Disasters happen every day, and they have the potential to derail production and operations. If you face downtime due to inclement weather, a cyber attack, or any other disruption, you must activate your business continuity plan. What it might not contain is how to print and mail regulated customer communications. You can address this with disaster recovery print services.

What Are Disaster Recovery Print Services?

Disaster recovery print services describe business continuity solutions to ensure transactional communications continue to be produced. You’ll contract with a company to assume your processes should you be unable to do so.

There are multiple structures for these offerings. Understanding the limitations and scope helps you make the best decisions.

How Do Disaster Recovery Print Solutions Strengthen Business Continuity?

The objective of business continuity is to keep it running, despite disasters, disruptions, or downtime. Companies have to look across all their operations and define policies for each to achieve continuity.

They may look to many organizations for support with this. Finding specialized services like disaster recovery printing can be cumbersome. Also, most vendors in the space don’t look at this with a modern lens.

They still cling to obsolete models with “cold” backups. In these situations, you’re simply renting capacity from a vendor who isn’t familiar with your work. If this is your only option, you may have a huge gap in continuity for these tasks.

That’s been the standard for decades, but a new option is emerging that’s more comprehensive. In this framework, your provider isn’t your backup. They know your jobs because they produce a fraction of them regularly. You request they take over, and it’s nearly immediate and available 24-7.

What Are the Different Types of Disaster Recovery Print Services?

You can group these into two main categories: traditional and comprehensive. Here’s how they differ:

• Annual fees: Traditional requires them; comprehensive does not.
• Subscription costs: Traditional charges them; comprehensive does not.
• What’s covered: Traditional is only there in disaster scenarios. Comprehensive usually provides coverage for planned and unplanned downtime. It may also be a supplement when there are peak demands or labor shortages.
• Rates: Traditional disaster recovery approaches include costs for production, materials, click fees, and other expenses. The more modern option has competitive rates that are inclusive.
• Manufacturing environments: Most traditional providers have more than one facility, but they usually are not redundant and may not have consistency across operations. The comprehensive package has true redundancy and uniformity.

What’s the Difference Between Cold Sites and Working with a Provider Regularly?

In many disaster recovery offerings, your work goes to a cold site. It’s “cold” because there’s no instant handoff. The print and mail company doesn’t have a structure in place to understand your workflows and requirements.

Since they are starting from scratch, there can be delays as well as concerns about compliance, accuracy, and quality. Errors may increase, or you could fall behind on meeting dates.

The alternative is to allow your disaster recovery services partner to produce a portion of your communications monthly. That work can rotate across all the different letters you send, so they have knowledge around each one. They then know your processes and preferences. Should a disaster occur, they can immediately begin production.

These two frameworks present different outcomes. With cold sites, you face considerable risks. Whereas printers that know your business and needs can take over without missing a beat.

ACTIV dR: Comprehensive Disaster Recovery Print

PCI Group created ACTIV dR to rewrite disaster recovery print services. All the attributes described in the comparison earlier represent ACTIV dR solutions. When working with us, you’re protected from any disasters and can transition production to us immediately.

Want to learn more? Request a consultation with our team.

Transactional communications tie directly to regulatory requirements. Because they contain personally identifiable information (PII) and/or protected health information (PHI), they have special rules. However, experienced providers deliver print-to-mail solutions that satisfy compliance and offer many advantages.

What Are Print-to-Mail Solutions for Transactional Communications?

First, let’s define transactional communications. They contain PHI, PII, or other sensitive information. This means they are subject to compliance, security, and accuracy protocols. It’s a unique subset of customer communications that requires robust processes and policies.

Print to mail solutions for transactional describes outsourcing printing and mailing of them. You simply send the data securely to your provider, and they handle everything else.

What Types of Transactional Communications Can You Outsource?

The capabilities of transactional print and mail companies are broad. There’s really nothing you can’t choose to outsource, regardless of regulations or industry. Common communications include:

• Statements, invoices, and billing documents
• Anything related to insurance policies
• Explanations of benefits or coverage
• Collection letters
• Approvals and denials of claims
• Regulatory or privacy mailings
• Checks
• Tax forms

If the content includes sensitive data going to a customer, you can employ a provider to produce and distribute it.

