A Digital Mailroom Allowed HMRC to Consolidate Five Large Regional Post Hubs into One
Business Sector: Government
HM Revenue and Customs is a non-ministerial department of the UK Government responsible for the collection of taxes, the payment of some forms of state support, the administration of other regulatory regimes including the national minimum wage and the issuance of national insurance numbers. HMRC provides services to 41m individuals and eight million businesses, collecting more than £500bn in tax revenues a year. While providing their services, HMRC receives 70m letters a year and sends out 200m outbound items.
Challenge
In 2014, HMRC sought to become a more efficient, digital-focused organisation while also reducing costs. They were targeted to reduce operating costs by £235m a year while delivering the same performance results for phone response and mail handling. The organisation was partly hindered by its size and geographic limitations. With over 70,000 employees across 170 locations, collaboration between teams was routinely limited by office location. HMRC required support to become a more non-geographic operation and improve internal efficiencies.
Solution
Restore delivered a dedicated outsourced Digital Mailroom environment within a four-month implementation period. Starting with a proof-of-concept handling six mailboxes before gradually ramping up our support to include greatly increased capacity, return letter services, data capture forms, back-scanning, and document archiving functionality.
What made the solution unique was the requirement to not only scan mail – like a traditional digital mailroom – but extensive routing of physical mail which was entirely automated using optical recognition technology (OCR).
All the while, all digitised documentation had to adhere to BS10008 and the strictest security measures due to the nature of the work undertaken by the client.
Result
HMRC’s digital mailroom now processes over 35,000 mail items per day within SLA’s of 36 to 48 hours. In total, it handles 5-6m scanned images per month. The partnership has resulted in up to 95% automatic classification of document type, subject matter, and ID of customer. This enables ‘correct routing’ of mail to the nominated recipient within HMRC without the need of manual intervention.
Strategically, the digital mailroom has allowed HMRC to consolidate five large regional post hubs into one and has improved customer service through significantly enhanced care of valuable documents with full visibility and traceability. Working together closely for over six years, Restore are now part of HMRC’s on-going Digital Transformation strategy, supporting the governmental body in their efforts to further streamline their work.
Key Facts
- 95% Classification of document type, subject matter, and ID of customer
- 30k Mail items per day
- 5 Office locations consolidated
