Restore Digital partnered with Co-op Legal Services to provide a Digital Mailroom solution in order to improve overall operational efficiencies, whilst delivering enhanced customer service response times.
Sector: Legal
As one of the UK's leading multi-disciplinary legal firms with over 300 staff based across Manchester, Bristol and London, the Co-op Legal Services division is divided into six legal practice service areas incorporating; Probate, Wills, Family Law, Personal Injury, Employment and Conveyancing.
Challenge
Co-op’s existing manual processes were presenting vast in-efficiencies, consuming essential staff resources in handling high volumes of paper processing thereby ensuing difficulties as a regulated organisation required to track audit trails.
On an average day, post would arrive at 8am, require prepping, sorting and distributing; not reaching the desk of the case handler until late in the day. Physically moving paper around buildings and across sites presented enormous risks in potentially losing documents, misdirecting mail and maintaining compliance regarding the sensitivity of documents and the information they contain.
With the Probate section dominating 60% of mail received, coupled with the status of highest revenue earning business unit, faster process efficiencies were a must to improve pace and competitive edge. Processing such large volumes of incoming mail increases the difficulty in identifying critical Court documents that require immediate attention. Missing an essential trial date would result in the firm having to absorb both the billed and court costs themselves rather than the client.
In addition, not having the use of OCR (optical character recognition) eliminates the opportunity to search for words and key phrases, potentially indicating a high net value case, which could then be prioritised and immediately sent to an appropriate case handler.
The organisation required a digital processing system to enable documents to be scanned through the system quickly, progressing cases at a faster speed and delivering a more efficient customer service.
The Solution – Digital Mailroom with automated mail
Restore's professional services team worked closely with the Co-op Legal Services staff to tailor a bespoke solution, from concept through to design, development, testing, user training, deployment and go live support; we were on hand at every step of the process.The Digital Mailroom solution implemented across the Co-op's 3 key sites combined multichannel capture, automated data capture and workflow technology to automatically prioritise, sort and route inbound communications regardless of the channel. This was integrated with existing MI dash-boards to allow the tracking of process efficiencies, cost savings and performance levels.
Key benefits of the Digital Mailroom
Reduced costs; Digitising and indexing business mail no longer requires staff members to manually process documents on-site
Greater security; Mail is diverted to our secure facility, providing a guaranteed safe place for sensitive documents. After being scanned, digital files are then accessible by only authorised members of staff, who can view a clearly defined audit trail to track when documents have been accessed, as well as identifying exactly who has retrieved them
Saved space; No more physical documents also means no need to retain space for incoming mail, allowing the business to remove the current mailroom and re-utilise the area for core business activities
Faster retrieval; All digital documents are indexed by a custom series of factors, suited to the business requirements. No more frantically searching through files to find one particular piece of information, a simple electronic search can access the data needed, quickly and efficiently
"We had an inefficient process, it was not conducive with order trails or providing a service to customers. It was operationally inefficient."
The Experience
The new digital process flow enables effective automation across the business, improving the ability to pick up and trigger information whilst syncing with additional business units, cultivating the transfer and security of sensitive data. In addition, staff can identify the primary sources where post is received and approach these clients to request a digital communication transfer, thereby striving to meet the paper-less agenda set.
By reducing the headcount within the post room, this subsequently frees up essential staff resources allowing them to be redeployed elsewhere within the business. Co-op understood the benefits of adopting a Digital Mailroom and how this would improve identifying, sorting and the distribution of communication throughout the practice, not to mention gaining a paper free environment.
Key Facts
Efficiency Gains with Customer Service Improvements
Enhanced Operational Efficiencies
Paperless Environment
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