What Do Print-to-Mail Solutions Include?

The services that transactional print and companies offer can vary. In most cases, they include:

• Receiving data from you via a secure file processing system
• Generating the letters and providing a sample for review
• Data scrubbing to remove duplicate and bad addresses
• Composition for printing
• High-volume inkjet printing
• Mail preparation
• Presorting jobs for the best postage rates
• Tracking of communications throughout the mail stream
• Special mailing services (e.g., USPS Certified Mail)
• Access to reporting and analytics

Each of these is vital to compliance, accuracy, and security. If there are limitations by a provider, you may not receive what you expect. That’s why you should evaluate providers and ask lots of questions about their capabilities and protocols.

What Are the Most Important Questions When Reviewing Print-to-Mail Providers?

When you compare providers, you’ll uncover a lot about how they work and what they offer by asking these questions.

• What compliance certifications do they hold?
• How do they integrate compliance into workflows?
• What data security policies and provisions do they have in place?
• Do they have true redundancy for operations?
• What cybersecurity best practices do they follow?
• How do they measure and improve accuracy?
• Do they audit processes regularly?
• What practices do they follow to insure quality?
• What frameworks or strategies do they use to produce transactional communications?
• How do they optimize postage rates?
• Do they have experience with helping companies transition to outsourcing?
• Can they share a plan for migration?

Are Print-to-Mail Solutions Right for You?

For organizations struggling with rising costs as well as security and compliance complexity, outsourcing addresses these. You’ll no longer have capital expenses; only operational ones. You can see a dramatic decrease in these expenditures.

Since companies like PCI Group only operate in the transactional space, they have all the expertise for ensuring compliance and security.

Get started by having a conversation with our team.

Healthcare communications have unique attributes, making them subject to compliance regulations. Most of this deals with how to handle protected health information (PHI) to ensure its security and confidentiality.

Scaling compliance across many types of communications can be challenging. Healthcare organizations struggle to maintain rigorous controls because it’s not a core competency.

Compliance is never a simple process. There are nuances to laws, and they can change rapidly. You can be more in control of all this if you outsource print and mail to a specialized partner.

What Is Healthcare Communications Compliance?

Healthcare communications compliance involves all the processes and practices around securing PHI and confidential information. The objectives of compliance are to:

• Protect patient privacy.
• Comply with regulations.
• Prevent fraud.
• Avoid fines.
• Reduce the chance of mis-mailings, which could expose PHI.

The provisions set forth in HIPAA and other regulations provide the framework. Executing on it can be complicated.

That’s why so many healthcare organizations choose to partner with those who specialize in secure print and mail services for healthcare communications.

How Transactional Print and Mail Companies Improve Healthcare Communications Compliance

You may have gaps, inefficiencies, and a lack of clarity around how you’re applying compliance across communications. Consistency and vigilance are key, and what you can expect from an experienced partner.

Compliance Change Monitoring

Transactional printers typically have compliance officers and dedicated staff to track compliance changes. They also prepare for them, focusing on what needs adjustment in workflows. You don’t need to worry about it because they have you covered.

Consistency in Compliance

You likely send lots of healthcare communications with regulatory obligations. However, each job may not have consistency as a pillar. That happens often with manual processes, older equipment and undocumented guidelines.

With a professional print and mail company, every workflow has consistency in terms of compliance checks. They leverage technology and frameworks like Lean Manufacturing to ensure this.

Accuracy Enhancements

Mis-mailings can leave you subject to noncompliance and reputational harm. While accuracy is unlikely to be 100%, there are ways to boost it. Key to this is intelligent insertion. This process uses technology and processes to support greater accuracy.

Intelligent insertion involves the printing of 2D barcodes on each page. Cameras scan that barcode, which tells the inserter which pieces to fold into the envelope. An additional camera takes an image for validation.

