The need for invoice printing and mailing services cross over many industries. These mission-critical transactional mailings are a channel to communicate and generate revenue. However, they also represent a cost that can impact your bottom line when you do it in-house.
The objective is to minimize these expenses and increase efficiency and quality. You also want to remain in compliance and ensure accuracy. So, what does an organization need to know about invoice printing and mailing to achieve these goals? Let’s talk about it.
In-Plant or Outsource?
The first consideration in the conversation is if you should operate an in-plant or outsource your invoice print and mail. In-plants are 100% under your control, but that doesn’t mean it’s efficient or cost-effective. There are many drawbacks to in-plants, made even more evident during the pandemic.
There are a variety of costs associated with in-plants that you have little power to decrease. Your volume is declining with more consumers adopting digital statements. Your equipment, labor, and space costs don’t go down. Now, you’re paying more per piece.
Your in-plant is going to let you down in other areas, as well. Without the latest and greatest technology, you’ll struggle with quality and accuracy. A deficit in these areas leads to less consumer engagement and possible compliance violations.
Outsourcing transactional invoice print and mail has the opposite effect. You can save money, improve quality, insert dynamic messaging, enhance compliance, and support business continuity.
Outsourcing Doesn’t Mean You Give Up “Control”
When you work with a professional invoice printing and mailing company, you still have controls in place. You are not out of the picture. Rather, you’re part of the ecosystem, except the operational function is no longer on your property or balance sheet.
Your partner takes over production, warehousing, technology, and security of your invoice printing and mailing. However, you’ll have the opportunity to track every piece of mail sent to your customers. Through an application, you can view status reports, process management, add new letters, and view postage costs. There’s complete transparency, so you have full visibility, but the heavy lifting is with the experts.
Invoice Printing and Mailing Represent Your Brand
Another thing to think about in invoice printing and mailing is that the letter you send represents your brand. So how it looks matters. An invoice isn’t solely utilitarian. It should reflect your company’s visual identity with colors, logos, and more.
If your invoices appear outdated or ugly, customers will have a response to this. Even it’s just subconscious; branding does impact perception. You care about your digital branding and user experience. Printed and mailed invoices should be in that same conversation.
When you have a well-designed invoice, which may not be possible without the most advanced inkjet printers, you can begin to see invoices in a new light.
Rethinking the Purpose of Invoice Printing and Mailing
While invoices are transactional mail, they have multiple purposes. The primary one is to receive payment, and a better process could lead to more on-time payments and more stable cash flow.
They are also a means of communication with your customers. You can include messaging that they need to know. That varies depending on the industry. Some examples include advising of water days for utility companies or warning about scams for financial invoices.
The third opportunity for invoices is upselling or cross-selling. We see this as common practice for telecom or cable companies. They often offer multiple services, but customers may only subscribe to one. Through data segmentation, you can put the right messaging in front of the right customers.
Are You Confident in the Accuracy of Your Invoicing?
As noted, accuracy is a pillar for invoicing. It can slip without advanced technology that ensures the right invoice goes in the right envelope. Accuracy also correlates with compliance. Because if your inserter misses something, you could find yourself in breach territory.
The best way to operationalize accuracy and compliance is with the right processes and sophisticated technology. These are non-negotiables in transactional mail.
So, how many errors are you aware of either with your in-plant or provider? What’s a good error rate? Zero would be ideal, but nothing is perfect. A “gold standard” in the industry has been 99.6%, which sounds impressive. Unfortunately, that’s still 4,000 errors in every one million invoices.
You’ll agree that’s not acceptable. What is? Our accuracy rating is 99.9999%. That’s one error for every one million pieces. If you don’t have this level of accuracy, you deserve it.
Down to the Dollars
We touched on the cost savings in the introduction, but any business deciding on invoicing understands this is a driver in decisions. Here are the costs you eliminate or reduce with outsourcing:
- Equipment (i.e., printers, inserters)
- Software to run equipment
- Labor
- Energy and utility
- Postage
- Compliance
- Space
- Materials (i.e., paper, ink, toners)
Those savings quickly add up to be very significant. When you look at the differences in costs, you’ll have money to redistribute to other areas of the business.
The Process Is Easy and Secure
A final note about invoice print and mail revolves around the process. You send your data through encrypted channels to ensure security. While the data is in transit to the machines, it continues to be handled with privacy and security in place.
Then you can customize the messaging, as notated in your data files. We make it very simple for our customers to run invoicing through us, and they appreciate how secure our facilities are and our certification in numerous compliance and regulatory areas. Our objective is to make invoice mailings easy, safe, and compliant.
Invoice Printing and Mailing: Get All the Benefits by Working with an Industry Leading Partner
How you print and mail your invoices matters for so many reasons. Your operations and processes can create opportunities or increase your spend. You’ll be able to reap all the benefits of highly technical and innovative invoice print and mail when you partner with PCI Group. Get in touch today to discuss how we can help.
