DM Jan-Feb 2021

CASE STUDY: GRAND UNION HOUSING Dm
"IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A REAL ISSUE IF WE HADN'T TRANSFORMED MAIL MANAGEMENT BEFORE THE PANDEMIC
STRUCK. WE WERE AT A MAXIMUM 25 PER CENT OCCUPANCY FOR SOCIAL DISTANCING WHEN WE WERE ABLE TO
START RETURNING EMPLOYEES TO THE OFFICE. AS IT WAS, WITH IMPRESS DISTRIBUTE, WE COULD STILL STAY IN
TOUCH WITH OUR CUSTOMERS THROUGHOUT. WE NOW MANAGE OUTGOING MAIL IN A VERY AGILE WAY;
WE'VE REDUCED OUR COSTS AND GIVEN STAFF TIME BACK IN THEIR DAY."
become more efficient, flexible and
ambitious, to have a positive impact on
its customers and communities. To
achieve this, Grand Union works to
support agile and flexible working with
employees equipped to work from
different locations. It needed an
outgoing mail management system
that would support the company's
strategic objectives.
Efficiency was also a big consideration,
as manual mail management was a
considerable time investment across
Grand Union's employees. By
centralising outgoing mail management
through a single system, Grand Union
expected to see efficiency
improvements, time savings and greater
cost control.
THE AGILE APPROACH
"We had the opportunity to set one way
of managing outgoing mail when we
centralised our operation," explains
Richard Pearce, Procurement, Facilities &
Insurance Manager at Grand Union
Housing Group. "This would give us
greater visibility into our mail
distribution, but we also wanted to
equip our employees to work in a more
agile way - not to be tied to a particular
location by manual processes."
Grand Union had an existing
relationship with Quadient, so Richard
spoke with their account manager and
initiated discussions with other
suppliers. Richard involved Grand
Union's IT director from the start to
ensure any resulting solution could be
smoothly implemented within the
company's existing infrastructure.
Richard was impressed that Quadient
demonstrated its recommended solution
at Grand Union's site.
"The discovery process was good," says
Richard. "Quadient spent time
understanding our needs, the account
manager was approachable and the
whole engagement was very
straightforward. The solution Quadient
recommended made sense for what we
wanted to achieve."
MAKING MAILING FAST AND
SIMPLE
"We were up and running within three
months," Richard went on. "Impress
Distribute is straightforward to use -
most staff are self-taught from simple
instructions we were able to share on
our intranet - and it's helped us
transform mail management in the way
we wanted to."
Impress Distribute from Quadient takes
care of preparing and sending mail,
freeing up busy employees to focus on
other activities. Instead of printing out
documents to put into envelopes and
post themselves, staff at Grand Union
securely 'print' them to Quadient's stateof-the-art
mail production facility which
takes care of the rest - printing,
envelope-stuffing, applying postage and
posting. In this way, mail is prepared
and sent without staff having to leave
their desks. What's more, they can
manage the activity from wherever they
are, and have visibility into what has
been sent and at what cost, across the
whole business.
VISIBLE RESULTS
Grand Union has transformed the way it
manages outgoing mail with the
flexibility to send documents from
wherever staff are and time saved that
was previously spent putting documents
into envelopes and applying postage.
The housing association estimates
annual cost savings of £8,500 since it
made the switch to Quadient’s Impress
Distribute solution.
Richard Pearce explains further: "It
gives us postage cost control. We can
set the default for postage to 2nd class
and staff simply change this if they're
sending urgent items. That way, we
have consistency in the way we send
post and visibility into where spend is
occurring."
With staff no longer reliant on being
in the office to send mail, letters and
documents can go out as soon as
they're ready. This flexibility proved
invaluable in 2020 when staff couldn't
be in the office.
"It would have been a real issue if we
hadn't transformed mail management
before the pandemic struck," Richard
concludes. "We were at a maximum 25
per cent occupancy for social distancing
when we were able to start returning
employees to the office. As it was, with
Impress Distribute, we could still stay in
touch with our customers throughout.
We now manage outgoing mail in a very
agile way; we've reduced our costs and
given staff time back in their day.
Working with Quadient has been a
good experience."
More info: www.quadient.com/en-GB
www.document-manager.com
January/February 2021
@DMMagAndAwards
21