With this structure, we’ve been able to achieve a 99.9999% accuracy rating!

Robust Security

Compliance and security weave together. One without the other is ineffective. A significant part of compliance is ensuring the security of data, no matter where it lives or goes. Encryption is a requirement for data at rest and in motion.

When evaluating potential partners, you want to understand how they apply the security protocols. In addition to encryption, they should also:

• Have true redundancy for data and applications.
• Employ firewalls and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS).
• Conduct vulnerability scanning and penetration testing.
• Provide business continuity and disaster recovery plans.
• Leverage other cybersecurity best practices like user-level permissions, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and network segmentation.

A healthy data security program does more than meet compliance. It exceeds expectations and is adaptable.

Improve Healthcare Communications Compliance with PCI Group

With certifications in HIPAA and HITRUST, combined with our decades of experience, PCI Group is a leader in the industry. We work with all types of healthcare companies to simplify their processes, streamline production, and remain compliance-ready.

Learn how we can help by requesting a consultation today.

Consumer finance communications have unique attributes. Confidential and sensitive information is usually part of the document, which means they fall into the transactional category.

As a result, there are compliance considerations for every letter, and the processes involved can get complicated and expensive. Your organization can resolve these issues by choosing to outsource these jobs. It yields many benefits that directly impact your workflows.

Common Workflow Issues in Consumer Finance Communications

For those companies that still print and mail their own communications, workflow can be cumbersome. Since this isn’t your core competency, you may have gaps in your processes that end up costing you time and money.

Some of the most widespread challenges in production include:

• High volume of undeliverable mail
• Pre-printed templates, which slow down the job
• Error rates in mis-mailings, which can trigger noncompliance claims
• Inability to customize communications
• Lack of automation capabilities
• High postage costs
• Unaudited processes

Any and all of these can create obstacles to seamless operations. By outsourcing, you can address them all.

Improving Workflows with a Transactional Print and Mail Company

Transitioning to a print and mail company has the potential to ensure challenges don’t persist. Here’s how their approach solves your workflow problems.

Reduction in Undeliverable Mail

A key step in the transactional print and mail process is address hygiene. This type of data scrubbing is common for vendors to use, but less so for individual companies. These tools access USPS address changes to make corrections. It also removes duplicates, validates every address, and standardizes formats.

The application of these tools reduces the amount of undeliverable mail. The benefits include lower postage rates, compliance support, and greater accuracy.

No Templates Required

Another workflow hiccup is pre-printing templates for specific communications. It’s inefficient and costly to do this. It’s not necessary with dynamic printing and the White Paper Factory (WPF).

The WFP framework involves feeding large rolls of white paper into commercial inkjet printers. Every page from that job prints at the same time. Dynamic printing enables the customization of all content in the communication. This automated process saves time and decreases costs.

Accuracy Boosts

One mis-mailing can trigger noncompliance violations and impact customer trust. Workflows must have checks and balances for this, but they may be less robust than those used by professional printers.

The most effective way to avoid mis-mailings is with intelligent insertion. Intelligent insertion uses 2D barcodes printed on every page. A camera scans them and tells the inserter which pieces go into each envelope. Another camera records this for validation.

PCI Group leverages this workflow to achieve an industry-leading 99.9999% accuracy rating.

Adopting Automation

By integrating automation, the entire process is more efficient. Every aspect of it starts with creating defined and repeatable workflows.

Automation involves technology replacing manual work. It starts with file processing. Dynamic printing, address hygiene, and intelligent insertion are also areas for automation.

With automation throughout the workflow, you’ll benefit from reduced costs, enhanced accuracy, and improved quality.

Better Postage Rates

One considerable part of expenses in finance communications is postage. To achieve the best rates, you need both volume and process optimization. It’s difficult to achieve this if you’re not a commercial printer.

They employ things like presorting and commingling to secure the best price using the USPS Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMb). You’ll also see reductions with data scrubbing for bad addresses. Letter standardization is another tactic, supporting consolidation to #10 envelopes weighing less than 3.5 ounces.

