You know the deal. Long lines wrapping around your mailroom, students and faculty struggling to find their assigned mailbox, losing their keys, or failing to pick up their packages at all. These are just a few of the problems that university mailrooms face every day. While beneficial in years past, traditional student mailboxes have become antiquated, leaving many mailrooms behind the curve as they lose time and money with inefficient workflows. SCLogic’s campus logistics software, Intra EDU, is a comprehensive solution to alleviate your mailroom woes. Here, our team of university facilities management experts discusses whether student mailboxes are a thing of the past and how we offer modern solutions to set your mailroom up for success. 

Virtual Mailboxes: Your Campuses’ Modern Mailroom Solution

One of the most common problems for university mailroom managers is keeping their mailroom organized. Increasing volumes of student and faculty packages make it excessively difficult to maintain a structured mailroom, and when students fail to pick up their mail and packages, mailroom space becomes slim. Traditional student mailboxes are bulky, taking up needed space for your mailroom to function correctly. Often, students do not want to carry the burden of remembering their mailbox keys or combinations every time they want to check their mail. With racing thoughts of exams, social life, and more, students frequently forget their keys, mailbox combinations, and mailbox numbers, forcing your team to stop their daily tasks to assist, costing you needed time.

The solution – virtual mailboxes. Virtual mailboxes are a fantastic way to improve efficiency within your mailroom, keeping organization at the forefront and maintaining a solid chain-of-custody. When mail is delivered by a courier and taken to the mail center’s holding area, the mail is prepped for a virtual mailbox. From there, the mail is sorted and scanned into individual barcoded file folders. Once scanned, an automatic email or text is sent to the student letting them know they have packages or mail ready for pick-up. You can even customize this workflow to send reminders to students if they have failed to pick up their packages, creating a trail of communication in the event a student claims they did not receive their package. At a time when many campuses are navigating the complexities of hybrid learning, having a folder system that flexes with your student population is a must. 

Intelligent Lockers: Flexibility at Its Finest

If your mailroom is dealing with a large number of parcels coming in on a daily basis, traditional student mailboxes just don’t cut it. Too large for conventional mail and too small for boxes, student mailboxes are inefficient for storing packages. Without a modern solution, your mailroom is likely filled to the brim with packages improperly organized, leading to long lines for pick-up, missing packages, and limited access for students. Intelligent lockers are a new solution that puts students’ needs at the forefront and offers extensive reporting insights. As a mailroom manager, having a strong oversight of your daily mailroom workflow not only helps your university as a whole but helps your team establish relevant KPIs and SLAs to identify gaps and increase revenue.

Intelligent lockers give your students the ability to pick up their packages at any time, even outside of business hours, if permitted. At SCLogic, we combine forces with several of the nation’s top intelligent locker providers to provide an integrated solution that allows managers to eliminate the dreaded pick-up line and account for each package through an in-depth locker management system. When a package is placed in a locker, an automatic notification is sent to the student, letting them know their package is ready, like the notifications used for our virtual mailboxes. However, this notification also contains a passcode or QR code for the student to open their locker. We then use the entry of their passcode or the scan of the QR code as a “signature,” completing the delivery cycle. Intelligent lockers are the perfect solution for all parties, providing flexibility, accountability, and essential data to streamline your mailroom workflows!

Why SCLogic’s Campus Logistics Platform is Your Perfect Solution

At SCLogic, our team has had over a quarter-century of experience working with campuses of all sizes. From small colleges to nationally recognized universities like Vanderbilt, our campus logistics software, Intra, is a comprehensive solution configured to your campuses’ unique needs. We believe that there is nothing better than utilizing new technology in the world of facilities management and make it our goal to be a leading provider of innovative, campus logistics solutions. If your campus is interested in making efficient mailroom updates, email us at [email protected] or contact us today to schedule your demo.