Finishing & Screen Printing

ACS PARTNERS WITH NEOPOST TO SPEED UP MAILROOM OPERATION

Tuesday 28. October 2008 - For American Computer Services, Inc. (ACS), business is most definitely in the trash. Yet management doesn’t mind a bit.

That’s because trash, as well as water and sewers, have been very good to the Buena Park, CA company. Founded in 1970, ACS has provided outsourced billing and mailing services to the refuse industry, as well as municipalities that deliver waste, sewer and water services. By acting as a single source for these important functions, ACS helps its clients save money, meet critical billing deadlines, and focus on their core competencies. It must be working: ACS now serves a client base that delivers the aforementioned services to over one million users.
The volume of mail that the company processes varies widely depending on the time of month or year.
“Our volume is very heavy for about 10 days each month,” explained Richard A. Franks, one of the company’s principals. “The billing cycles come in three different versions: monthly, bi-monthly, and quarterly, depending on the company’s or municipality’s billing procedures. Our busiest times are the quarter-end, and the two biggest months of the year are June and December because that happens to be when all three cycles hit together.
“We send out a couple million billings a year, so it averages about 150,000 a month, but at peak times it can be up to 500,000.”
ACS employees perform virtually all of the tasks related to the billing function: computing the actual bills, printing the invoices, folding them, and stuffing them into the envelopes (along with any inserts that the customer might supply). They will even send payment reminder letters when necessary. This is made possible through the use of ACS’s proprietary software, housed on its servers and accessed by clients either over the Internet or frame-relay circuits.
The pieces are subsequently picked up by a third-party presort house, which blends them in with their higher volumes of mail for additional discounts. The presort house then brings them to the post office, where they enter the first-class mail stream. The company even receives all the payments on behalf of its customers, making it a truly soup-to-nuts billing operation.
Given the efficiency of its operation, it’s hard to believe there was actually a time when ACS was doing only the printing of the invoices, outsourcing the other functions to a mailing house in a nearby city. Ultimately, this became rather burdensome, due to the wide range of mailings and the diverse pieces involved.
“The individual billing runs could be as small as 5,000 or as many as 50,000, so the volume wasn’t a problem,” said Franks, who oversees all operations at the company’s facility. “But each mailing had its own set of inserts and different size envelopes, in addition to the bills themselves. It became somewhat of a nightmare to coordinate all of those pieces for our vendor to ensure that each mailing had the proper elements.”
Some 10 years ago, ACS management decided it would be advantageous – not to mention profitable – to bring all of this work under its own roof. Naturally, this would mean a major investment in mailing equipment to handle the folding, inserting, and metering. After carefully researching the options, ACS found PFE International Ltd, a worldwide supplier of folders/inserters. (The company was subsequently acquired in September 2007 by Neopost, the European leader and a leading worldwide supplier of mailroom solutions.)
To help it embark on its new direction, PFE supplied ACS with two of its Automailer 2 devices. At the time, the Automailer 2 was a prudent choice: the system’s modularity, PC-based operating system, advanced infrared double document detection system, wide range of in-feed devices, and output of 3,500 inserts per hour (100,000 filled envelopes per month) made it an ideal “starter” machine. And with two of the devices in hand, ACS was confident it had harnessed enough horsepower to manage even during its busiest periods.
Not surprisingly, ACS outgrew the two Automailer 2 machines about five years ago, despite their high productivity. The company then upgraded to PFE’s Automailer 5 (now Neopost’s DS-1000), becoming the first company on the West Coast to put the new model to the test. This advanced device was capable of a higher output than the two Automailer 2’s combined – up to 8,000 inserts/hour. What’s more, the automatic document security system, ability to work with a multiple envelope sizes, and versatile folding styles including three-plate folding made the purchasing decision relatively uncomplicated.
Still, even the significantly increased productivity of the Automailer 5 left ACS a little short when the mailings really began to pile up.
“The Automailer 5 was a real workhorse, but at our true peak times, we still had to outsource some of our work to a mail house because of the time sensitivity of the statements,” recalled Franks. “We can’t sit on the statements for a week — that’s money to our clients.
“But it’s not just about the money. Depending on the company and the jurisdiction in which it operates, people may have their service turned off if they miss the payment cutoff date. But if we’re late in getting those bills out, there will be all kinds of chaos because customers are going to say, ‘I didn’t get the bill until such-and-such a date.’ Our commitment is to have bills out of here within 48 hours, so if we had a big billing run on any given night, we would have to send some of it outside.”
Consequently, in December 2007, ACS management undertook yet another upgrade, this time to Neopost’s DS-1000 (PFE’s Automailer 5 Plus). Arguably the most cost-effective, flexible and serviceable folder/inserter available, the DS-1000 combines the productivity of a high-speed production folder/inserter system with the user-friendly features of desktop models. A PC-based touch screen makes setup extremely easy, while most job changes can be inputted in under two minutes. It’s considerably quieter than other production folder/inserter systems, a real benefit for a machine that may run continuously for days at a time.
Since each station has individual paper control and intelligence, the system can be configured to precisely meet the requirements of any individual mailing, from a two-station folder to a complex 16-station installation (ACS runs it with four feed stations). Interestingly, the processing speed of the system is unaffected by the number of stations fitted, or in use for each job. As a result, the system can evolve if ACS’s business continues to expand.
On the output side, the conveyor has a capacity of up to 600 envelopes and is suitable for general applications, while the vertical stacker stands the sealed envelope on edge, creating a stacking capacity of up to 1500. Its ergonomic design also makes it easy to divide the stack and load into postage trays, an important consideration in the ongoing effort to improve worker safety.
According to Franks, the DS-1000 is capable of processing virtually everything that ACS can throw its way. On the rare occasions it can’t, there is a viable alternative.
“The truth is, we don’t control when our clients are going to request their billings,” he said. There are times when we’ll have a half a dozen people say, ‘On July 29, I want all of these bills processed.’
“But that no longer presents a concern, because in those cases we just kick the other DS-1000 into gear. Between those two machines, there is basically no volume that is beyond our capacity.”
Not to be lost in the discussion of the DS-1000 is how simple it is to operate.
“These machines are extremely easy to use,” Franks said. “There was not a great deal of training required for either of them. We have two operators, one who usually works the DS-1000 and a second person who runs the other machine when it’s needed as a backup. The transition from the old one to the new one was painless.”
While ACS’s customers are the clear beneficiaries of the company’s updated mailing equipment, don’t underestimate the benefits to ACS: Franks estimates that the business has grown about 20% since the purchase of the equipment.
“We’ve been able to pick up a number of new clients because this equipment can not only handle high volume, it can process many different types of jobs,” he said. “Without it, I don’t know if we would have landed some of our newest clients.”
That is why ACS has found itself as the dependable billing and mailing provider their customers can count on to get the job done.