Unaudited Processes

How often do you audit your print and mail workflows? If you’re not doing this consistently or at all, you won’t have clarity around bottlenecks. A lack of visibility into processes allows errors and issues to persist.

By applying Lean Manufacturing concepts, professional transactional print and mail companies are always iterating and improving. This strategy involves constant auditing of standard works, which break down every process into tasks and steps. Reviewing these often ensures issue correction immediately.

Ready to Outsource Your Finance Communications?

The reasons make the case for outsourcing. You’ll realize so many benefits and be confident that all your communications are compliant and accurate. Explore how it works by requesting a no-cost consultation with our experts.

Looking for ways to cut costs without impacting compliance-related workflows? If you’re still printing and mailing auto finance communications, it’s time to rethink this model. Since these tasks aren’t your core competency, you may be facing financial and regulatory pressure to optimize and revise.

If you are still on the fence about why transitioning to outsourcing is the best choice, check out these six reasons.

1. Reduce Costs

Outsourcing is a cost saver, and operations to print and mail are expensive. When you outsource, you can immediately remove these items from your budget:

• Equipment
• Technology
• Materials: paper, ink, toner, etc.
• Overhead: leasing and utility expenses
• Labor

What you pay for these things with a professional printer is much lower. They have special deals with suppliers of materials. Additionally, they spread the costs for equipment, technology, overhead, and labor across many clients.

Further, they have perfected the process of mailings by:

• Applying address hygiene tools to decrease waste from inaccurate or duplicate addresses
• Leveraging high-volume presorting through the USPS Intelligent Mail® barcode (IMb) to secure the best postal rates
• Standardizing mail pieces

2. Enhance Data Security

Auto finance communications contain protected and confidential information. A breach would trigger non-compliance claims and upset customers. Thus, you need to assess providers on this criterion.

Security starts at submission. A secure portal allows you to upload data. It then travels to a secure, private cloud. Data encryption is always present, whether at rest or in motion.

Other security principles to evaluate include:

• How they secure perimeters with firewalls, network segmentation, or intrusion prevention systems
• What proactive measures they conduct, such as vulnerability scanning and penetration testing
• If they have user-level permissions and identity access management (IAM)

3. Be Compliant Ready Always

Compliance requirements related to auto finance communications aren’t optional. You must follow the rules of the applicable regulations. Working with a transactional print and mail company, compliance will always be top of mind.

Compliance should be part of every workflow and not an afterthought. To do this well, providers audit every step of every task. This is to identify any errors and correct them immediately.

You’ll also have access to documents that you may need for audits by regulatory bodies. For example, a camera records the folding of pages into each envelope. This is part of the accuracy component. With this verification, you can easily prove delivery is correct for each customer.

4. Send Dynamic Messages

You’ll also no longer need to print inserts or templates. Dynamic printing enables custom messaging on each document. It’s not just the billing part of the statement that’s individualized; so are the offers.

You can use dynamic printing to upsell or cross-sell, announce programs, bring attention to changes, or anything else. This simple change can increase customer engagement.

5. Minimize Risk of Operational Disruptions

What happens when you have an issue that impacts production? Downtime can be the result of natural disasters, cyber attacks, or equipment in need of maintenance. Getting your communications out must be timely to be compliant and not affect remittance.

When you work with a professional print and mail company, they plan for this. They have redundancy built in so that downtime is extremely rare. With a detailed business continuity plan, these organizations have checks and balances to ensure no disruptions.

6. Gain Greater Transparency

How much do you know about current print and mail operations? Are metrics, costs, and compliance materials easy to find? If not, it can be a real challenge.

You should have full visibility and quick access to important information. PCI Group delivers this through trakPCI.

trakPCI is s secure business document management platform. You can monitor the status of jobs and mailed letters, from production to delivery.

You can also track, schedule, and control all of your production jobs. It also has features to view account information, get real-time status updates, request letter changes, search archives, and run hundreds of reports.

