Case Study: Biomedical Technology Firm
Ricoh expands mailroom support with digital mail solutions for remote employees.
About our customer
This Fortune 500 biomedical technology engineering firm specializes in manufacturing devices used in interventional medical specialties, such as radiology, cardiology, and coronary artery disease. Headquartered in the U.S., they operate in more than 100 countries and employ more than 40,000 people. Their team is dedicated to creating innovative solutions to impact patients on a global scale.
"Our relationship with Ricoh has been excellent. Having their full support during the launch took teamwork and skilled coordination, and we couldn't have asked for a better partner."
- Senior Facilities Specialist
Challenge
90% of employees began remote work
No plan to deliver critical physical mail
Employees had to commute onsite to pick up mail
The client has entrusted the mailroom services of their main U.S. campus of 2,000 people to Ricoh for over twenty years, where we've been responsible for maintaining the highest levels of service for handling first class, priority, mass mailings, interoffice, accounts payable checks and certified mail.
In 2020, about 90% of our client’s workforce began working remotely within a matter of weeks. As the company had to reassess their remote and hybrid work capabilities, physical mail delivery emerged as one of their major challenges — and we estimated the company received over 1,800 envelopes per month.
As a temporary workaround, our mailroom staff that remained on-site would communicate with individuals and teams to designate people to come in weekly or biweekly to pick up mail. However, their mailboxes were piling up quickly as recipients were no longer onsite to receive their mail daily. On a case-by-case basis, the mailroom staff would open, scan, and email physical mail content to recipients — but the process was time-consuming and not scalable.
Not only was employee experience impacted, but the lag time in processing business-critical mail was impeding work in key departments such as accounts payable, finance and legal.
The center of the firm’s mission is their patient care, and they wanted to tackle the challenges of today's workplace head on and without compromise.
Solution
"We had some scanning abilities, but nothing as robust as the digital mail system implemented by Ricoh. Our remote employees no longer need to commute to the office just to retrieve their time-sensitive mail."
- Senior Facilities Specialist
Analyzed mailroom volume and processing workflows
Surveyed on-site and remote employees to gauge pain points
Implemented Intelligent Delivery Services, available on our Intelligent Business Platform, to digitize mail delivery
As the company realized that many of their employees would remain remote for the foreseeable future, they sought a permanent solution for automating mail delivery. Our on-site mailroom team suggested operationalizing their process for the whole campus. To understand the company’s needs for a digital mail solution, we analyzed their mail volume, distribution, and processing workflows, and held workshops among critical departments. We also sent out a survey to the entire campus and remote workers.
Soon after, we implemented our Intelligent Delivery Services (IDS) available on our Intelligent Business Platform (IBP). The IBP is a user-friendly system offering Ricoh services and workflow automation solutions. For this client, the Intelligent Delivery Services digital mail solution enabled them to open and scan all the information from physical mail, making mail easily accessible to team members working anywhere through a cloud portal.
Images and metadata (identifying both the sender and recipient) are captured using specialized hardware and software, including artificial intelligence, natural language processing and machine learning technologies. For scans, these are captured as high-fidelity black and white images then converted into searchable multi-page PDFs. To ensure the security of sensitive documents, we use ID badges for all mailroom staff. This creates an audit trail for all opened and scanned mail contents.
Results
Digital mail delivery within 24 hours ensures key business information is sent to employees
Less risk of human error in delivering mail to the correct recipients
Employees more satisfied with the mail delivery process
Mail processing and delivery is now fully automated from end-to-end, so employees no longer need to commute onsite to pick up their mail. With an average of 1,800 envelopes per month, more than 5,000 images are captured, including an image of the envelope. Despite the initial constraints the remote work brought on, this offering has been a valuable asset for companies moving into hybrid work environments as well. Document data and image files are made accessible for recipients within 24 hours. Because employees now receive their critical mail in a timely manner, their business is running more efficiently. The company can also depend on the safety of their sensitive documents, as the automated process helps ensure communication is delivered to the right person, in the right format the first time. There is also less risk for human error now that the workflow is configured end-to-end.