Colorado IDS Honored as Mail Center of the Year

The State of Colorado’s Integrated Document Solutions (IDS) has been selected as IPMA’s 2014 Mail Center of the Year. This award recognizes a corporate mail center for outstanding improvements in the areas of new technology, cost savings and processes. Representatives from the in-plant received their award during IPMA’s annual awards banquet in June.

“We are very honored and excited to receive this award,” notes IDS Project Manager Mike Sexson. “To be recognized by our peers and the in-plant community is truly rewarding.”

IDS offers assistance to all government entities under the State of Colorado’s umbrella.

“We play a major role as a key strategic partner to our customers in local municipalities, counties and state agencies, bringing outside-the-box thinking to solutions that benefit both our customers and the citizens of Colorado,” says Sexson.

With the United States Postal Service on the verge of mandating bulk mailers’ use of the Full-Service Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb) to continue to get discounted automation postal rates, the IDS Operations team took the lead in a statewide project and found a way to not only prepare for the IMb change, but created a process resulting in government agencies working together to leverage and better utilize each other’s resources. The result is a revamped State of Colorado Motor Vehicle License Plate Renewal (MVR) program that is a great example of how in-plant mailing facilities can help government entities work with each other as mutual resources and partners to achieve a common goal. They managed to get Colorado’s state agencies and counties to step out of their comfort zones using their outside-the-box-thinking approach to keep pace with ever changing technology.

Previously, the Colorado Department of Revenue managed the license plate renewal program, and worked with the state’s 64 counties to decide which renewal cards needed to be printed and mailed each month. The department would send each county a PDF with all of the barcodes along with necessary USPS paperwork. The counties would be responsible for printing, separating, sorting, traying and delivering their cards to the post office.

With the new regulations for the discount, counties would have to register separate mailer IDs, submit their paperwork electronically and incur various training, software and equipment costs.

So the IDS team worked with the Department of Revenue and 59 of the 64 counties to ensure license plate renewal cards would be processed as full-service IMb mail. Counties would standardize the card format and procedures, utilize IDS to print and mail the cards, and share cost savings with all other counties.

IDS developed an address quality program incorporating NCOA, DPV, CASS, Lacslink and Suitelink tools.

“This is a key piece of innovation,” notes Sexson. “It creates a clean, accurate mail file eliminating sending of undeliverable or unnecessary pieces.”

As a result of this new format, all counties pay the same cost for printing and mail processing and receive the same presort discount. Counties no longer have full-time employee hours dedicated to processing renewal cards. The counties as a group have saved more than $91,000 in six months.

“The Colorado Motor Vehicle License Renewal program was developed as a cooperative effort of front-line government workers from Colorado’s counties, the Department of Revenue and IDS, not because they had to do this, but because they wanted to do it," notes Sexson. "This was ‘outside-the-box thinking’ in government—the new norm.”