This blog post considers the background and relevance of the Digital Mailroom concept in 2021.

In the fast-paced digital age, the digital mailroom concept is extremely important to businesses for managing important documents.

But what is the history behind moving from the traditional mailroom, and will it continue?

The original concept of the Digital Mailroom Solution was conceived in an era when handling and managing inbound paper documents was the norm. Specifically, it originally focused on the process of digitising and indexing paper documents prior to being distributed via digital channels to relevant end-users such as knowledge workers, handlers, or processors in an organisation. In that sense, the Digital Mailroom can and should be considered an enabler of digitisation, a true “Digital Transformation” step.

Contemporary Digital Mailroom solutions typically stage document classification, data extraction and verification of structured content as scalable server-based processes to achieve digital mailroom automation.

The extracted dataset can be used via APIs (Application Programming Interface), RPA (Robotic Process Automation) or BPM (Business Process Management) tools to automatically trigger events and to update line of business applications – making it easier for companies to track and see data as it comes in.

Digital Mailroom systems were originally deployed at organisations with centralised operations, i.e. a managed facility implemented to handle all the needs of disparate groups within an organisation. Taking a moment to consider this fact, it’s how early scanning centres were organised. These facilities were relatively expensive to set up and operate; they were usually managed by the same team as physical mail, hence the close mailroom connotation.

Digital Mailrooms were, and still are, especially relevant where paper documents are abundant. Advocates of the approach are quick to include inbound emails and messaging in the same solution, i.e., a single conduit that can automatically handle and process all streams of inbound documents irrespective of their format and channel.

Do Digital Mailroom solutions reflect today’s needs, and how do organisations implement this system?

After the COVID-19 pandemic, remote and hybrid working will continue to be the norm in 2025. It is clearly advantageous for organisations to automate easily managed tasks. This doesn’t require a physical mailroom; organisations can adopt digital mailroom solutions to facilitate remote work.

The Digital Mailroom Services Market” [2024-2031] found that the market was valued at USD 1165.95 million in 2024 and will reach USD 1886.52 million in 2032.

As requirements continue to expand, some organisations still baulk at the notion of merging content from “native” digital channels into a Digital Mailroom Solution that was previously paper-document-oriented.

This is because there is a natural shift in operational responsibilities, i.e., the mailroom department acquires some ownership of processes outside of their former physical domain. With ownership comes responsibility: Information Governance, such as data privacy and security, as well as the integrity and resilience of upstream processes that often depend on accurate and timely information delivery.

Whether staged centrally or distributed at a departmental level, digitising or scanning paper documents is often appended as a natural step in the overall paper handling process.  There’s no mystique or magic here: envelopes are opened, documents prepared and scanned using Document Capture Software before being uploaded into a Workflow and/or Content Management system.

Processing unstructured information is a key part of the revised Digital Mailroom concept. Handling this content can be broken down into steps that many people will recognise because we often do them in our jobs:

1. Identifying and classifying information: This could be formal or informal, depending on the type of document or message. For example, a notice of intended prosecution, a new contract, or an invoice should be categorised because they have a clear business purpose. On the other hand, things like inquiries or sales communications may be classified more loosely.
2. Extracting relevant structured information: The data in the document or message connects it to an established or new process. For example, an insurance claim includes dates, times, policy numbers, and involved parties. To maintain accuracy and compliance, it’s essential to apply business rules when carefully verifying this data.
3. Capturing additional relevant data: To support the process, extra information such as dates, email addresses, phone numbers, or postal addresses can be added. However, only necessary data should be stored to avoid unnecessary information overload.

Supporting tools and technologies

There are essentially two groups of tools for managing inbound, unstructured information.

The first set of tools is classic “advanced” Document Capture solutions that perform document classification and data extraction (aka indexing) for all inbound documents at the time of ingestion. These solutions are considered adequate for automating these tasks, staging any exception handling and then exporting them to back-end systems such as Content Management and/or workflow / BPM solutions and line of business applications. These systems are often categorised as Automated Document Processing, Advanced Document Capture or Cognitive Capture solutions.  They typically attempt to normalise content by converting a scanned image into a fully searchable document in a ubiquitous format such as MS Word or PDF.

The second approach acts on documents already captured and exported into a repository. These may include Enterprise Content Management or even file systems on servers using rudimentary meta-data (such as sender, date, type, etc.) as the initial organisation and indexing structure (think folders for the originator and or date). Once stored, these new documents are automatically indexed in situ using a Discovery Software solution that allows complex queries to be quickly run across them; These queries can automatically generate XML export lists allowing other standard tools such as workflow, BPM and RPA to execute processes. These export lists are analogous to “to-do lists for robots”.

Which solution is a better fit? As always, it depends on requirements and there are merits and disadvantages in both methods; although the staging and set up is different, these systems work in similar ways and can deliver similar outcomes. Both employ machine learning techniques, and both offer sophisticated content analysis tools such as entity extraction and sentiment analysis that allow them to handle large volumes of unstructured information.

The Advanced Capture system approach is relatively fixed in its design and generally takes longer to configure and deploy. In contrast, the Discovery software solution provides more flexibility and less time to setup and deploy. This factor is especially important for dynamic situations where the structured dataset to be exported is subject to frequent change and index queries may need to be re-run across the whole repository.

Fundamentally, these differences can be contrasted as follows: Advanced Capture systems process documents to generate actionable index and meta-data. Whereas, Discovery systems query already generated index data to provide a view or optional list of actionable index and meta-data. These solutions have tended to gravitate towards specific use cases: Advanced Document Capture for transactional or case-oriented documents and Discovery for compliance and Information Management requirements, irrespective of the underlying business processes.

In summary

It’s clear from the figures mentioned above that the Digital Mailroom concept is still relevant today, and changes like the pandemic have made paper documents less common. However, the need to automatically classify and extract important information from electronic documents and messages has increased.

The environmental impact must also be considered

Globally, the pulp and paper industry is the fifth largest energy consumer, using more water per tonne of product than any other industry. Additionally, the Union of Concerned Scientists reports that wood products, including paper, contribute to around 10% of total deforestation.

A paperless office and the role of a digital mailroom can help reduce the use and need for paper in the organisation.

As we continue to change how we work and with ever-shifting market conditions, the benefits of the digital mailroom remain.

Or learn more about our digital mailroom solutions.