Outsource Auto Finance Communications with PCI Group

If you want to reduce costs while improving accuracy, compliance, security, and quality, you should work with us. We’re experts in the industry and solely dedicated to transactional print and mail. Request your consultation today.

Financial institutions print and mail tens of millions of banking statements every month. These confidential and regulated customer communications must meet compliance requirements to protect data. Those mailings must be accurate, as well. With bank statement printing, you can achieve both while reducing costs.

What Is Bank Statement Printing?

In this context, bank statement printing refers to using a third-party print and mail company to produce those documents. You supply the data files, and the provider takes care of all the logistics with a focus on compliance, security, accuracy, and quality.

What Type of Statements Can You Outsource?

Whether a checking, savings, or other financial account, you can transition from in-house printing to working with a provider.

You simply batch up the content for each recipient, and transactional print and mail companies have defined workflows. One framework used is the White Paper Factory. Operators feed rolls of white paper into commercial printers. Each statement prints uniquely based on the data in the files. Every area of the document is customizable, creating less waste and no need for inserts.

Does Third-Party Statement Printing Ensure Compliance?

Not every print and mail business has the same compliance ecosystem. Some may mix their jobs—transactional and promotional. That can be a risk factor. However, there are companies dedicated to compliance-regulated communications.

In evaluating compliance, be sure they have certification in FISMA, SOC I & II, and PCI DSS. Additionally, the organization should have a Compliance Officer and staff who keep up with changing regulations.

Find out how they fine-tune their operations around compliance for financial print and mail services. Lean Manufacturing is a mechanism for this. With this approach, companies create standard works, which document every step in processes. Every location and operator abides by these for consistency.

You can also track a job from submission to delivery to the recipient. The entire workflow is transparent, delivering all the information you need to document compliance.

What’s the Likelihood of Mis-Mailings in Banking Statement Printing?

It’s impossible to achieve 100% accuracy, but there are ways to get close. Mis-mailings can lead to non-compliance claims and reputational harm. To ensure the fewest possible, intelligent insertion has become a necessity.

Intelligent insertion involves printing 2D barcodes on every statement page. A camera scans these, informing the inserter which pages to fold into each envelope. A separate camera records this for verification.

With this system, PCI Group has achieved an industry-leading accuracy rating of 99.9999%!

What Data Security Safeguards Are in Place?

Submitting data to a vendor that includes protected information requires strict security protocols. The most secure option is via SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol).

Once you upload the data through a secure portal, the files move to a secure, private cloud. Encryption is in place at transit and at rest to satisfy regulatory rules.

In addition to this, savvy print and mail companies have layers of security practices, including:

• Endpoint security
• True redundancy of all data and applications
• Firewalls
• Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS)
• User-level policies
• Vulnerability scanning
• Penetration testing
• Business continuity and disaster recovery plans

How Does Bank Statement Printing Reduce Costs?

Printing and mailing statements is expensive. You have capital expenditures and operating expenses. Outsourcing allows you to decrease your monthly costs significantly. You won’t need to purchase paper, ink, toner, technology, or equipment.

You can also eliminate all overhead and labor costs. Finally, you’ll see a better rate for postage since professional mail houses presort, commingle, and optimize to secure the lowest costs for First Class letters.

Banking Statement Printing with PCI Group

It’s a great time to cut costs while also enhancing accuracy and compliance. You can do that by working with us. We have decades of experience working with financial institutions. Let’s talk about it. Schedule a no-cost consultation today.

Can you lower mailing costs for your business? With postage increasing at least twice yearly, it seems like an impossible quest. However, with volume and postage optimization strategies, you can see them go down when you outsource.

Postage Keeps Going Up

The USPS typically increases rates twice annually. These changes don’t always impact every type of mailing, but First-Class letters have seen rates rise consistently. Currently, USPS is also charging a fuel surcharge.

What you are unlikely to see is a rate decrease. As the USPS modernizes, it does provide those with large quantities some significant breaks. You’re unlikely to qualify unless you outsource your transactional communications.

When you do, you can see some serious savings.

