So where can these savings be made?

1/ Companies with a regular flow of documents stand to gain benefits from outsourcing some if not all of the components that make up the process flow. Working with a managed print partner allows a company access to state of the art electronic design, printing, document management technologies and cloud based computing. Which means that you can make sizeable gains by not making the investment in the technology.

2/ Working with a reputable print and mailing company will ensure you harness their expertise to maximise the advantages of document management, electronic despatch and print of transactional documents.

So what? Well you get the flexibility to post and electronically send out your documents, something you may well be doing in-house but its become time consuming and cumbersome.

3/ Outsourcing the invoice process gives you the opportunity to audit your paper flow and evaluate how the forms are being used. Consider rationalisation of some of the documents, are so many necessary? Do they convey the company branding effectively and do they communicate clearly and unambiguously?

Big deal? Its no good having a great looking invoice if the customer cant see how much it is they owe and where to pay.

4/ Speed – one of the main factors affecting the despatch of your documents is speed. Great if you print them over night but it takes 3 days to get them in the post and another 2 days getting to your customers. Mailing facilities by default have faster production/automation; printing and despatch now takes hours!

Not a problem to us! Really, what happens when you’re ready to hit the button to print and discover there’s a problem with the invoice file? Easy, you can make changes at the last minute and your documents will go out on time.

5/ Sophisticated design technology means that documents can be variable and highly personalised.

Why do I need that for?  Some of your customers might get specific discounts or you might want to do a marketing message for a product or service.

6/ Clean your customer invoice lists to ensure correct addresses and ensure more accurate delivery of invoices. What’s the point of sending out your invoices if half of the envelopes come back as “not known at this address” you’ve just duplicated the effort!

7/ Pre-sorting your mail is great news for you because we can maximise postage discounts driving down the costs using a franking machine in-house will not provide the same discounts.

8/ Colour – laser technology enables us to print and hi-light specific areas of text on your document.

So? Our invoices are already 2 colours. That may well be, but using what we call spot or hi-light colour on the amount column or to bring attention to amounts overdue is a very powerful way of alerting your customer to speed up payment.

9/ One of the difficulties in managing the paper process in house is the maintenance of your corporate credibility; if different departments order from many print suppliers how do you ensure the company style is reflected across all transactional documents?

Easy – outsourcing ensures that the company style and branding are maintained and reinforced on every invoice, statement, cheque sent out.

Finally

10/ End to end service – using modern document management technologies and printing services makes it easy to outsource the whole process.

Coming next in part 2

HOW TO OPTIMISE YOUR E-INVOICING!

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