What is it and how do you know if you need it?
Intuitive Printing is an InStream service that delivers control and efficiency – greater control over your company’s outbound communications and a more efficient use of your internal resources on an ongoing basis.
It’s about automation. Manually filling in templates with customer-specific information, printing them and then mailing them can be time-consuming. Utilizing a mail merge to generate the letter may speed up the process slightly, but provides no audit trail. InStream’s Intuitive Printing service automates the entire process in a trackable way.
How do you know if you need Intuitive Printing?
Intuitive Printing’s value is tied more to need than industry. Specifically, Intuitive Printing is a solution to a well-defined set of challenges.
1. You are manually sending letters in bulk today
Are there people on your staff dedicated to inserting personalized information into a letter template? It takes significant time and energy to manually send letters out to your company’s customers after cutting and pasting unique information into each letter. But that’s not all – someone on your staff also has to print the letter, fold it, stuff it into an envelope, address the envelope, apply postage, and get the letter mailed. Think of what other, more important tasks that employee could be taking on if they no longer had these responsibilities.
InStream’s Intuitive Printing service automates every task in the process. Our solutions are integrated into a digital workflow and document management system, where selecting what letter needs to go out is as simple as pushing a button – literally! We use your specific business rules and letters to customize a solution that automatically generates each letter for you based on your selection, filling in the various data elements on the letter with the appropriate information. Once the letter is created, InStream will print and mail the letter on your business’s behalf, freeing your staff to focus on other business tasks.
2. You use template letters
It’s not feasible for most companies that regularly communicate with customers or potential customers through the mail to write entirely unique letters for each recipient. Instead, they opt for a hybrid approach – a templated letter containing customizable fields where details specific to the customer can be inserted.
InStream’s Intuitive Printing service automates the creation of templated letters. Because it’s integrated with a digital workflow in a document management system, Intuitive Printing can notify InStream of which letter needs to be sent to which customer, and then extract the customer-specific data from the system and insert it into the letter template automatically. Any company that sends letters or any sort of printed notice at regular intervals based on defined business triggers will benefit.
3. You must comply with strict turnaround times for correspondence
In many industries, a company is required to send certain categories of business correspondence within a very specific timeframe in order to remain compliant. If found to be non-compliant, the business faces possible fines or even litigation. Automating letter creation with the Intuitive Printing service removes any possible delays due to manual intervention, ensuring deadlines are met.
Once the letter is chosen by the end-user, InStream’s Intuitive Printing service automatically generates the selected letters, and our service bureau handles all printing and mailing responsibilities. Intuitive Printing removes delays and frees our customers’ employees to focus on other time-sensitive tasks, while we ensure this one gets completed.
4. You need to keep a record of all communications for auditing purposes
For legal reasons, a company may need to retain proof of what letters were sent to whom, when they were sent and who within the organization authorized each letter. Auditors will want to see a full history of every letter sent to customers and what the content consisted of.
With InStream’s Intuitive Printing service, the full audit trail of the workflow history is always available for users to be able to see every step leading up to the decision to send a specific letter, as well as who authorized it to be generated. Our letter printing service can also generate a PDF copy of each letter and store it in your document management system as proof of what was sent to each customer and when.
5. You want to use a mass printer, but you don’t have the quantity and or the quantity varies
Plenty of printers are capable of templating letters and mailing them; however, most require a minimum quantity – thousands or tens of thousands of letters each day. Business doesn’t always work that way. Workloads vary. You may need to send 50 letters one day and 3,000 the next. Failing to meet mass printers’ requirements means you may have had to continue using internal, manual processes.
Instream’s Intuitive Printing Services requires no minimum quantity. Our service bureau is structured in a way that is easily scalable, with built-in flexibility to match your needs on any given day.
6. Your letters are part of a larger process you want to digitize and automate
Often, the process-driven event that triggers a letter’s creation in a business is part of a manual, paper-based workflow process, where the letter is just one small part of an overall larger process.
InStream’s Intuitive Printing solution extends beyond printing the letter. InStream can digitize your entire workflow process to ease in the processing of your files. Not only does this improve your ability to send letters quickly, but it also improves upper management’s visibility into the process and ability to run reports. It also allows you to implement some automation to your currently manual processes, ultimately decreasing turnaround times as manual work is eliminated from your day-to-day. Intuitive printing facilitates whole-process improvement.
Intuitive Printing: Mass Printing Automated
Mass printing and mailing, if done manually, is a heavy lift on company resources. InStream’s automated, scalable Intuitive Printing Services help to make your employees’ lives easier and free you to reallocate and optimize your internal resources to ensure regulatory compliance. If your company meets any of the six criteria we’ve outlined here, please contact us at info@instreamllc.com.
