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StreamWeaver Bolsters Integrity for Ameriprise Financial
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Ameriprise Financial Services, headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, is a leader in financial planning. Ameriprise expects perfection when processing critical customer messages, such as monthly financial statements and related correspondence.
To better serve their customer base, Ameriprise has two goals — achieve flawless execution for every mail piece processed and guarantee privacy for clients.
The Challenge
Better Than Perfect
Ameriprise’s inserting operation was already very good with a defect rate at a Six Sigma level of less then two dozen for the 45 million mail pieces processed annually. But, they wanted to achieve perfection by bringing the error rate down to zero.
Keep It Private
Privacy has always been a top priority for both Ameriprise and their customers. Today, with the growing problem of identity theft, legislation such as HIPAA, and rising customer expectations, it is more important than ever.
Big Business, Bigger Concerns
Ameriprise knows, first hand, the concerns and headaches that go along with a large operation. Both their financial business and print/mail finishing operations are substantial. The Ameriprise Financial side of the house serves close to three million individual, business, and institutional customers with a variety of investment alternatives. In addition, their print/mail operation prints 300 million pages each year, resulting in 45 million financially sensitive mail pieces. That is a lot of responsibility.
The Solution
Customized Hardware and Software
To handle their varied and growing mailstream, Ameriprise implemented a coordinated mix of hardware, software, and professional services from Pitney Bowes. The customized solution consists of Inserting Systems equipped with state–of–the–art Direct Connect file-based processing control systems for assured mail piece integrity, coupled with StreamWeaver print stream engineering software to facilitate document composition and boost processing efficiency and integrity.
Help from the Experts
Pitney Bowes Professional Services team provided invaluable expertise, in the form of training and programming services, to assure the new customer messaging capabilities were implemented quickly and smoothly.
The Benefit
Safety, Security and Accuracy
Ameriprise achieved absolute integrity through the interaction between the print engineering software and the file-based processing control system. This combination allows Ameriprise to create a mail run data file, and use barcodes and high-speed scanning technology to assure that each mail piece is assembled accurately.
Automation Is King
Integrity is further bolstered by the system’s capability to automatically outsort and regenerate mail pieces that are flawed or even suspected of being flawed. Manual intervention is removed from the operation, thereby eliminating the chance for human error. This increases the productivity of the operators, since they can now concentrate on keeping the systems up and running, instead of worrying about flawed mail pieces.
A Dollar Saved
Ameriprise has saved an estimated $100,000 a year in postage, materials, and labor costs by merging multiple documents that are intended for the same recipient or household — such as dividend checks — into a single envelope.
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