Excellus BCBS Named Mail Center of the Year

• Staff can now use 6x9˝ envelopes for half-fold transactional materials of more than eight pages, increasing the number of pages that can be mailed at letter rate from eight to 16—a savings of $0.50 on each piece over the cost to mail them at flat rate.
• Collateral material such as booklets and calendars can be inserted in-line and mailed alongside transactional materials.
• Flat materials up to 0.25˝ thick can be manually inserted into 9x12˝ or 10x13˝ envelopes more easily. Staff can now switch from letter insert mode to flat insert mode in as little as 10 minutes. So the insertion of 1,500 pieces can be done in a single hour, as opposed to requiring 16 hours of manual work.
• Insertion is now much quicker, with a capacity of 50,000 sheets at 14,000 envelopes per hour, compared to the previous figure of 22,000 sheets at 7,000 envelopes per hour.

Before the installation of a Pitney Bowes EZ-Flats sorter, there was no capacity for pre-sorting flat mailing material in-house. The new equipment made it easy to pre-sort all flat transactional materials, in addition to automatically producing all the necessary USPS documentation. The new installation resulted in $44,957 savings on postal costs.

By installing a Pitney Bowes Print+ Messenger color inkjet system, names and addresses can be printed on envelopes in-line with the insertion process of the MailStream Evolution. By reading a variable data file, it can add custom messages or graphics to each envelope. Staff can now plan out, design and preview each job before commencing. The addition of an ink estimator means that staff can see how much a job is likely to cost before starting.

By adding Pitney Bowes Business Insight software, management can now review the insertion process in real time, check mail integrity and prevent missing pieces in transactional mailings.

The Document Services team also retrofitted some existing equipment, like the APS Inserter. Installing a moving beam scanner and 2D camera allow for better reading of 2x5˝ linear barcodes. Consolidating the existing three postage meters into one meter freed up floor space, saving the mail center $3,000 a year in postage meter rental costs.

These upgrades and others have allowed Document Services to handle more mail, more efficiently than ever. From faster insertions to dynamic printing to mail verification, the overhaul has given the mail center a boost, resulting in faster processes, significant reductions in manual labor and an impressive $90,000 in postage savings.