How-to Guides, Outsourcing, Postage and Mailing, Printing
Benefits of Outsourcing Print and Mail – Reduce Costs, Risks, Increase Efficiency
on April 21, 2017
Benefits of Outsourcing Print and Mail
There are many benefits to print outsourcing. But first of all, we need to define the term print outsourcing. Outsourcing printing is when all printing, mailing, document management, multichannel delivery, and even marketing is handled by a third-party company. Businesses in nearly every industry work hard to increase profits. They can do this in a number of ways.
In addition to increasing their customer base, most businesses focus on reducing costs, reducing risks, or increasing efficiency. One proven method for accomplishing all three is to outsource print management and mail production.
This is also referred to as Document Outsourcing. Think of outsourcing your printing as delegating these tasks to a third party who is better equipped to handle these costly and time-consuming expenditures. Not every print and mail company is the same.
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. 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
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.
Cost-Benefit: 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.
Risk Management Benefits
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.
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 outsourcing 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 savings on postage and paper costs.
Conclusion
The result of this is stabilized cash flows, reduce the risk of data breaches, satisfy compliance requirements and improved overall workflows. FSSI eliminates the need to contract with multiple outside parties to accomplish business goals because it’s a one-stop-shop print solution. Its customers gain the advantage of reduced costs and, most importantly, reduced errors. Above all, when companies find ways to reduce costs, reduce risk, and increase efficiency, everybody wins.
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
