Getting your business off the ground and maintaining key functions is no easy task. Dealing with incoming mail is critical to keeping any business running properly, but it can be surprisingly time-consuming, especially as your business grows in size and complexity. Mail forwarding services can help simplify, streamline, and standardize your mail handling processes. It’s also great for any business that deals with freelancers or digital nomads who need secure access to their incoming business mail from anywhere around the world.
What is Mail Forwarding?
Mail forwarding is, essentially, exactly what it sounds like - a service that receives incoming mail at one central location and forwards it to the intended recipient at a different specified address. It’s particularly useful for companies with large, distributed workforces, as well as small businesses that may change locations often. Demand for mail forwarding has been growing as businesses embrace the work from anywhere movement and grant greater flexibility to their workers.
In today’s digital-first world, most mail forwarding is done by digitization. This process involves receiving physical paper mail items at a central facility, where the items are sorted, opened, and scanned using high-definition scanners, converted into searchable digital documents, and routed electronically to the intended recipient. The physical mail can then be forwarded, stored, or destroyed, based on user preferences.
These services often also offer virtual addresses, which allows businesses to centralize mail flow and establish a physical presence in certain regions or cities.
The best mail forwarding services give you complete control of all incoming mail. Whether you choose to have certain items forwarded to you, scanned digitally and sent to you via email – or whether you need to attach e-signatures to your mail, archive mail items, or even shred junk mail – you have the freedom to choose what to receive and what to eliminate.
Avoid Losing Mail When Relocating
As businesses grow and expand, upgrading to larger or more conveniently located centers of operation is often necessary. Alternatively, businesses adopting more flexible work from anywhere policies may find it advantageous to downsize their office space and opt for smaller, less expensive real estate. Whatever the reason for relocating, an office move often risks mail getting delivered to the wrong address. Missing crucial business related mail or notices can lead to big headaches, and potentially missed deadlines and lost revenues.
Additionally, businesses with branches, teams, or operations located in other countries can benefit from mail forwarding for expats as well.
Eliminate Unwanted Mail
Paper might not seem like it takes up much space, but anyone who’s had to deal with a lot of junk mail knows how quickly it can pile up, especially when deliveries accumulate over time. Sifting through every individual piece of mail delivered to an office location and physically sorting and organizing them based on importance is time-consuming and tedious work.
Many mail forwarding companies work with national post offices to offer an online postal mail service to their clients. With this type of service, customers get their postal mail electronically. The best part about this service is the removal of ever receiving mail that is considered irrelevant to the company.
Go Paperless by Digitizing Mail
Digital transformation has been reshaping businesses and internal processes for years now, delivering greater efficiency and improved outcomes for companies and customers alike. No matter where your business is in its digitization journey, digitizing mail services is an excellent next step. With powerful optical character recognition (OCR) and intelligent character recognition (ICR) software, paper mail is converted into full digital copies as they are scanned. These digital files make for easy integration with downstream systems that rely on digital inputs for even faster processing.
Effectively Outsource Mail Management
Mail management is outside of the core operations for the vast majority of businesses. That means it’s inefficient for them to devote staff and work hours to handling incoming mail - especially as businesses grow and the volume of incoming mail and critical business tasks expand. Business mail forwarding is a convenient way to manage mail related tasks, allowing employees to focus on other areas of their operations.
Whether it’s dedicating more time to work on human resource management, operating procedures and product development – the ultimate result leads to improved performance and by extension increased profits for businesses.
Improve Communication
Another benefit of using mail forwarding is having better managed communication with business partners, employees, and clients. These types of services facilitate speedier, more dependable mail delivery and also offer added features like electronic signatures and easily accessible addresses that facilitate exchange or requests.
Save Money
Businesses that use mail forwarding services benefit from reduced operational costs in the form of fewer courier fees, eliminated in-office filing and storage costs, and no need for PO boxes or similar postal storage options. Additionally, the traditional mail forwarding lacks the flexibility to receive your mail at any given time. Digitizing incoming mail services also typically leads to a reduced need for onsite headcount.
