Companies that thrive and grow revenue have something in common—they focus on their core business capabilities. When they do this, they find that letting other experts support other parts of their operation only makes sense. One of those categories is transactional print and mail, and in this post, we’re going to talk specifically about outsourcing invoice printing.
Lots of different types of companies must create and mail out invoices to customers every month. It’s a labor-intensive process that’s becoming more expensive. Additionally, compliance requirements are in place for these communications, making it an even more complex process.
So, why should you outsource invoice printing?
What Are the Indicators It’s Time to Outsource Invoice Printing?
Several things can drive your exploration of outsourcing. Usually, at the top of this list is cost. With the rising costs of paper, postage, materials, equipment, and technology, your budget line for this keeps growing. Even if volume decreases because more people adopt e-invoicing, your costs won’t likely decrease.
How Outsourcing Saves You Money on Invoice Printing
When you shift this work to a transactional print and mail company, the first financial outcome is that this work no longer includes capital expenses. It’s now just operating, as you don’t have to maintain the infrastructure of printers, inserters, and other equipment. The overhead disappears, as you’ll no longer need a space to house everything or pay for energy and utility expenses.
Working with a company specializing in this and produce high daily volumes also ensures they get the best pricing on paper and ink. They also use postage optimization strategies, including:
- Reducing waste from inaccurate or duplicate addresses through address hygiene tools
- High-volume presorting
- Usage of the USPS Intelligent Mail® barcode (IMb), which is a 65-bar Postal Service™ barcode used to sort and track letters
- Commingling, which further categorizes letters by ZIP codes
- Mail piece standardization options
These savings add up and enable you to reinvest them in other parts of your business.
Another key reason to outsource is the improvements in quality.
How Outsourcing Enhances Quality
There are a few different areas of quality in reference to invoice print and mail. First is the appearance of the invoices. Professional printers use advanced inkjet printers to ensure every document looks its best with full color available. You can add even more quality to invoices by redesigning them into a modern template that uses blocks to call out important information, and you can also add dynamic graphs or images personalized to that customer.
Quality also means having a repeatable, standardized process for production. Practicing Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma are best practices for transactional printers. They focus on quality assurance. This means that quality is baked into each task, which minimizes errors. Lean Manufacturing uses standard works to standardize and remove waste from processes so that quality is always in a state of continuous improvement.
These quality workflows also support accuracy, which is critical in invoice printing and mailing. Every letter needs to insert into the correct envelope, and one mis-mailing can jeopardize compliance and your reputation. The key to accuracy is using quality initiatives and advanced technology.
We use intelligent insertion that leverages 2D barcodes, the USPS IMb, and high-speed cameras. This framework allows for tracking documents from production to delivery by the postal service. Integrity cameras read the barcodes for verification that each piece of paper folds separately into the envelope, while another camera snaps an image of the inserted envelope.
Reducing costs and improving quality are the outcomes any business desires when outsourcing, and that’s what you’ll get by working with us.
PCI Group Is Your Outsourcing Invoice Printing Partner
Our expertise and capabilities make us a reliable and trusted partner to companies that decide to outsource. Our accuracy rating is 99.9999%, and we have lots of experience helping companies transition to this new model.
Learn more about our invoice printing solutions and how we can help.
