+ RSSMailroom Design
Optimising the layout of your mailroom is a vital step in the overall planning your business operations. Making full use of the space available to you is something you must achieve in order for your companys processes to run as smoothly as they possibly can. It often occurs that businesses give their mailroom lower priority than the rest of their operations and end up suffocating their own operation.
Meticulous planning on the size of your mailroom is essential for ongoing, smooth business processes. You must take into account the amount of mail that you plan to receive, not just in the short term, but for the next five to ten years. If your plan is to double the size of your business every three years then having a mailroom that is only big enough for your current operations is likely to cause you unnecessary expansion costs.
The next thing to consider is whether you will automate your mailing process. I.e. will you dedicated staff to hand sorting your businesses incoming mail, or will you buy the equipment that automates the process. Purchasing the equipment may seem like the most costly way, but if you add up all of the labour costs of having the mail hand sorted over a few years, then the automatic equipment comes out as the more cost effective option on the long run.
The type of racking or storage that you use will play an important role in the overall functionality of your mailroom. You should consider the type of mail you will be receiving and plan your storage space accordingly, i.e. if you are mostly going to be receiving letters, then your storage racks would be different to if you were going to be receiving mainly parcels. If you opt for letter storage, then any parcels received will have to be put somewhere else, which will undoubtedly lead to inefficiencies. By conducting an initial assessment of your incoming mail you can vastly increase the functionality of your mailroom.
Another factor to take into account is your average daily mail intake, and the way you transport it. You will only want fairly small trolleys if you are mostly receiving letters, but you will require bigger ones if you receive lots of parcels. Many companies do not think about these seemingly trivial matters.
The overall criteria of a well designed mailroom is that is maximises the use of space, which will in itself optimise the running of the business operations. It is important not to rush this stage of the setup process and to take some time over it if you want your mailroom to be effective and efficient in sending out and receiving mail, day in, day out for years to come.
