"We had made good progress in reducing both the cost and time required to process the messages we send to recipients of welfare aid in Massachusetts," recalls Robert Burgess, Director of Facilities and Operations for the state's Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA).

DTA administers programs like Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children (TAFDC), which provides temporary financial assistance to eligible residents, and Burgess had recently overseen a successful multi-year effort to automate DTA's print/mail finishing process.

Excessive postage and returned mail
"But we were still stymied by postage costs that were too high as well as inaccurate address data that both hindered our ability to contact recipients promptly and caused too much returned mail."

The postage problem was their inability to do presorting and the excessive use of pre-printed forms that were either over-sized or over-weight. The combination meant that virtually every one of the approximately 8,000 mail pieces processed each day required full postage, and in many instances, triggered the surcharge assessed for mail that is over-sized or exceeds the one oz. limit.

The problem of inaccurate addresses stemmed principally from the fact that recipients receive financial aid electronically. Once their eligibility is established, funds are transferred directly to their bank accounts, which lessens their need to keep the DTA informed of any changes or errors in their address data.

However, the flawed address data and the delays it caused in mail delivery were also impacting recipients. The DTA is required to notify recipients in writing of any change in their eligibility. These changes can result from a modification in the program guidelines or a change in family circumstances, such as when a child reaches 18 years of age.

Since aid recipients are permitted just 10 days to appeal changes in eligibility status, any delay in mail delivery hampered their ability to challenge a change.

Additionally, the entire volume of DTA's returned mail, which averaged 12 to 18 percent of all outgoing mail, was received by the agency's centralized print/mail finishing center. But case workers responsible for following up and correcting individual addresses were located in more than 35 field offices dispersed around the state, which added more time, cost and complexity to the returned mail dilemma.

Plus, even when the returned mail eventually reached the right caseworkers, they were usually handling much higher priority work and had little time for the seemingly endless task of correcting inaccurate addresses.

To help solve the problem, Don Miller, a three-year veteran with DTA who heads Systems Development for the agency, selected an integrated solution involving two software tools from Pitney Bowes: StreamWeaver for print stream engineering, processing efficiency and mail piece integrity; and Finalist for assuring address quality.

Automated print stream processing
Here's how the solution works. After each mailing application is processed but before it is received at the print/mail finishing center, StreamWeaver intercepts the print stream for automated conditioning and manipulation.

The manipulation centers on reformatting the data, so that the information can be easily handled on Xerox 6180 laser printers using 8.5 x 11 inch cut sheet stock.

This automated reformatting eliminates the need for the costly and cumbersome pre-printed forms used previously by the agency. Indeed, at one time DTA preprinted and inventoried more than 400 separate forms, many of them 12 x 14 inches in size, with each one costing an average of three cents. These forms were then fed into impact printers, and required time-consuming bursting and elaborate folding prior to insertion.

The print stream conditioning occurs when StreamWeaver locates and extracts the name and address information for each mail piece and calls upon the Finalist software to standardize, verify and correct each piece of address information.

Lastly, StreamWeaver adds high integrity OMR barcodes to the documents in the print stream, which helps boost productivity tremendously by enabling the agency to combine applications and variable-page-count mail pieces -- even those including both simplex and duplex printing within the same application -- and process the mix as a single mail stream on the agency's high-speed 8 Series inserting system. The easy-to-handle and standard-sized cut-sheet stock is a further aid to prompt and accurate automated processing.

Real-time data verification
An important additional boost to productivity and cost-effectiveness occurs even before a mailing application is processed or an individual mail piece is generated, thanks to DTA's implementation of an innovative and fully integrated data processing and control system called BEACON.

BEACON, which stands for Benefit Eligibility And Control On-Line Network, is a real-time, interactive, client/server tool that houses in a single location details about every agency program and recipient.

With BEACON, case workers need only enter recipient data once, and the system automatically applies the information across all possible aid programs, helping to boost case worker productivity and assure that eligibility guidelines are followed across all programs and offices.

BEACON also helps reduce DTA's returned mail problem because it enables the use of the Finalist software tool on the 'front end,' enabling case workers to automatically verify address information in real-time as data is entered for the first time or during subsequent updates.

Lower postage costs
As for results, Miller couldn't be more pleased with the improvements. First, the switch to the standard size paper stock and envelopes has yielded an immediate postage savings of roughly $90,000 on the nearly three million mail pieces processed by DTA each year. That's on top of the nearly $90,000 the agency is saving annually by eliminating use of the over-sized pre-printed forms.

Even more postage savings may be on the horizon. DTA now uses a presort vendor for its entire volume of outgoing mail, which reduces the total savings the agency can achieve. But Miller is reviewing the density characteristics of DTA's various mail applications -- particularly the periodic mailings that regularly exceed 100,000 mail pieces -- to determine if DTA might be able to utilize Mailer's Choice software for presorting, which would enable the agency to capture a larger percentage of the full postage discounts available from the USPS.

Second, the use of Finalist software to assure address deliverability has helped reduce the amount of mail returned by roughly 50 percent. Just as significant, the lower volumes of returned mail are now being handled far more efficiently.

Each outgoing mail piece now contains a return address that is linked to the specific field office serving the recipient. As a result, the remaining instances of returned mail are now received and handled promptly by the appropriate case worker, especially since the amount of returned mail now averages less than one piece per case worker per day.

Third, the entire solution was implemented in about a year, which has enabled a quick pay back for DTA.

As for alternatives, Miller believes that part of the solution could have been achieved by reprogramming the legacy applications at the mainframe. But that is a complex task and the agency's IT resources are already over committed. And even if internal resources were available, Miller estimates it might require as much as three staff years of effort to complete.

Lastly, the software solution is flexible and can accommodate and facilitate additional changes, which will help enhance performance in the future. A prime example involves DTA's plans to reduce the volume of returned mail still further by incorporating the use of ForwardTrak software to update address data in the print stream.

ForwardTrak utilizes the USPS move update database, which contains the most recent 13 months of move update data, to assure optimum deliverability for every piece of mail. Various organizations using ForwardTrak report reducing returned mail by an average of 50 percent in just three to six months.