Thank you, Glenn, Larry and all who took the time to email your suggestions/comments and for providing me with such thorough and thoughtful responses.
It certainly seems that there is little downside in taking over the "Document Distribution" discipline, and there is much to gain. Definately, always glass half full!
Many thanks and will keep you posted of the outcome.
Vlad
> Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 08:19:03 +1100
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: RIM and Mailroom
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Vlad
>
> It would help if we all knew a bit more about your organisation - size,
> geographic spread, function, government or non-government etc. But even
> without that, and before you get bogged down in metrics, reorganisations and
> other mundanity, consider your marketing and posture. You already have RM
> positioned as a strategic function - great. Build on that.
>
> Step one is, stop calling it 'mailroom'. A mailroom is a place, not a
> function. We call ours 'Document Distribution', which immediately positions
> us better to move into the electronic world, and not by the overly
> simplistic "scan incoming mail and flick it electronically around the
> organisation" - you can get out there and persuade business units to go
> electronic, and to persuade them to get their customers and suppliers to go
> electronic. The strategy is not to turn paper into electronic when it hits
> the 'mailroom', it is to stop paper coming in at all. By running the
> 'mailroom' you have a finger on a pulse which allows you to identify areas
> of significant potential improvement. Sell document distribution as a
> consultancy, and very much part of RM.
>
> For example, I know that 50% of the mail items in our pigeonholes each
> morning, are internal mail envelopes going from our 85 business units in 35
> different locations, going to Accounts Payable and to Payroll. So if I can
> help the AP manager to extend her existing program to get our suppliers to
> send invoices electronically, and if I can trigger a move to go fully
> electronic for overtime forms and leave applications, I can probably free up
> one staff member. A lot of doing precisely that is helping ensure the
> integrity of processes and electronic documents and containers from an RM
> point of view. Not part of RM? Ha.
>
> Then you market it as a service: what do the team do best? They know at a
> detailed level who lives where, what they do, and what sort of documents
> they deal with. Not RM? Ha. That knowledge is actually an important part of
> RM, especially if you are into functional classifications. And unless your
> organisation is unlike any other I've seen over the last too many years,
> finding out who does what, at the micro level, is the hardest part of what I
> might call Knowledge Management.
>
> The other thing the team does best is to move large lumps of stuff from one
> place to another. Sell that as a service too, and you'll gradually get
> involved in projects of all sorts (eg marketing, IT, staff relocations etc),
> at the planning stage. So you become proactive instead of reactive, and can
> start introducing electronic distribution as an alternative to hardcopy.
>
> Internally, you can make Doc Distribution part of RM too. Do you still
> manage any hardcopy records? Got the odd compactus or two? Offsite storage?
> We do, so I've restructured the RM team so they are customers of
> Distribution. Want files from the compactus or offsite, or put back there?
> Distribution does it, not RM. Are there any files to go from Records out to
> customers? Distribution again. I also run library services (yep, another
> ex-librarian in Records), so Distribution fetches, puts away and distributes
> library materials (and we are switching to fully electronic in that area
> too, as fast as I can manage it - no books!).
>
> What this does is free up our small number of expensive RM and Library staff
> to do high level professional work. So I have three informal and highly
> overlapping teams: records, library and logistics, which includes document
> distribution, formerly known as mailroom.
> Don't forget that equipment and facilities are part of being professional:
> Document Distribution is very visible - our team get to every part of head
> office twice a day, and they are even more visible now I've scrapped the old
> scungy trolleys they had in favour of shiny new red ones - it's all part of
> the professional posture, and as any pertol head knows, red ones go
> faster. At my previous job I had to move the 'mailroom' out of a a grimy
> hole in the basement, so they had the same desks as the rest of us, their
> own personal space, windows and airconditioning. I've worked with too many
> organisations which treat 'mailroom' in quite a shameful way. Hopefully you
> don't have that problem.
>
> Finally, while I obviously believe in RM / DM / KM as high level, strategic
> services, it also helps when times are tight to have a very visible
> operational service. You need both.
>
> Cheers
>
> Glenn
>
> Glenn Sanders
> [log in to unmask]
> Australia
>
> These views are mine alone. They may or may not be those of any
> previous or present employers or clients. I don't know. If I'd asked
> and they'd agreed, I would have signed it "Harry Peck and Co and
> Glenn". Or whatever. But I haven't, so I didn't.
>
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