Debt management business saves £100k per year
PayPlan used to print and post 70,000 letters a month. Now they outsource to Postworks, and they’re saving £100k each year.
“I know I keep repeating myself, but Postworks just makes everything so easy.” – Simon Linforth, Communications Director at Totemic
PayPlan (part of Totemic group who operate a number of financial services businesses) provides free debt advice and communicates with creditors on behalf of over 100,000 people every year. That’s not something you can do unless you send a lot of letters – a lot of statements, account summaries, updates, leaflets, welcome packs… In Totemic’s case, “a lot” adds up to 70,000 pieces of post per month.
It used to be a job for two employees, two printers and one expensive machine which folds paper and stuffs envelopes. That’s about all a folder-inserter can do. It doesn’t know which letter belongs in which envelope. It never has a clue about who posted what. The printers weren’t much help, either – they kept breaking down and staying down, as printers tend to do.
Totemic had even invested in expensive document software to help make it easier but implementation was so tricky and time intensive the project didn’t gain traction.
At the mercy of the print queue
Totemic was faced with a never-ending backlog of letters. Costs kept rising. The print queue took on a life of its own, and no one felt qualified to tame it.
Simon just wanted post to be easy. He hated worrying over broken printers, spiralling costs and potentially missing deliveries. Still, it wasn’t an easy decision to outsource. Many of Totemic’s letters contain sensitive, personal information. They write to some of the biggest creditors in the UK. Could he really trust someone else to get the job done right?
Trying just about everything
“I had to jump through hoops with other suppliers. Everyone else makes it so hard.”
Outsourcing led to a lot of false starts. Each option Simon tried felt wrong in a different way. One company provided really bad customer service. Another tried to drag him through a painful contract process, without even letting them trial it. The DownStream Access (DSA) providers offered only half of what he needed: they’d deliver the post, but they certainly wouldn’t help them create their document, sort it, and print it.
It seemed like a failed experiment, but Simon decided to give it one last shot. Enter Postworks.
Ticking all the boxes
“We’re not throwing money at printers, post room software or random machines any more.”
What Postworks does for PayPlan is simple. The Postworks software takes their complex documents and manual processes, and recreates them in digital workflows.
Different letters have different requirements – everything from postage type to envelope size and even adding different inserts based on letter content.
You might think that throws a spanner in the works. But actually, digital workflows can be set up in a matter of minutes whenever a new requirement presents itself.
Marvee-Lisa Booker, Commercial Director said, “Our company vision is to make post easy and it’s great for us to see that is exactly what’s happened here. We take real pleasure in knowing that our service is delivering what we intended it to.”
If Simon or any of their document team wants to find out what happened to a letter, they log in online to Postworks HUB. There, they can see who sent any letter, when and where it was sent and when it was posted. They even receive custom reports, which let him see line item detail. He loves that he can even see at a glance how much it has cost – for a company that is audited by the Financial Conduct Authority that’s really valuable. And it’s all kept safe with end-to-end, bank-level encryption.
“Postworks takes away even the smallest tasks.”
Now Simon has time to focus on what’s important: helping his clients get out of debt. Meanwhile, Totemic’s post takes care of itself.
If you’re like Simon and want to explore how you might be able to get rid of your mailroom worries, get in touch with us at [email protected] or call us on 0370 334 1516.
