In our role as an outsourced print and mail vendor, we often find ourselves in a position where we need to solve an issue with the data that’s fed to our systems. When faulty data enters most print and mail systems you can experience problems with mailings going out on time or reaching their intended destination.
Recently we helped a client uncover issues with its address data connected to mailed policyholder documents. We realized that there was both missing data, like an address without a name attached, and pieces of data that contained too much text, such as a contact that listed multiple names, making the address too long to fit into envelope windows.
Periodically having issues like this may not seem like a big deal, but when insurers are mailing thousands of pieces of mail every week, it quickly becomes a significant challenge. It’s a cost problem because every piece of address data that contains errors results in wasted postage and processing costs. Each mailing with address errors essentially doubles the postage expenses of that mailing. You pay for the original, which is then returned, plus the second mailing with the fixed address. Not to mention the delay in payments and other policy documents that could arise from mailings reaching policyholders late.
There’s also increased overhead to deal with processing returned mail. More labor is necessary to deal with the reinstatement of missed billings and communications with agents to correct the address. That doesn’t even factor in the labor needed to manually fix these address data issues on the back-end of your system.
The Solution
To help this client combat this data issue, we developed a program to Identify, Report, and Fix the problems.
Identify
We’ll find address data entries that contain a name with no address.
We’ll locate addresses that contain too many names, pushing the address onto unnecessary multiple lines.
Report
We’ll generate a CSV file containing problematic data instances we identified and email it to a distribution list of individuals who need to know.
Fix
We’ll fix the mistakes in an automated, programmed manner rather than relying on time-consuming manual updates. This is customizable depending on your requirements.
We’ll also omit any addresses that are shorter than three lines.
All of this is accomplished on our print/mail portal, meaning it’s become a seamless part of this client’s processes.
Addresses that were rejected (those deemed as problematic by the program we developed) are viewable in the portal at all steps of processing. If the client needs to change any of those records, they can do so by manually overriding the entry. Their portal also has a new field showing all the affected addresses.
Addresses, and address structure, in particular, are an important piece of your print/mail solutions. Sometimes it can be hard to focus on time-consuming, but important aspects like address optimization, but that’s where we come in as your print/mail partner. We’re able to dive into areas like this when you don’t have the time or resources, to make sure all parts of your solution are functioning optimally.
For more information on this important feature contact Drew Stadterman.