How Transactional Mail Companies Get the Best Rates

It’s not just the actual postage rates that can deliver savings. There’s much more to postage optimization.

Reducing Undeliverable Letters

You can lower your mailing costs by decreasing the number of undeliverable mail. This can be a source of waste, but professionals have tools to validate with scrubbing tools.

Such a solution combines proprietary technology and the Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMb). Data from the National Change of Address (NCOA) and Address Element Correction (AEC) also identify any incorrect addresses.

Addresses go through an assessment to find anything that’s incomplete or inaccurate. If scanning pulls up a new address for the recipient, it updates. Your savings could be substantial.

Letter Standardization

Do you currently have multiple envelope sizes? If so, that’s contributing to your costs. Ideally, you want every letter to be a #10 envelope. Also, paper weight matters. Automation systems require 3.5 ounces or less in weight.

Transactional printers have all this figured out for you and can help you transition.

Removing Inserts

With dynamic printing capabilities, you don’t need inserts stuffed into your envelopes. Every statement or document is customizable with messaging, typically reserved for inserts. If you can eliminate them, you don’t have to worry about going over 3.5 ounces.

Presorting and Commingling

Presorting and commingling are the undisputed champions of lowering mailing costs. Presort mail works with IMb scanning that segments letters by ZIP code. You can use presort for First Class and standard mail. Presorting happens before delivery to the post office.

Commingling categorizes letters by ZIP code using the IMb for automation, as well. It occurs after delivery. It’s even more precise than presorting.

Encouraging Customers to Go Digital

Lastly, you can create savings for letters that you never mail. You likely have electronic delivery as an option. Many prefer this, but others still want the hard copy. You can’t persuade everyone to go digital, but you could consider incentives.

However, you can’t send transactional communications through a standard email system. You need a platform with compliance and security.

Some key features of an e-delivery solution include:

• Sender certification, which identifies and resolves deliverability issues
• List validation, which corrects bad emails to prevent bounces
• Email authentication, which tracks the health of your e-delivery program
• Built-in compliance requirements
• Physical mail triggers if the system is unable to deliver the email

Lower Your Mailing Costs with PCI Group

We’re postage experts and also provide a secure, compliant email system for sending transactional communications. You can see improvements in deliverability for paper and digital statements.

Find out how by requesting a consultation today.

If your company still sends a large volume of invoices via mail, you likely know this is an operational challenge. It’s also getting more expensive. Ensuring these arrive to your customers securely and on time is imperative. If you’re tired of this model, you should consider invoice mailing services.

What Are Invoice Mailing Services?

Invoice mailing services describe using a third-party provider to print and deliver these documents. They take care of the entire process from data intake through tracking. It means you only need to prepare the invoices, and let professionals take care of the rest.

Evaluating Invoice Mailing Services

If you choose to outsource, you can reap many benefits, including cutting costs and improving accuracy. However, not every provider is the same, so here’s what you need to know before you select one.

Seek Out a Company Focused on Transactional Communications

Any commercial printer could print and mail letters for you, but you have to consider that invoices are in a special category. They are transactional mailings because they include PII (personally identifiable information), PHI (protected health information), or other sensitive information.

As a result, you have compliance obligations. Working with companies that don’t specialize in this could expose you to risk. They may lack processes, checks and balances that are critical.

Ask Questions About Their Compliance Programs

First and foremost, the provider should have a compliance program. This is more than complying with regulations. It should be a robust strategy to ensure there are no compliance gaps. Additionally, they should be able to adapt when changes to regulations occur.

The things that make a compliance program effective include:

• Dedicated staff, including a compliance officer
• Regular compliance auditing
• A compliance-focused culture

Compliance goes hand in hand with security.

Investigate Their Security Protocols

Data security isn’t optional in transactional print and mail. When you send a provider your data, you must be certain that it has secure processing. Additionally, they should have policies in place that account for data encryption while at rest and in motion.

They should also be agile in their cybersecurity defenses, using firewalls, Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), and network segmentation.

