Benefits of Outsourcing Printing: Save Time and Money

Is Your Business or Financial Institution Ready to Outsource The Processing and Mailing of Customer Documents?

Understanding the benefits of outsourcing printing starts with defining the process. Print outsourcing encompasses handling all aspects of printing, mailing, document management, multi-channel delivery, and even marketing by a dedicated third-party company. Businesses across industries constantly strive to increase profits through various strategies. Alongside expanding their customer base, most companies prioritize cost reduction, risk mitigation, and efficiency improvement. Outsourcing print management and mail production offers a proven method to achieve all three.

Often referred to as document outsourcing, this approach essentially delegates these tasks to a specialized third party, better equipped to manage these costly and time-consuming operations. However, not all print and mail companies offer the same level of service. By partnering with a full-service print solution provider, you gain access to more than just basic printing services. Reputable print providers offer a comprehensive suite of tools encompassing print, mail, document management, and workflow solutions, ensuring every step of the print and mail production process is optimized.

Criteria to Consider When Choosing a Print and Mail Company

When looking for an effective print-mail outsourcing company, they should be able to handle a few basic tasks:

• Data processing and archiving
• Statement processing and mailing
• Optimized mailing, and postage optimizations
• Transparent workflow tracking and automation
• Variable data printing and integrated personalized marketing
• Multichannel document delivery
• Certified print facilities, and data security
• Real-time document management, and be able to make changes in real-time

If a potential document outsourcing company is missing one of these aspects, you should consider looking at other print outsourcing companies.

Benefits of Outsourced Print and Mail

When you outsource your company’s print and mail, it is an effective, proven business strategy that enables your company to:

• Minimize capital investments
• Avoid long-term lease commitments
• Reduce paper, postage and production costs
• Improve and stabilize cash flow
• Generate reports to satisfy compliance auditors
• Reduce the risk of a costly data breach

By outsourcing with a full-service print solution company, you open yourself up to more than just basic print services. Good print providers should have a suite of print, mail, document management, and workflow tools at their disposal. They need to have every step of the print and mail production process optimized.

Print, mail and document management are the costliest aspects of customer communications. We are going to break top the top 3 benefits of outsourcing printing vs. in-house printing. Taking a look at each aspect of your in-house printing processes can help you determine if outsourcing might be an effective printing solution for your company.

---

Benefit 1: Reduce Overall Production Costs

The top reason most companies outsource their print or mail processing is to reduce expenses. Handling these tasks in-house can be very costly in both equipment and personnel requirements. A low-end commercial laser printer costs about $50,000 and a high-end continuous digital color press can run as high as $5 million. As a result, to achieve the lowest, per-page print cost, the production volume of a company’s print jobs must justify the price of the equipment.

The same rationale holds true for mailing equipment. A new, non-intelligent mail inserter will cost $50,000, while a fully automated intelligent machine with tracking can run close to $1 million. That’s a significant amount of capital to tie up in equipment that has a five-year life expectancy. The expenses don’t stop with the initial investment. You need to regularly maintain print and mail equipment, it requires a dedicated space, and trained operators to run them.

For many companies, it makes more sense to let document outsourcing companies take the investment risk on equipment and staffing.

Benefit 2: Risk Management and Disaster Recovery and Continuity

Another concern when dealing with outsourcing your print and mail production is dealing with sensitive customer data. Companies in many highly regulated industries, including finance, healthcare, and insurance a disaster require a disaster recovery plan. A disaster recovery plan must be in place in the event that a print facility receives damage or a data security breach. Disaster situations include long-term power outages, flood threats, fires, or even natural disasters.

For example, FSSI, a secure printing provider, can switch operations on short notice to its remote disaster recovery facility in Dallas Texas, almost 1,500 miles away from its main facility in Santa Ana, California. The disaster recovery facility runs every day using trained operators, backup printers, mailing machines, servers, and alternative internet connections.

Having a backup solution gives FSSI’s clients the confidence to know that their critical deadlines will always be met. Lots of print outsourcing companies overlook print management. When looking at business process improvement it is one of the most important aspects you should consider. Companies should be wise to learn more about the advantages of outsourcing customer communications.

Benefit 3: Increase Efficiency Advantages: Optimized Workflows

Savvy business leaders know what their core competencies are and what tasks are best performed by a third party. Using a print and mail specialist’s advanced technology, commercial equipment, trained operators, and expert knowledge of the industry gives businesses an important competitive advantage. Additionally, using an experienced print and mail outsource company will ensure consistency, accountability, and high-quality work every time.

FSSI has a long working relationship with the USPS. This relationship and expert knowledge ensure that FSSI will organize each mailing so that its customers receive the best postage rates possible. FSSI also provides customers with a database address correction service where we update incorrect addresses with the USPS version. This service gives FSSI customers ensured delivery with 24-hour tracking and reporting that cuts the guesswork out of their mailings.

Print outsourcing and mailing services with FSSI is a sound and proven business strategy to improve business processes in several ways:

• Outsourcing helps to minimize capital investments in equipment.
• Avoid long term leases,
• Save production space
• Huge saving on postage and paper costs.

---

Speak with a Print Outsourcing Specialist Today

By outsourcing print and mail, businesses achieve stabilized cash flows, reduced risk of data breaches, effortless compliance with regulations, and improved overall workflow efficiency. FSSI acts as a one-stop-shop print solution, eliminating the need to manage multiple vendors. This translates to reduced costs and, most importantly, minimized errors. Ultimately, when companies prioritize cost reduction, risk mitigation, and efficiency improvement, everyone wins. FSSI understands the specific needs of regulated industries like banks, insurance companies, and healthcare providers, offering tailored solutions for both transactional and marketing-related documents.

For more information on the advantages of outsourcing your printing and mail, please read FSSI’s special report download, The Top 10 Reasons to Outsource Printing and Mail Production

---