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Outsourcing vs. Insourcing

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Nathan White

Automail is a mailroom outsourcing company specializing in mail and document processing strategies. Burning question among corporates is whether insourcing or outsourcing is more productive and less expensive. It is proved beyond a doubt that outsourcing is cheaper as the associated overhead costs are absorbed by the outsourcing provider due to their specialisation on the core areas. The outsourcing partner company  provides all the process management, in our case all outgoing and incoming communications are processed and addressed in a very systematic and secured way and the costs involved are taken care in their pricing itself. With insourcing, it's not just the manual labour, but all the infrastructural costs like space, equipment, and the utilities, etc are to be paid as well as process automation system are to be provided for the job at hand.

There are misconceptions that outsourcing can solve all your problems. But this is not true as you just moved your problems to an outside provider. Outsourcing your services is valuable only when your customers are satisfied with the end result. Customer response is the best way to measure the success of an outsourcing provider.

It would be a shame for a company to choose the wrong outsourcing provider so a meticulous selection process is an important factor in your selection process. A proven track record, good client history and unmatched reliability and security are factors which can influence the selection process. Mailroom outsourcing operations can introduce entirely new problems, including privacy and security breaches involving sensitive information at any point of time.

Along with signing confidentiality agreements with vendors, companies that outsource their mail operations should insist that procedures are in place to protect sensitive data included in the mailings.

Company should ensure that no employees at a third-party mailer access their bills and sensitive information. Companies that outsource mailings must gain security practices to ensure that no one is abusing their data.

Finally, but perhaps most importantly, companies in highly regulated industries must ensure that outsourced service providers can keep consumer data safe and stay in compliance with state and federal laws protecting the information. It is essential for a finance or healthcare provider to ensure the security and confidentiality measures are in place and are in accordance with the laws of the state. Outsourcing your mailing to someone doesn’t mean you are not liable for compliance. Your responsibility is not shared so it is important to have a verifiable compliance and adherence system is in place on both sides.

Businesses can gain trust in outsourcing vendors by researching their technology, their years of experience in the field, and more importantly the type or size of clients they have worked with. The accountability of the vendor is trustworthy when they keep your customer data safe and secured.

It is known that for many organizations, such as utility companies and banks, mailings are the primary means by which they communicate with their customers. For businesses like grocery stores and florists, mailings are secondary to in-person interactions. The best option may not be simply insourcing or outsourcing, but a combination of both. An organization might decide to perform its day-to-day mail operations in-house, but outsource more complex or specialty mails.

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Nathan White
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