How British Companies survive and make it to the holy land metaphorically speaking remains to be determined but there are still a number of cost saving initiatives companies should consider as a means of saving money and reducing debtor days.

Outsourcing your cash collection process can add a vital component to a company’s armoury particularly where the SME is concerned.

How can this work for an organisation struggling to manage and chase their debtors?

Case Study

DCA provide credit management and debt recovery services for many companies that outsource their debt collection requirements.

The service includes outward bound and inward bound calls from a call centre acting on behalf of its clients supported by the printing, mailing and electronic delivery of personalised collection letters to debtors.

The DCA’s growth has resulted in a rapid expansion of their operations to provide services to Companies across the UK, ROI and Europe. The task of producing personalised letters for the companies they represent became too time consuming, cost prohibitive and less efficient in-house.

Efficiency was critical to the speed at which they collect outstanding debt and to maintain the printing of letters in-house would have involved capital purchases of larger printers, employee time and additional I.T resources.

The service the DCA required was a daily production, personalisation, fulfilment and mailing of anywhere between 500 to 12,000 letters.

Working closely with the DCA, Digital Print Management provided three solutions that embraced both printed and electronic letters to be personalised and mailed.

The Print and Mail Solution

Data is sent daily and contains identifiers to determine which files are required to be printed and mailed out and those that are to be electronically emailed. Flags within their data identifies the letter templates to be used, stationery types, envelopes and inserts that are required.

The DCA’s requirements include the use of five different base stock types – letterheads, bank giro credits and envelopes, BRE’s (Business Reply Envelopes) and up to 100 different letter content templates.

Printing is undertaken using high speed laser printers and identification of multiple page documents is done via the use of OMR marks that are printed enabling inserting machines to ensure the correct documents are presented in the right order within the envelopes.

The Electronic Solution

Electronic credit and collections provides an efficient and cost effective alternative to the more traditional collection processes involved in collecting delinquent payments.

Collections are challenging for AR departments and when debts move into the collection process incur additional expenses such as print, postage, payment negotiation and higher interest fees due to days sales outstanding. (DSO)

Electronic notices emailed into customer inboxes reach customers quickly enabling them to pay by clicking on a link that takes them to a payment page without the need to visit a web site.

The benefits of electronic delivery include:-

• Costs are reduced because it is an efficient way of reaching delinquent customers
• Shortens the payment cycle by reducing the number of customers falling into the credit and collection cycle by sending automatic reminders
• Improved cash flow

Using Digital Print Management’s Print-2-Mail desktop service fulfils this need as data files containing collection letters for the various companies they manage are uploaded daily, printed and despatched, saving postage, processing and mailing costs. In turn they are then able to pass on these savings to their clients. 

The unique business relationship that exists between the DCA and Digital Print Management means that the only in-house requirement is to ensure that data is generated daily and in a timely manner to ensure there are no delays.

There has been significant savings on postage, stationery, staff resources and no further capital investment on additional equipment.

Staff who were previously involved in the debt collection process have now been re-deployed into the business to focus on core competencies allowing Digital Print Management to handle the task of distribution of their debt collection letters.

 If you want to find out how you can transform your debt collection mailings but not sure where to start then leave your details here and one of advisors will call you back.

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The post How to save time and money outsourcing your debt collection letters appeared first on Digital Print Management.

Most organisations have an ongoing requirement for mailing out customer letters, mailshots, invoices and statements.

I bet you still have a number of customers that absolutely insist on wanting a paper document.

Those few letters a month to process take time and effort so who is going to do the job?

The never-ending postal increases mean that companies have to be smart and inventive when it comes to mailing customer letters.

E-billing, e-mailshots and paper documents are hierarchical depending on importance.

There are specific documents like legislative financial documents that are required to be processed as paper, or customers who request paper documents only.

Many businesses have an ongoing mailing requirement no matter how small which requires an in-house print and mail solution.

Our desktop mailing solution

Using Digital Print Management’s Print-2-Mail service mailing letters is a whole lot easier!

How?

Print-2-mail helps you retain control of mailing out letters to your customers. You decide when to upload and choose a mailing date. Instead of using your local print driver, you upload to our portal via a print driver.

It’s cheap, it’s quick and easy to use.

Why use hybrid mail?

Hybrid mail is a combination of printing and posting as a bundled service, combining small mailings for lots of customers and by optimising cheaper postage such as DSA (Downstream Access)mailings are cheaper and easier to manage.

How do I save money?

• Increased staff productivity – staff no longer have to load and manage printers or stuff envelopes.
• Reduced postage costs – we sort your mail, consolidate it so you benefit from significant postal discounts.
• Reduced in-house equipment costs – general office printer usage goes down, cost of consumables is reduced because you are not using so much.
• Reduced stationery and consumable costs.
• Reduced paper wastage – using our postal validation system you can amend missing or incorrect addresses by downloading an address database of your customer mailing and ensure your customer database address details is up to date.
• Pay as you go – with no setup or licence fee or software installation, print-2-mail enables you to send letters quickly and conveniently in the UK and Europe
• Improved customer interaction – because the process is so quick and easy to use, your customers will benefit from your latest news; invoices will be printed when you need them
• 1st and 2nd class mailing options are available and where letters exceed 15 pages they will go into a C4 envelope.

How do I manage what is being mailed?

How does print-2-mail work for your business?

