As campuses across the country return for in-person and updated hybrid learning initiatives, universities have had to adjust to accommodate the changing needs of their student body. As the return to campus grows, so does the need for universities to prioritize the student experience, ensuring that their entire campus is optimized with safe, modern, and efficient resources and technology. Of course, this is important in classrooms and recreational facilities, but internal operations such as your campus mailroom should not be overlooked. Investing in a comprehensive campus logistics platform, such as Intra, improves both the student and employee experience by optimizing your mailroom through configurable workflows and integrations, saving your team time and money. Today, our university mailroom software experts at SCLogic discuss five ways our platform minimizes costs for your mailroom, leading to expedited growth and additional revenue. 

Mailroom Automations Save Your Team Valued Time

Automations, automations, automations. Honestly, we love automations so much, we could talk about them all day long. All too often, we see universities using outdated software, or even worse, manual package tracking, within their mailroom. Mailroom managers and employees spend their entire day sorting, organizing, and sending out packages with no centralized software, leading to increased human error and an unhappy student and faculty body. Thankfully, with our Student & Faculty Mail Workgroup, many of these pain points are eradicated. This workgroup offers workflows such as automated package tracking, address forwarding, virtual mailboxes, and optional workflows such as digital mail or courier services.

No longer are you struggling to locate missing packages, organize a storage room full of items for students who haven’t picked up their packages, or minimize the seemingly endless lines for package pick up each day. Instead, your team can utilize automations such as email or text notifications during package scans and forward mail and packages to former students and faculty that are not currently on campus. Automations save your team extensive time by minimizing the need to send out notifications or manually search for updated mailing addresses. Automations also reduce costs significantly by ensuring your mailroom remains organized, meaning no need to pay for additional storage to hold dated mail, pay for expedited shipping once misplaced packages are found, or purchase multiple point-solutions to solve individual needs. 

Mobile-First Software Improves Collaboration & Mobility

One of the most significant trends for new facilities technology is emphasizing a mobile-first interface. If you know Gen-Z, then you know just how involved they are with smartphone usage; it’s essentially an extension of themselves. According to the Center for Generational Kinetics, 55% of Gen-Z use their smartphones for five or more hours daily, with more than a quarter using them for over 10 hours a day. Furthermore, Dell Technologies reports that 80% of Gen-Z hopes to work with cutting-edge technology, with 91% citing technology as the most important factor when choosing a job. When working at a university, implementing mobile-first technology that both staff and students can use bridges the technology gap, improves communication in all areas, and increases mobility for mailroom managers and employees as they move about campus.

 When you use Intra, your team has resources, including real-time updates, to complete tasks as efficiently as possible. This means that when mailroom employees are organizing and delivering packages across campus, special requests, new shipments, and updates can be viewed immediately on their mobile devices. Additionally, scanning packages for proof of delivery in real-time helps close the chain-of-custody loop and prevent any errors by waiting to manually enter completion notes when employees return to the mailroom. On the student side, students can receive automated texts and emails when a package is ready for pick up and fill out forms via their mobile device for forwarding preferences to ensure that their mail and packages are delivered correctly. In turn, you are spending less on delivery employees, resulting in fewer mistakes by your team that would ultimately cost time and money.

Mailroom Logistics Platforms Help Optimize Storage Space

One challenge that plagues mailroom managers on campuses of all sizes is the need for storage space. It seems as if no matter the size of your mailroom, disorganization, and lack of storage space always seem to arise. When working with an outdated or manual mailroom logistics system, these factors only increase in intensity, resulting in both employees and students becoming frustrated as the endless search for their packages continues. By investing in a campus logistics platform like Intra, myriad modern solutions can be implemented to alleviate these mailroom pain points, including barcoded shelves, virtual mailboxes, and P.O. line item receiving (POLIR) integrations.

With Intra, your team can barcode shelves and sections across your mailroom, configuring them in a unique way that works best for your campus, whether by department, campus housing, name, or other factors. No longer are you sorting and searching through piles of packages trying to pinpoint a single piece of mail while your student pick-up line continues to wrap around the mailroom. Instead, you have an immediate and exact location of package storage. If you’re not struggling with package storage issues, your team has surely dealt with endless paper mail taking up unnecessary mailroom space. Traditional mailboxes take up space, and students constantly forget their keys, codes, and mailbox numbers. Virtual mailboxes improve storage within your mailroom by sorting each piece of mail into designated file folders once delivered, then sending notifications to students and faculty to decide if they want to save, forward, or trash that piece of mail.

Finally, POLIR is a fantastic tool for large campuses, providing mailroom managers insight into how many packages they are getting on a given day. In turn, they can adjust how many employees are needed and pre-organize the mailroom to prepare for a large shipment, working proactively to keep their mailroom as organized as possible. So, how does this save your team money? Suppose you run out of storage space within your mailroom. In that case, you will likely find some frustration in getting an expansion of space from your department without either having to finance that on your own or seek help from other facilities departments, which could take months or even years. Investing upfront in a campus logistics platform like Intra will save your team countless dollars long-term.

Various Integrations Alleviate Point Solution Problems

The plague of the point solution. If you don’t work in facilities management technology, you may not be familiar with the difference between a platform and a point solution, but our savvy software team can tell you time and time again why a comprehensive software platform reigns supreme. In short, a software platform, such as our logistics solution, Intra, is a platform that holds an exhaustive list of abilities, making it the all-in-one solution for facilities managers. Point solutions, however, are created for a specific purpose, generally only able to complete one or two tasks for your team. So often, we see campuses with multiple point solutions, working with different interfaces, customer service representatives, and communication needs that don’t interact effectively, if at all.

When using point solutions, your team is likely shifting back and forth between various programs, some of which work best on different interfaces. Data cannot be transferred amongst these point solutions, and when an issue arises, your team must work with representatives from multiple companies instead of just one. Additionally, SLA requirements differ for each solution you’re using, and contracts may overlap, leading to excessive funds spent to keep each point solution running accordingly. When using a comprehensive platform, you can eliminate unnecessary point solutions and instead incorporate integrations such as intelligent lockers, kiosks, mail sorters, outbound shipping platforms, and carrier integrations including USPS, UPS, and more. The result? One platform that does it all, giving you one point of connection to solve your individualized mailroom needs in the blink of an eye and saving you money while doing it.

Modernize Your Mailroom with Intra EDU

Whether you are a community college serving your local area, or a large state university with multiple campuses housing students from across the country, SCLogic’s Intra EDU software has the capabilities to help you master your mailroom. As students return to campus with adjusted needs and a desire for a technology-savvy campus, working from the ground up by investing in facilities management software is the building block to bring your campus to the future. Our comprehensive campus logistics platform, Intra, offers configurable workgroups and workflows to solve your campus’ unique pain points. With a mobile-first interface dedicated to optimizing the student, faculty, and employee experience, Intra EDU is your complete campus solution. To learn more about our Student & Faculty Mail Workgroup and our other offerings, email [email protected] for more information or schedule a demo with one of our team members today!