Delivering World-class Mail

Print Action, May 2004 by Bolte, Clint

The thirteenth annual fulfillment conference, sponsored by the Mailing and Fulfillment Service Association, was originally slotted for last September but was postponed because of Hurricane Isabelle. The rescheduled event, held in the first weekend of April, still managed to draw 108 attendees. The fact that 20 per cent of those attendees were first-timers hints at the growing interest in the fulfillment arena.

This historic setting of Boston was an appropriate backdrop for this event, because of the mailing industry's own strong history. While technology tools and client expectations for quicker responses continue to change fulfillment operations, over the years, the leading vendors still attest to the importance of managing client relations. This strategy was showcased through conference tours of Fleet-Boston Financial Services' mailing-and-fulfillment facility, as well as two of W.A. Wilde's three plants.

Boston's powerful fleet

FleetBoston, soon to be part of Bank of America, occupied 80,000 square feet and represented only one of the company's four New England locations. This facility's entire operations staff was outsourced to Pitney Bowes Mailing Management Services on a 5-year contract. The fulfillment group had eight fulltime employees and a lot of temporary workers to deal with a regular spike of assembling the customized financial transaction packages during the first five days of each month.

This particular fulfillment group handles more than 500 companies dividend reinvestment plans (DRIPS). U-shaped corrals stood 6-feet tall for manual sorting and all had plexi-glass backings behind the shelves so that activities could be easily observed. Kathy Hegarty, Fleet's fulfillment manager, remarked on their successful use of Airborne's Flight Ready bags. These pre-paid courier pouches were helpful in that there is no charge back for slight errors on addresses when the package could still be delivered. These charge backs are common by FedEx and UPS.

FleetBoston's mailing operation had two Bell and Howe high speed, pre-sorting units - a Criterion & a JetStar 3000 - running multiple shifts processing 500,000 first-class letters a day with a capacity of 2-million pieces a day. USPS placed a MERLIN on site in November that just went live in February 2004. There is 100 per cent security screening of everything coming into this facility. This is performed by an E3 Communications security and detection System, which cost US$65,000 and is operated by three people. There is no noticeably delay in getting inspected product into normal workflows according to Fleet's management.

Wilde, fulfilling ride

Founded in 1868 and now under fifth-generation family management, W.A. Wilde Company has 425 full-time employees in three different New England plants. Forty per cent of their current business is build around fully servicing fund-raising packages for nonprofit organizations. The balance of the company's business is split between fulfillment and direct mail.

W.A. Wild offers some of the world's most sophisticated closed-loop response management services to high-tech clients. Wilde offered one of the first Web-based order-entry systems in 1998, which is trademarked eZOrders. These order-entry systems tie into the company's propretiery Wilde Inventory System (WIS). CEO Tom Wilde described their client-branded websites, utilizing eZOrders, for online ordering, as being "very Amazon-like."

Wilde's extensive "kitting" operations are based on production sets of 10 followed by one sampled quality-control check; hence, quality assurance involves a 10 per cent sample of all kits. Order-picking employees follow standardized procedures throughout the warehouse regardless of client. And yet packers are assigned to each client because packing specifications are often client unique.

Warehouse receiving standard operating procedures includes a customer agreed upon count methodology. An example of this count is to agree with a customer that one to two boxes or skids will use weigh-count average, and that the delivery of work will have a 2-hour dock-to-stock target, ultimately held in client-specific storage areas.

Robert Reeder, Wilde's chief information officer, took the time to describe the company's data and information flowcharted procedure, by product and service. He remarked, "There is critical data exchange between our built and bought software systems." Wilde's on-demand technology philosophy has five key components: rules based, data rather than document centric, document self assembly to accentuate the one-to-one marketing objectives, online proofing via PDF, and, finally, support for various foreign languages.

The company also shared its future IT vision, broken down into three key components: interactive (HTML) documents, collaborative design features, and total data-driven document creation. To support this market driven strategy, nearly 15 per cent of all employees are part of the IS/IT package plus another 27 account managers and six sales people.