If they use a cloud to store data, what kind is it? Public or private? A private cloud delivers the greatest security.

Developing an offensive security posture also matters, so inquire about vulnerability scanning and penetration testing, too.

Identify How They Manage Accuracy

To be compliant, you must be accurate. Mis-mailings can trigger noncompliance complaints and cause reputational harm. So, how do you avoid this as much as possible?

It’s about the processes and technology. With intelligent insertion, accuracy strengthens. Here’s how it works:

• Each piece of paper has a 2D barcode.
• A camera scans that barcode.
• The information from the barcode flows to the inserter.
• The inserter folds the specific pages into the envelope.
• A second camera captures this for verification.

It seems simple, but it’s very sophisticated. Using intelligent insertion results in high accuracy rates. Our is 99.9999%!

Continuous review of the operations is also crucial for maintaining accuracy.

Understand Their Quality Approach

We’ve talked a lot about workflows and auditing them, and that’s fundamental to quality assurance (QA). A framework for this is Lean Manufacturing, specifically standard works. These are detailed documents of all the tasks that exist within a process. There’s an ongoing process of auditing to find anomalies and correct them.

Lean Manufacturing and QA are much better options than quality control (QC). QC only looks at post-production units to inspect, which doesn’t lead to correction.

Discuss Transitioning

If you are currently producing and mailing invoices in-house, you’ll need to transition to outsourcing. This can be an immense thing to undertake without the right support. Ideally, you’ll find a partner that is a migration expert and has a proven implementation and onboarding process.

Ask about this during consultations to understand what resources and plans they have. The process could be slow and painful if the vendor doesn’t have the experience.

Invoice Mailing Services with PCI Group

We’re a leader in transactional print and mail, including invoicing. We only produce these types of communications and have invested in people, processes, and technology. If you’re ready to shift invoice delivery, let’s talk. Contact us today for a no-cost consultation.

Cutting costs can seem impossible in an area where efficiency and economies of scale are out of reach. Companies producing their own statements have seen expenses rise considerably with no real strategy to manage them. As a result, organizations are turning to bill printing services.

What Are Bill Printing Services?

Bill printing services describes outsourcing the printing and mailing of these critical communications. Since PII (personally identifiable information) and PHI (protected health information) are typically present in these, there are rules and regulations associated with how to handle this sensitive data.

With these requirements, the costs associated with these operations are much higher than promotional or marketing content.

Why Bill Printing Services Reduces Costs

There are many categories of expenses for print and mail workflows. They include hard and soft costs, and they are rising. Let’s look at how you can actually lower your expenditures.

Physical Materials, More Expensive Than Ever

Commercial printing requires paper, ink, toner, and other physical materials. If you could purchase those at a high volume, you’d get a better price. It’s unlikely you can realize these advantages because your quantities are still too low.

Paper, specifically, has had volatile pricing for years. It began during the pandemic when there was less output. This picked up, but tariffs played a part in their increased cost last year. Transactional print and mail companies are able to purchase in bulk and have special contracts with manufacturers to ensure they have what they need at the best possible rate.

Ink and toner costs can fluctuate, as well. Again, volume purchases help keep these costs down.

Another component of this is eliminating waste. The White Paper Factory enables this by feeding large rolls of white paper into commercial inkjet printers. There’s no need for pre-printing and the waste associated with it.

Investing in Specialized Equipment and Technology

In a transactional setting, there is specific equipment and technology that make the system work and ensure accuracy and compliance. It’s more than just commercial printers; one of the most critical pieces is the insertion machines.

Transactional communications have the lowest rates of mis-mailing when using intelligent insertion. In this framework, each piece of paper has a 2D barcode scanned by a camera. The information from the scan feeds into the inserter so it knows which pages to fold into each envelope.

Investing in this creates capital expenses for you. They also need maintenance and upgrades. You won’t need any of these with bill printing services.

Skilled Labor: High Expense Category

To operate equipment and ensure compliance and accuracy, you need dedicated employees. They have specific skills and experience. As wages rise, this category becomes more expensive.

