Create & Send Mail From your Workstation…
Wherever it May Be

Success Story – Birmingham City Council

Creation and sending of postal mail
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Postal Mail From Anywhere

Hybrid Mail Improves Mailing Procedures at Birmingham City Council

Employees can work efficiently and send letters from any office or home office.

Birmingham City Council is the local government body responsible for the governance of the City of Birmingham in England, which has been a metropolitan district since 1974.

The council headquarters are at the Council House in the city center. The council is responsible for running nearly all local services, with the exception of those run by joint boards. The provision of certain services has in recent years been devolved to several council constituencies, which each have a constituency committee made up of councilors from that district.

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The Birmingham City Council is
the governmental branch
of the city of Birmingham
(one of the largest
in the United Kingdom).

Problem

Birmingham City Council every day sends a large number of postal mail to its citizens around its different areas: These include Council Tax, Benefits, and Support, Schools, Waste and Recycling, Housing, Roads Travel & Parking.

Employees use local printers (MFPs) on a daily basis and they manually fold hundreds of letters. This task is obviously very time-consuming. The situation was reinforced by the COVID-19 health crisis. 

The employees, during COVID-19 remote working, could no longer access printers and stationery. One employee from each department went into the office with the sole job of opening hundreds of emails printing attachments and manually putting documents into envelopes.

It had therefore become urgent to find a solution that would not only generate lasting savings and optimize the time spent on mail processing but also, in line with current events, be accessible for employees working from home, and all this while guaranteeing reliable and efficient access for users.

Birmingham City Council

120 Advisors

7 000 Employees

1 000 000 Community Citizens

+1 Million Pieces of Mail

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“ScopHybrid – ‘Press to Post’ BCC Hybrid Mail solution has […] allowed us to provide business as usual to the citizens of Birmingham during COVID-19 and will continue to be the operating model when the pandemic is over”

-Karen Price, Operations Manager Birmingham City Council

Proposed Solution

Following a successful Proof of Concept in late 2018/19 Birmingham City Council is now using MPI Tech’s Hybrid Mail solution ScopHybrid and the scheduling engine ScopIOM. The Council knew the operational savings and that this solution could be deployed quickly.

ScopHybrid allows city employees working from home to create and send their mail from their workstations, using The Council’s secured Virtual Private Network. Mails are sent directly to the in-house production center in Dolman Street where they are printed, folded, and sent. In addition to the savings, the Council benefits from additional functions such as the addition of appendices or inserts, the management of page backgrounds directly from the solution, validation, and signature functions, standardization of the address field, etc.

Using a professional solution such as ScopHybrid is also the assurance of seeing each mail perfectly produced, in compliance with the internal graphic charter.

Beyond these advantages, ScopHybrid was a pragmatic and quick response to the problem related to the global health crisis. Deployed in only 2 weeks, the solution handles hundreds of letters every day, allowing employees to respond to citizens’ requests and stay reactive during this period. Each document is then taken care of by ScopIOM, which takes care of adding tracking and control barcodes and creates batch print jobs sent directly to production print devices. Mail is then produced and handled by the postal services. 

Envoi automatique des courriers cas usage birmingham | mpi tech

Streamline the Publishing Chain

Reduce Infrastructure Costs

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Standardize Documents

Reduce Printing Costs