Print-2-mail enables you to process your documents in a matter of minutes. We manage any type of mailing from mailshots, debt collection letters, emergency letter mailings, invoices, statements and general communication letters.

Aside from the obvious cost savings on print, fulfilment and postage, there are the invisible cost savings of energy, equipment, stationery and consumables.

It, couldn’t be simpler. If you want to see the benefits of our print-2-mail solution then request a demo now by contacting us or calling on 01234-271156.

The post How to save money with hybrid mail. From desktop to doormat. appeared first on Digital Print Management.

If your company or organisation cannot reclaim VAT, your postage costs can only go one way and that is UP.

Businesses that rely on bulk mailings and use the royal mail’s bulk mailing services such as mailsort, presstream, walksort, cleanmail, packetpost, advertising mail, sustainable mail and standard tariff will have experienced rising mailing costs.

Irrespective of escalating postage and mailing costs there are a number of measures that an organisation can undertake to ensure the cost of print and mailing is kept at a reasonable cost level.

How?

By optimising all or some of the following.

Multi-channel distribution 

Multi-channel distribution of business documents – your data file is broken down into those letters that are required to be printed and mailed, electronically sent or documents that need to be printed and then returned to a head office or delivered to regional offices all from one data file. Providing you with a complete printing and mailing service.

How can this work for my business? 

Working with a mailing solutions partner who will advise you what the alternatives are and provide guidance on the best method to ensure your mailing is a success.

Whether it is getting those invoices out to your customers on time or a direct mail piece, a print and mailing solutions provider will take your data file containing names and addresses, extract the letters that are required to be printed and mailed, electronically send documents to those recipients and return those documents that are required to be internally distributed back to head office and regional locations.

To find out how to choose the right mailing solutions provider click here

DSA 

DSA is the term used to describe mail which has been collected and distributed by a competitor of the Royal Mail but is delivered into the Royal Mail centres for final processing onto local offices. The cost savings per envelope depending on weight can be substantial saving companies as much as 0.24p per envelope.

Electronic

Not quite as straightforward to get your customers to accept the fact that you will be communicating with them solely via email and not every one of your customers will want to receive an electronic bill, statement or letter for all sorts of different reasons but as long as you follow the process I’ve outlined here you can see your postage costs reduce substantially.

Beware, your customer’s perception may be a negative one.

If you are wanting to drive your mailing costs down by moving to an electronic system of sending out your documents you need to be aware that some customers will view that you have effectively passed the costs of processing and in many cases, printing to your customer.

If they don’t have an effective accounts payable/invoice processing system then there is the manual processing of your document at the customers end resulting in additional work.

Aside from the print and mailing solutions there are also known desktop mailing solutions.

How does this work?

Easy really if you click here there’s more information on how the system can help you reduce your mailing costs or click here to find out how mailing on a budget can make a difference to your organisation.

Finally…

Avoid the use of C4 envelopes

Avoid having to use 1st class Royal Mail

Maximise your discounts by using downstream access mailing

Use a hybrid mail solution like the one described above.

For more information on hybrid mailing solutions click here

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The post How to benefit from print and mailing services appeared first on Digital Print Management.

If you still mail out letters and bills there are some options that will save time and money

Businesses rely heavily on the Royal Mail in spite of the internet and the availability of sending documents electronically.

The UK Royal Mail increased their charges from April 2013 and businesses who use a multi-distribution method for delivery of their customer letters such as post and electronic delivery will no doubt have felt the impact of the postage costs on their bottom-line.

Despite the increase and depending on what volumes you mail out in a month there are 3 ways that can help you reduce the expenditure.

Using a print and mailing service provider offers a number of tangible benefits that will save you time and money. You can read more about how the service works here.

Use DSA (downstream access)

DSA is the term used to describe mail which has been collected and distributed by a competitor of the Royal Mail but is delivered into the Royal Mail centres for final processing in to local offices.

The cost savings per envelope depending on weight can be substantial and savings can be up to 13p per envelope using 2nd class mail. (Price will vary subject to weight)

Good Database Management

By ensuring that your data is current and reliable removes the issue of duplication.

Many companies over look the importance of recording their customers address and contact details and this results in duplicated addresses and most likely duplicated invoices arriving on the customers door step.

Maintaing your billing database (clicking on the link here will explain why data cleansing is important for your business) on a regular basis shows best practice and will save time and money and it doesn’t have to be a costly exercise.

A print and mailing service provider can check for errors and duplications using de-duping software.

Address Inaccuracies

Sending invoices or statements to an incorrect address or defunct address can be costly!

Not only does the invoice go unpaid but the invoice then has to be re-printed and mailed out again effectively doubling your postage charge and increasing the processing and print time.

Incomplete addresses result in items being undelivered unless there is a return address on the envelope which will ensure the item is forwarded to the originator of the envelope.

But incorrectly or incomplete addresses means that the invoices have to be painstakingly checked and re-issued correctly. This takes up valuable company resources and slows cash collection too.

If you are faced with the challenge of getting your documents out on time there is an alternative solution called hybrid mail. If you click here you can find out more about what the service can do to speed up the mailing out process.

If you call Digital Print Management on 01234-271156 and ask for Caroline or drop us your email address here one of expert advisors will talk it through with you. What best suits your needs when it comes to mailing out your documents.

The post 3 Ways to Reduce Postage Costs appeared first on Digital Print Management.