Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council (MBC) runs local services for around 220,000 residents. This includes bin collections, street lighting, libraries and leisure centres in Stockport, Greater Manchester.

The Mailing and Scanning team at the authority help colleagues process documents for distribution to customers and suppliers.

The challenge

The team at Stockport MBC have to process documents that contain personal data. To support its GDPR compliance, it wanted to make the posting of letters as secure as possible to avoid data breaches.

The authority’s mailing and scanning team started to look for a secure Hybrid Mail solution.

They also wanted to encourage less use of paper and copiers and to save colleagues time on printing.

The solution

Stockport MBC’s mail carrier, Whistl, recommended Datagraphic’s Aceni Hybrid Mail.

A UK-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application, Hybrid Mail, as Stockport MBC’s Hub Manager, Brian Taylor, describes it is ‘a slick, swift mail service that people can operate from anywhere.’

The ‘anywhere’ flexibility of Hybrid Mail has made it a perfect solution since the lockdown due to COVID-19. When colleagues could no longer work in the office, Hybrid Mail was still there working for them to get mail delivered securely.

Key Benefits

The Mailing and Scanning team at the authority have noticed several benefits since using Hybrid Mail:

• Large print runs can now be handled with the click of a button.
• There is no internal printing and enveloping, which means large mailshots can process much quicker.
• The authority’s staff now spend much less time waiting at the printer and can focus on other tasks.
• The controls and automation in Hybrid Mail mean the team have a secure GDPR-compliant UK mailing facility.

And as already mentioned, an unexpected benefit of the service is the fact Hybrid Mail helps homeworkers. As staff return to “normality” after the COVID-19 pandemic, many people will continue to work from home and use their Hybrid Mail facility.

“Aceni Hybrid Mail is a very impressive service. It’s very easy to use and I have trained colleagues over the phone with excellent results.

Response times to queries are fantastic and the online live chat help facility has proved invaluable since it was introduced. In my role, Datagraphic has given me back much needed time by not being afraid to contact our users directly to resolve any questions.

Avoiding data breaches is high on the list of the authority’s priorities. Datagraphic has enabled us to do this.”

Brian Taylor, Hub Manager, Mail and Scanning, Stockport MBC.