Outsourcing removes the need for this. Those employees can then work within your business on tasks that generate revenue and growth.

Postage: Always Rising

The cost of postage increases at least twice yearly. Sometimes, there are additional fees like fuel surcharges. The way to get the best rate is with high-volume presorting and commingling. You may not have the capacity to do this or have the necessary quantity.

Transactional communications companies are experts at this. They apply the USPS Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMb) for automation, perform address hygiene to remove duplicates and correct information, and involve other optimizations.

Overhead Adds Up

How much do you pay for utilities, rent, infrastructure, property taxes, and security? It’s likely significant and not decreasing. It can be hard to budget for this, as not all costs are predictable. You also never know when you’ll need to replace your HVAC or fix roof damage from a storm.

It’s another expense category that you can remove entirely. You can either repurpose the spaces or let them go.

Compliance, Legal, IT, and Administrative Costs

While these functions serve your entire company, they are necessary for print and mail. That’s especially true for compliance oversight. These roles will still be part of your organization, but they’ll have much less work in terms of bill printing.

Many outsourcing providers provide access to these roles to secure platforms where they can:

• Review jobs.
• Run reports.
• Store copies of sensitive information.
• Track mailings.
• View costs.

Information is all in one spot, so it’s easy to access.

Ready to Reduce Your Print and Mail Costs?

Bill printing services offer a way to outsource these activities securely and compliantly. PCI Group focuses solely on this type of print and mail, ensuring competitive rates without compromise.

Let’s talk about transforming your operations. Contact us for a consultation.

Cloud computing has become a critical component of any modern business. On-premises servers have mostly disappeared. The cloud offers security, lower costs, scalability, and more. However, data in cloud repositories is subject to the same regulatory rules as any other environment.

When transactional communication companies adopt cloud computing, there are additional nuances to consider. Let’s review what you need to know about this framework.

What Is Cloud Computing?

In the context of transactional print and mail, cloud computing offers the infrastructure to receive, process, and use data. Much of this is sensitive, falling into categories of personally identifiable information (PII) or protected health information (PHI).

Regulations guide the security of this data, requiring encryption and other protections to ensure privacy and to avoid data breaches.

The Role of the Cloud in Transactional Print and Mail

There are several ways that the cloud is an integral part of the entire lifecycle of a production run.

• Data transmission: Before any job begins, it starts with a data upload to the printer. In most cases, this is via Secure File Transmission Protocol (SFTP) to ensure secure file processing. Once transmitted, the data moves through the provider’s system and remains encrypted while in transit or at rest.
• Third-party applications: Software applications must reside somewhere for use in production. Hosting them in the cloud ensures they are always up to date without any effort for the end user.
• Proprietary platforms: Transactional professionals often have a web-based system for their customers. These document management solutions provide real-time and historical information. They also have reporting functions. These live in the cloud, too.

Modern production involves high volumes of data, multiple applications, and internal platforms. To scale and preserve operations, the cloud is really the only option. But not every cloud is the same.

Public vs. Private Clouds

There are different categories of clouds, and that impacts security and privacy to some degree. In public cloud computing, third parties manage these and users “share” them. Public clouds are secure, and there’s no commingling of data, but there are limitations.

Organizations own private clouds and offer more customization regarding security and tighter controls. The cloud is only accessible by the users within that company or their customers. A private cloud also tends to be more consistent and reliable since a single group manages it.

In the realm of transactional print and mail, a private cloud is preferable. Hosting applications and storing data within them ensures more stringent compliance standards.

Private clouds do require considerably more investment than public ones, but the benefits outweigh the expense.

How PCI Group Uses the Cloud

With the opening of our new facility last year, we also launched our own secure and private cloud for data and applications. It connects to our second location, as well. We custom-built the cloud to align with all regulatory requirements and those of our customers. This allowed us to achieve true redundancy as well, as jobs can easily move if necessary.

Security and compliance affect everything we do, so we needed an infrastructure to support this. That’s our commitment to every customer.

Learn more about our technology and operations by requesting a consultation.