Customers of print and mail service providers are asking their vendors for information about how they protect their communications from accidental addressing mistakes, inserting problems, and distribution errors. Accountability and document integrity are on their minds as customers consider their investments in printed communications.
Judging by reports from DDS customers, document production control has moved from something that was "nice to have" to a baseline requirement.
Companies that fail to recognize this shift may get passed over in favor of competitors who have implemented modern document integrity safeguards.
Document Integrity for All Applications
At one time, the only companies that installed document tracking and verification systems like Document Data Solutions’
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were those that processed complex transactional documents like bank statements. Not anymore. Today, mailers are taking advantage of accessible data, sophisticated composition software, and digital printing technologies to create highly personalized and targeted communications in a variety of applications-including direct mail marketing. Businesses want to make sure their vendors accurately print, insert, and mail all their documents.
Document print and mail operations are exposed to plenty of opportunities for mistakes when creating and distributing personalized documents. Some errors are catchable with manual quality control methods, but techniques such as batch balancing or spot checks are no longer adequate. As communications become more personalized and segmented, errant documents can easily slip through. Document integrity consequences range from reduced response rates to fines or lawsuits.
Machine-mounted validation equipment and specialized software can protect a print and mail service provider from making mistakes such as:
- Double-stuffing documents into envelopes
- Mis-matching envelope contents
- Processing a batch twice
- Skipping a batch
- Failing to notice missing pages in multi-page documents
- Generating unreadable postal addresses or barcodes
No one wants to explain errors like these to their customers. But inability to demonstrate methods to keep those kinds of events from occurring could prevent print and mail vendors from having a chance of doing the work in the first place. Most companies we work with are doing all they can to retain the customers they already have. You may never recover work lost to a competitor that has upgraded their document tracking and integrity processes. This loss is unnecessary when affordable document integrity solutions are available for almost any shop.
Protect Your Business
Considering the trends towards greater document personalization, multi-channel communications, and privacy concerns we are advising document operations centers to evaluate their exposure to document integrity errors. If manual quality assurance is still your standard operating procedure, consider the impact sub-standard document integrity protocols can have on your business.
Insufficient automated controls expose your operation to unnecessary risk. Call DDS to discuss how to protect your customer base from defecting to your competitors.
