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| CASE STUDIES | June 2009 |
Irish postal serevice exceeds efficiency goals with integrated POD system
AN POST, one of Ireland’s largest companies, provides postal, communication, retail and money transmission services. While its retail division sells financial products, An Post Mails—similar to the United States Postal Service—handles all postal deliveries. Each year, An Post delivers more than 750 million items of mail to 1.3 million homes and businesses. It manages close to 1,400 post offices across Ireland.
The challenge
An Post’s Proof of Delivery (POD) system—a mission-critical function for confirming postal services to customers—required too much time and too many employees. The company set a formidable objective for its Mails Department: To reduce salary overhead and increase employee productivity while maintaining a high level of customer service.
When parcels are delivered, An Post carriers remove barcode stickers from the packages and attach them to cards for signature. Previously, these POD cards were then sent to company headquarters in Dublin and filed in cardboard boxes piled on racks in a storage room covering more than 400 square feet (44 square meters). Or, due to high volume, they were also stored at each local post office.
Cards were retained for at least three months in boxes sorted by date. When a customer requested a signature to confirm delivery, retrieving the data could take up to fifteen minutes. According to Damian O’Toole, IT manager with the Mails Department at An Post, “Customer service agents had to leave their desks to go to the storeroom, access the right box, find the card, then take it to a photocopier or fax machine to send it to the customer.” Estimates confirmed eight full-time employees spent close to 40 per cent of their time managing the POD process. Of the 320 man-hours worked every week, roughly 120 hours were spent accessing cards.
Retrieval was so intensive, the main driver for change was a cost-reduction and efficiency exercise. An Post set the goal to reduce its customer service staff by two members. Savings could be achieved by reducing manpower, but the company still wanted to provide the same level of customer service. Such a balancing act requires an effective imaging and document management system. The An Post IT team searched for a cost-effective, easy-to-use solution that would integrate efficiently with other applications. The company didn’t want to create a complex system that needed a team of people to manage it.
The solution
After reviewing several potential vendors, An Post selected Inpute Technologies, a solutions provider based in Dublin, to implement a new system. Working with Inpute, An Post replaced its manual POD processes with an automated and integrated solution powered by Cardiff TeleForm, Captaris Alchemy, Captaris RightFax, and Inpute Document Viewer (N.B. Captaris were recently aquired by Open Text). The updated POD system virtually runs itself, without intervention from IT administrators or customer service agents. Employees avoid labour-intensive paperwork and customers enjoy 24x7 access to POD information via the Web.
Instead of piling up in store rooms, signed POD cards with traceable barcodes are returned to the General Post Office (GPO) where they are scanned and validated using TeleForm forms processing software, then loaded into the Alchemy repository for storage and retrieval. The system automatically processes more than 80 per cent of POD cards. Remaining cards with torn barcodes or other defects are flagged for verification and correction by an agent. Once successfully processed, the system automatically populates An Post’s Track and Trace database to supply signatures to customers, as needed.
As a digital document library, Alchemy also easily handles digital transactions. For certain services in major urban areas, An Post carriers use personal digital assistants to confirm parcel deliveries. In these cases, electronic POD signatures are transmitted instantaneously to the GPO. An Post’s system creates an image of the signature and associates a tracking number with the transaction. The electronic signatures are also stored in the Alchemy repository.
As document management and delivery components of the overall system, Alchemy and RightFax support An Post’s FactsBack, the online information center customers can access anytime, anywhere. In twelve months, FactsBack handled nearly 60,000 requests, of which 88 per cent were delivered via email, the remaining 12 per cent via RightFax.
The process is 100 per cent automated. There is no manual intervention for customer representatives except in rare cases. For instance, agents manage requests individually for customers who are not aware of the online service or prefer to make requests via phone. Even so, using Alchemy and RightFax on the desktop, agents quickly retrieve and deliver images via email or fax with the click of a button. There’s no other action for the customer service agent. When they finish the call, the request is already processed.
An Post relies on RightFax for inbound faxing as well. With individual Direct Inward Dial (DID) numbers, employees receive faxes right at their desktops and view them through the Fax Utility. An Post’s automated imaging system and major centers are linked on a metro network and rely on one corporate RightFax Server that replaced a handful of fax machines. In the near future, An Post plans to extend RightFax to each rural post office as well.
An Post is confident in extending the use of RightFax and Alchemy based on proven reliability and successful integration with both legacy and new applications. “No matter what requirement we’ve looked at in recent years, Captaris integration has been relatively easy,” O’Toole said. “When we’ve approached Inpute to come up with a solution, in nearly every single case, it’s been relatively small work to integrate the system.” In addition to the POD process, An Post uses the TeleForm and Alchemy platforms to merge its accounts and tracking system for billing, allowing customers to track expenditures. An Post is also investigating automation of other forms, such as new address notices.
The results
Since the installation of an automated system, the amount of POD cards has more than doubled. Today, with the addition of registered mail, express and other premium products to parcel operations, the imaging system automatically processes closer to 160,000 POD cards per month. The system now contains more than eight million images indexed by 35 million track and trace numbers. The increased volume could not have been handled with the old manual system. In fact, An Post manages the high volume of transactions even after cutting its customer service staff in half-from eight to four full-time employees.
Current agents spend the first half of the work day verifying POD cards, then they are free to handle general service calls. The routine is a marked improvement compared to expensive overtime hours demanded by the manual system. Agents were often working Saturdays and nights to clear backlogs and process cards. Now, virtually no overtime has been worked in that department at all.
Improved customer experience
In light of its previous goal for staff reduction and productivity, An Post went the extra mile, exceeding benchmarks for staff and turnaround. And, rather than simply maintaining a consistent service level, An Post improved the customer experience. Instead of waiting up to three days for a POD request, customers access the data online immediately, at any time-a feature that is especially useful for customers in other time zones since An Post operates as an agent for the United States Postal Service and Australia Post.
Captaris, now part opf Open text) is a provider of software products that automate document-centric business processes. Captaris specialises in document capture, recognition, routing, workflow and delivery. Captaris integrated solutions provide interoperability with leading line of business applications and technology platforms. Captaris products include RightFax, Captaris Workflow, Alchemy, FaxPress, DOKuStar, RecoStar, Single Click Entry and ID Star. Inpute Technologies, based in Dublin, provides solutions that convert manual, labor-intensive, paper-based processes into more effective electronic processes. Inpute provides the complete range of document image processing services to the corporate and institutional marketplaces. |
