Valldata Services

1Valldata Services, a leading direct marketing services company, provides mail fulfillment and response handling services for UK charities.

Overview

Valldata Services, a leading direct marketing services company, provides mail fulfillment and response handling services for UK charities. During 2006, Valldata received over six million donations, as well as a significant amount of returned mail and gone-aways that require processing. Processing donations is highly labor-intensive.

Business Need

Valldata Services needed a way to make the response handling process streamlined, efficient and easy to use. Valldata realized by outsourcing these services, charities can improve the collection and management of customer information, enhance the targeting of future campaigns and ultimately increase cash flow.

BancTec’s Solution

Before BancTec, Valldata Services used labor-intensive, inefficient response-handling processes. Donations arrived in separate bins for individual charities, the contents were sorted by donation type, and operators would rubber stamp each donation with a serial number and remittance slip. Donations were then batched for scanning using traditional “drum” scanning devices, which scanned a single document type at a time.  Valldata Services realized that the response-handling function had to be streamlined and improved using the latest technology.

BancTec:

• Provided Valldata Services with a high-volume, “open track” scanning system, the IntelliScan DS9000, which moves the documents on a totally flat and open path
• Processes up to 240 pages per minute
• Provides the most comprehensive set of features, including the ability to identify documents by size and type on the fly
• Invests in on-board imaging technology to provide high-quality color images
• Was able to tailor the device to suit Valldata Services’ specific requirements
• Increases date accuracy on unopened mail

The Results

Following installation, Valldata used the DS9000 on the day of installation and had full throughput in less than 3 days, making an immediate return on investment. Valldata took on a higher volume of work over a shorter amount of time and reduced the number of operators required to manage the scanning process. It saved up to eight additional staff during peak periods, giving a payback on purchase in under 12 months. The DS9000 streamlined operations, from 3 days to 1 day, improved client service levels and reduced operational costs. BancTec was able to customize the DS9000 to reliably scan unopened returned mail. Valldata could process all returns without having to open the contents and prepare them for scanning. Valldata could also do away with much of the pre-sorting process and eliminated manually stamping each document with an ID number. Valldata has now bought a second DS9000, replacing all its remaining drum scanners.

In the Client’s Words

“Success for the charities depends on the accuracy and speed in which the campaign information, as well as the donations, is processed. By investing in the DS9000, Valldata is making a solid commitment to our customers to provide them with the best available services.”

“By choosing the DS9000, we greatly reduced the number of document jams, and it allows for very fast recovery times and gave us the highest document throughput of all the scanners we looked at. It has the most comprehensive set of features, including the ability to identify documents by size and type on-the-fly, and out of the three main vendors that we looked at, BancTec was the only supplier that could tailor the device to suit our specific requirements.”

Martin Kirk

Managing Director, Valldata Services

“All work is keyed and verified utilizing validation software which allows us to offer a 99.99 percent accuracy guarantee.  We can now turn around a charity donation from a process that took up to three days down to a same day service.”

Paul Doman

Operations Director, Valldata Services