Regulations and guidelines highly regulate transactional mail. As a result, it requires a focus on compliance, accuracy, and quality. Many businesses still run these operations in-house, but outsourcing transactional mail has many benefits. In this episode of Ask the Experts, PCI Group president and owner Chris Kropac shared why organizations should consider outsourcing.
Chris shared, “If you do it in-house, labor, supply chain issues, and paper increases are a challenge. The equipment is expensive and needs to be maintained. On top of that, you have declining volumes of hard copy mail transitioning to electronic communications.”
All these things add up fast regarding costs, time, and resources. In many cases, it’s not sustainable or financially feasible to continue to operate an in-plant.
Specifically on the equipment side, Chris noted, “Many times, in-plants have aging equipment, and you want to update it. Right now, inserters are many million dollars, and printers are a million or more. Not only do you need to get new equipment, but you also have to pay maintenance on what you have.”
Material costs, specifically paper, have ballooned in the past few years. “You’ve probably experienced two or three or even four in the same years as well as the scarcity of products,” Chris relayed.
You can eliminate much of this when you outsource. “You gang your volume along with all the others the outsource provider does and have better buying power,” Chris explained.
Cost reduction is often a primary driver for outsourcing, but you can also gain security and compliance. Transactional print companies like PCI Group have this embedded in everything they do.
The last cost concern to consider is those variable ones of running a facility. “As your volume decreases in an in-plant, your cost per piece goes up. By moving work to an outsourced provider, you get a per piece rate that is consistent and bankable.”
