a certain day, at a certain time, for an operation. If it is a knee operation, the center will have to send him a specific form telling the patient what to do before the knee operation takes place. If however the veteran is having an eye operation then he will need a different set of instructions. Therefore the right document preparation and mail processing system needs to be in place so that the veteran gets the right letter and the right instructions for his operation.

Software for Effective Mail Processing

Efficient document preparation software exits today, enabling users to define which documents should go into which communications piece. It can sort and collate documents to avoid sending multiple items to the same recipient and it secures the content of each communications piece. In addition a flexible solution can be integrated into folder inserters to electronically match each mail piece to a mailing’s data file to ensure complete “closed loop” (from the beginning to the end of the job) verification. Complete security is essential for mailing integrity and a folder inserter that has the right operating system can ensure there are no double documents feeds and that each document is recorded at input and right through the process until the document is inserted into an envelope and placed on the output stacker.

The Role of Data in Mail Preparation

The important thing to remember is that it all comes down to how data is produced. As Theo Theodorou, Export Business Manager for Neopost explains: “Organizations want to be able to ensure they have the right integrity checks in place during the whole mail preparation process. And they want to be able to go back at the end of the process and verify that what has actually been produced checks back to the data prepared in the first place.”