As corporate America continues to downsize, rightsize, call it what you will, managers are continually challenged with the growing need to do more with less.

Mail Center Managers are certainly not exempt from this reality. On the contrary, the Mail Center quite often seems to become the dumping-ground for menial tasks, responsibilities and physical items unwanted or desired by other departments within a facility.

With this in mind, proactive Mail Center Managers are continually looking for and inventing new ways to utilize their personnel and maximize productivity with the players and resources they have.It is always important to identify any areas within a department where time and money may be saved (of course, time = money) and implement new methods which will reduce the load so that resources may be more effectively utilized.

One of the most fruitful operational areas for improvement and streamlining is in the processes of Internal Distribution of mail, reports, packages, etc. Many hours are eaten up each day by people who are moving around (picking up and delivering) things which no longer need to be, thanks to the Internet and E-mail.

There are actually two prime offenders causing much of this unneeded work and gobbling up millions of hours and dollars of revenue which could surely be more appropriately used elsewhere. They are paper documents and computer diskettes containing information from simple programs such as MS Word, Word Perfect, Excel, Access, Q&A, etc.

You see, over the years we have all become much too comfortable and used to sending and moving around letters (pieces of paper with printing on them) and files/programs (diskettes with magnetic/electronic information on them) between us by hand because in the old days that was the only way we could share the information. The manual distribution process of these types of items is often bulky, time consuming, tedious and allows great chance of error, missorts, etc.

Sometimes pouches even need to be handled and delivered a few times, almost in "circles" until the proper recipient finally gets it. Possibly several days from when it was first sent (even from within the same company or building). So, usually the less items we are forced to put through the old manual processes, the better.

Over the years, many people seem to have lost sight of the fact that it has never really been the pieces of paper or the diskettes inside the pouches that we actually needed to share. It has always been the "information", "messages", "files" (including pictures and sounds) or "programs" contained on the paper or diskettes that we really needed.

The paper and diskettes just happened to be the most convenient vehicles for us to use to transfer the information we needed between parties. At the time, back then it was the best way, key word = "was". Now that fact is not always so.

Have you ever wished that you had more people in your Mail-Center or that your existing people had more time available to do other things ? If so (and I'd be very surprised if you answered no), I offer you a possible solution;

Take a good look inside several of those dreaded, bulky internal distribution (inter-office) pouches, bags and envelopes that you are paying people (and loosing many labor hours) to "move around" each day. You may be very surprised by how many of them contain exactly these types of offending letters/documents or diskettes.

By utilizing simple, easy to use and inexpensive E-mail programs, facilities can quickly, easily and greatly reduce the volume of those daily pouches you now have to "move around". Doing so will greatly free up time for your Mail Center Staff do better, more productive things. It will also enable needed information to be sent and received much more quickly (often instantly) directly between each sender and recipient(s). This would avoiding having to burden the Mail Center with extra, unnecessary work.

The way that E-mail is used is actually quite simple. All that is required is that the sender as well as the recipient both have E-mail available to them either on their own computer or at least somewhere handy to them in their facility.

Let's break it down to the real nitty-gritty. Don't let words that can at first sound scary to the newcomer (like Internet, World Wide Web, FTP, etc.) intimidate you. It is really all very simple;

Letters, documents, pictures, sounds or movies are all saved as files inside a computer. Each of these files has a name and is saved in a directory. All that a user has to do is to send an E-mail message to the recipients E-mail address and by pushing a button or two, or clicking a mouse, almost all of the popular E-mail programs used today enable us to "attach" a file. By following simple instructions the user tells the computer which file(s) to attach, hits "send" and "zap"... like lightning it's done!

Depending on the systems used on both ends, the size of the files and a few other variables the message and files sent will usually be received within a few seconds or minutes. In some rare cases it may take hours but that usually only occurs if there is an extreme amount of what I call electronic traffic or the primary servers and computer system(s) or network(s) being used are insufficiently undersized, are overworked or are just too slow for today's standards. For these reasons you may have better luck by using your own computer and modem independently rather than going through your internal corporate network which is being shared and resources are being drained by many other users at once within your facility.

My travels to hundreds of Mail Centers over the years has enabled me to see that quite often the mail center either does not have enough computers or gets stuck with hand-me-down computers from other departments. These are often very slow 286's or 386's which may not even have E-mail in them. Use this information to help you justify your requests to get a better, newer or just faster computer or upgrades if you need them.

Share this information with others in your company in a proactive way and use the tools currently available to improve your companies communications overall. Do not draw a separation line between your Hardcopy and Electronic Communication Efforts. Go with the technology and stay current with the times to help the company, but also for added job security, promotion and personal financial growth.

Attaching files is very easy, works great and saves extraordinary amounts of time and money for all involved. Complete software programs can be sent instantly and can actually be used and run by the recipient within minutes of being sent. No more of the dinosaur-need and financial burden of "overnight me the important disks, so that I have them by tomorrow". Now we can just say "E-mail me the files and I'll be running the program or printing out the documents into my hands minutes from now!"

When talking to customers, clients, vendors, etc., get into the habit of asking them if they have E-mail and recording their E-mail addresses on file. Also, find out what word processing, graphic, accounting or other programs they normally prefer to use so that you can send them the types of files that their computer can read and use. Most of the common programs used today are very flexible and offer many import, export and file conversion options to enable users to share information over many platforms.

When asking everyone if they have E-mail, you will probably be surprised by how many of them not only have E-mail now, but have already been using it, benefiting from it and saving money for years. E-mail is actually "old news" but it has gotten a lot better, smarter, more flexible, easier to use and less expensive over the past few years.

Some of the other benefits of E-mail include the ability to;* Group Broadcast, send messages or files to many people all at once instantly. No more making & delivering lots of copies.

* Better Than a Fax, originals are more secure, they go into private mailboxes with passwords to prevent others from reading them unlike a fax that many others may read first.

* Save Big $$$ 5 Ways, Reduce Labor, Time, Overnight Shipping, Postage and Phone (Fax) costs dramatically.

* Improve Service, there is no faster turnaround time than instantly!

* Increase Professionalism, giving out a business card without an E-mail address on it today is like giving out a card without a fax number on it was a couple of years ago.

* Reduce Interruptions, E-mail is available to you and read at your convenience, unlike a telephone call or playing phone-tag.

* Often better than Verbal Communications, while in no way do we want to impersonalize things or loose the human element, we must admit that it is often better to get things in print for future reference. E-mail does that automatically and also allows you to easily forward and share the information with others at any time.

The Internet is a fascinating and huge topic and I could go on forever sharing ideas and more specific details, but for now it's back to work. I have to check my E-mail now, there are probably a few more goodies waiting for me in there!

For more information, watch future issues of MAIL: and see us at MAILCOM presentation #DS303, "The Internet & The Mail Center, A Winning Combination".

Scott DeMayo, CMDSM, MPQCS is President of DeMayo Mail Management Consultants, specializing in Internal Distribution, Data-Management, Printing & Mailing Operations Consulting services and the Successful Integration of Hardcopy & Electronic Communication Efforts. You may reach him at (973) 361-0278 or E-mail scott@demayo.com, http://www.demayo.com