Shift to Automated Sorting Unlocks Immense
and Continuing Benefits for Hays DX
Firm deploys nearly 40 Olympus II barcode and sorting systems
from Pitney Bowes MailCode for fast, accurate and comprehensive
processing -- plus a platform for growth

Recognizing the need to automate a manual work process is often simple. Deciding how to automate is another matter altogether.

Consider the experience of Hays DX, the flagship unit of Hays plc, a leading UK business-to-business services firm with more than $2 billion in annual sales.

Hays DX pioneered the concept of a member-to-member document exchange service 30 years ago. Today, it is the world's leading private mail delivery service, an enviable and potentially lucrative position given the rapid pace of postal deregulation and privatization now underway around the globe.

"Our Document Exchange Service came into being during the Royal Mail industrial disputes of the 1970s," explains Warren Brunskill, who serves as General Manager, Operations Systems for Hays DX. "At the time several law firms in London were concerned about erratic mail delivery and banded together to form a membership-based document exchange service to assure the prompt delivery of important legal and time-sensitive documents."

Easy Drop-off and Pick-up
Today, the Hays DX service has grown into a network of more than 35,000 members in the UK and Ireland, where member businesses can exchange mail pieces with each other without using the Royal Mail.

Instead, members drop-off their mail each evening at one of more than 3,600 Hays document exchange locations in the UK and Ireland. The mail is sorted, delivered to an exchange location near the recipient member, and is available for pick-up the following morning by 9:00 a.m.

The Hays DX service processes more than one million mail pieces each day and is the leading mail service among lawyers in the UK. It also has equal presence in the retail, banking and financial services markets and has established itself in the property, construction, government and health care sectors.

More recently, as part of its growth strategy to expand the document exchange market by collecting mail from and delivering it to more points, Hays DX acquired a courier company. With the acquisition came an informal private mail delivery service -- and an immensely more complex sortation scheme.

"We were faced with the prospect of having to sort mail by hand according to two separate formats," continues Brunskill. "Our existing DX format consisted of about 30,000 combinations and could be memorized by most employees after several months of on-the-job training.

A Complex Sortation
"But to expand delivery to points outside of the DX network, our people would also have to sort according to the delivery code system utilized by the Royal Mail. And that sortation system consisted of millions of combination and was far too complex to commit to memory."

To solve the dilemma, Hays DX selected the most advanced automated sorting technology available today -- the fast, comprehensive and versatile Olympus II barcode sorting systems from Pitney Bowes MailCode. And to maximize the performance of the advanced systems, Hays DX deployed nearly 40 of the high-speed, high-integrity units throughout the firm's network of depots in the UK and Ireland.

The results are spectacular. First, the new equipment is processing a wide spectrum of mixed mail -- including envelopes ranging from DL to C4 in size -- at an average speed of 30,000 mail pieces per hour. That's a capability exclusive to the Olympus equipment and unmatched by any other sorting technology in the UK or the world.

Second, Hays DX is absorbing added volume easily. The sorting operation is already processing mail at an annual rate in excess of 200 million pieces and has the capacity to easily accommodate up to 350 million pieces. Plus, there's no need to worry about the cost or time involved in employee training, errors or absences. The equipment's always there.

Intelligent Sorting
But just as important as the speed and inclusive nature of the automated sort is the ability to handle different delivery address formats -- such as Hays DX system and Royal Mail postal coding format -- and automatically select one over the other to achieve better delivery performance.

For example, if a piece of mail is addressed to a recipient using the Royal Mail postal code, but the recipient is also a member of the DX service, the equipment will automatically sort the mail piece for delivery via the recipient's nearby document exchange location. This assures prompt delivery, helps lower costs by eliminating costly hand delivery to multiple end-points, and promotes use of the DX service channel.

Another key benefit comes from the equipment's compatibility with innovative voice recognition technology. "Most of our manual sort employees are skilled in a production setting and are well-equipped to shift into the role of equipment operator," explains Brunskill.

"But we also need people to decipher the addressees on mail pieces that are handwritten and can't be handled by the equipment," he continues. "Even though the Olympus II features state-of-the-art Optical Character Reading technology, a failure-to-scan rate of just one percent means we have more than 10,000 mail pieces each night that must be handled manually."

At first, Hays DX hoped to retrain any workers displaced by the new systems to perform the manual 'read and sort' task via remote video encoding technology. But this required workers who were accustomed to active and manually-oriented labor to sit all day and type on a computer keyboard. The results of the retraining were mixed at best.

"We didn't want to discharge our people, some of whom had been with us for 10 or 15 years, just because we had invested in automated technology and they were slow to adapt to a new task and skill level," adds Brunskill.

The solution came in the form of new video encoding units that are equipped with innovative voice recognition technology. Now, everyone in the Hays DX mail center can easily handle the manual 'scan and read' assignment and serve as equipment operators as well.

All that is needed is an individual voice recognition file, which workers create by talking into a recording device for about 20 minutes. The system can accommodate all manner of accents and dialects, as long as each worker speaks and pronounces words consistently. This voice file serves as a thumb print and each time a worker logs onto the video encoding unit, the system automatically accesses the worker's voice print file.

"The voice recognition technology eliminated all the issues for us related to retraining," says Brunskill. "If our employees can see and read, which they had to do already to sort the mail by hand, they can use the voice recognition technology to sort the handwritten mail by video encoding technology without the need to type on a computer keyboard.

Investment Protection
The Olympus II systems can also accommodate a futuristic track and trace delivery notification capability called PostBackOffice (PBO), another software innovation from Pitney Bowes MailCode.

With PBO, the sender of a particular piece of correspondence can have several options to verify its delivery, including having an e-mail notification sent to confirm that the intended recipient has received a specific mail piece.

Such a capability would be useful to credit card issuers, for example, to help prevent theft or fraud, or insurance companies that need to confirm receipt of important correspondence such as notices of cancellation. Hays DX and Pitney Bowes MailCode are reviewing how best to tailor and deploy this sophisticated notification capability in the UK.

Indeed, Hays DX and Pitney Bowes MailCode are working together in a relationship that is more partner-oriented than customer/vendor to assure the full and ongoing success of the new automated sorting capability.

"We are looking to apply for additional licenses from the postal regulator to deliver more mail to more locations in the UK," says Brunskill. "And we need expert help from innovators like Pitney Bowes MailCode to develop the superior services, the added-value services, and the lower cost services that will fuel the continued growth of our private mail delivery service."