Since October 2001 and the threat of anthrax-laced letters, the mail center has become much more visible and important to businesses both large and small. Prior to this period in time, many corporate chief executives were not aware that they even had a mail center in their organizations. To many in the executive office, the mail center is a necessary evil.
Much like corporate America's reliance on a secure information technology (IT) infrastructure, the time has come for businesses to insure that the company's mail center will effectively support and protect business-critical documents. Thus the evolution of the mail center looks very similar to that of information technology and its progression over the last 30 years in corporate America. And just like IT, the lifecycle of the mail center's evolution is much shorter than it used to be.
Business managers are recognizing that the mail center is a strategic part of a company's management lifecycle and not just a necessary evil relegated to the back office. Savvy business managers are now asking the same sort of questions that IT managers have been asking themselves, such as "How do I make the mail center a part of knowledge deployment and enhancement in my company?"
How an organization answers this question actually depends on its corporate culture and how receptive it is to new ideas, whether these ideas are broadly communicated and whether or not the company has a formal method to validate ideas. The mail center, not unlike IT, is merely a tool and how well any corporate tool performs often depends on what motivates the hand that wields it.
In today's environment, the mail center manager, similar to the chief information officer (CIO), must have a variety of skills. Some CIOs are creating operations-focused deputy CIO positions for managing day-to-day activities and putting out fires, thus enabling the CIO to focus on business strategy. Similarly, the expanding scope of the mail center manager has made it more difficult to run an efficient mail center and focus on mail center strategy at the same time.
Lessons Learned from the IT Evolution
Since the late 60s, the corporate IT function has evolved from managing a mainframe environment that was mostly outsourced in the 70s and 80s to managing new technologies and distributed computing in the 90s to where it is today.
The personal computer (PC) has revolutionized the way corporate America conducts business and the way business people talk and think. The evolution of the computer from the mainframe and mini-based systems of the 60s and 70s to the Wintel (Windows/Intel)-based computers of the late 80s has been an evolution and convergence of three critical elements: thought, hardware and software. By the late 80s, corporate America saw the computer as a serious business tool. Businesses hired technicians and programmers to write operating programs and software, fix the equipment and manage the operation of their computers.
PCs started appearing on desktops in companies large and small to produce work schedules and payrolls, write letters and memos and generate budgets. Software was written to enable businesses to do more in less time. Management began sending employees to class to gain new skills in order to better operate and utilize this new business machine.
The 80s were a time of furious change in the computer industry. The creation and success of the PC would not have been possible without the elimination of the concept that a computer was a large, centralized, data processor and number cruncher only. Today, the PC is a communication channel more than it is a computational tool.
A Sea of Change in the Mail Center
Historically, mail center equipment has been mainly a hardware-based tool that helped to bring some form of automation into the back office function of sorting and processing business mail. Improvements to this equipment included mostly minor changes to the hardware, with some introduction of electronics and mail processing software coming along in the early 90s.
Today, special software-based tools developed for the mail center have significantly elevated how American companies view their mail centers. Soft tools such as software and process improvement systems are allowing companies to · achieve even greater efficiencies. A higher level of production has been made possible. Companies large and small alike can now more readily budget mail center costs, take advantage of discounts and process more mail for the entire organization.
As a result, many mail center management functions are now moving out of the back office and into executive suites as the mail center manager's job is becoming more focused on security, technological innovation and budget forecasting.
But even as mail center managers are being charged with showing the way toward new, business-critical uses of the mail center, they nonetheless remain responsible for the day-to-day functioning of internal and external delivery, operating systems and cost containment. This has made their jobs exceedingly more difficult and has forced them to wear both a strategy and a technical or operational hat. Like the IT executive, the mail center manager in today's environment needs to spend a greater percentage of his time on strategy and less on operations.
Having an operations-focused mail center staff that works hand-in-hand with a strategy-focused mail center manager overseeing day-to-day execution, maintenance, personnel and budget is ideal. The mail center manager, like a CIO, must develop a new architectural framework for the mail center that provides flexibility and cost savings for the company while his staff runs the day-to-day operations. Additionally, the manager must be able to build relationships with other senior executives to ensure that the evolution of the mail center from a back office function to a strategic business unit is understood by the executive management team as absolutely essential for the company to survive in today's security-conscious/competitive environment.
Management Principles
While many major technological innovations demanded our attention during the past decade, the most important changes were in management, notes CIO Magazine, with the most significant improvements involving the alignment of IT objectives with business objectives.
Those same principles can be applied in today's corporate mail center. As with IT, the two main objectives of the mail center and its staff are to support the organization and to do so in a cost-effective manner.
Why Outsource When You Can Manage from Within
As we have developed more advanced software tools, larger corporations are realizing they have increased flexibility in their mail centers. No longer do they need to outsource certain mail center functions, such as folding and inserting invoices and direct mailpieces, sorting and presorting as well as addressing. Companies now have the option of and ability to establish a full-service mail center internally thereby eliminating the risk of leaking proprietary lists and information.
In addition, now that we have a vast number of software-based tools available to the mail center manager in the 21st century, it will demand that he think about the company's mailing preparation needs and operations in a different way. As software-based tools continue to evolve, the mail center manager will be able to use new tools to expand and improve processes, which will demand a better assessment of how to train and manage the mail center staff.
The mail center manager now has the ability to promote his employee base. In the past, there was little room for the mail center employees to advance within that area of the company. You might start out in the mailroom, but if you were looking for advancement opportunities, you sought them outside of the mail center. However, now that we have more complete tools that generate automated reporting and workflow, they create the opportunity for advancement within the mail center based on skill sets and different work activities.
Key factors of this process include improved operating efficiencies, higher quality customer contact and more effective information sharing internally. This is important for information-based industries, which includes almost any industry in today's business environment.
Benefits to Elevating the Mail Center
Applying strategic thought changes to the mail center and treating it as a critical function much like IT will help management create a knowledge-based center that safely and efficiently handles anything from the company's invoices to its marketing campaigns and beyond. This will in turn lead to a better number of benefits including:
Staffing/succession planning Because all staff are adequately trained, any member of the staff can easily step in and run the mail center if the manager or other members leave the company.
Employee turnover An inclusive management style and education of all staff promotes team building, encourages employee feedback, creates a more challenging environment and results in increased employee satisfaction.
Return on investment (ROI) If given the manpower to do so, a mail center manager can improve efficiencies, focus on strategic projects and enhance the overall functioning of the mail center, solidifying ROI.
Securing proprietary information The mail center manages the same type of proprietary information the IT area does but in paper form. Critical information such as business contracts, client databases and sensitive corporate information flow through the mail center and will be secured when managed in-house.
Physical site security Many tools are now available to protect the corporation from attacks through the mail stream. Armed with these new tools, the mail center manager is more capable of handling all of the incoming and outgoing mail and administering the security aspect within his department.
Larry Turner is president of the US region of Francotyp-Postalia (FP Mailing Solutions). For more information, visit www.fp-usa.com.
