ACS Projects $165,000 Savings with New Address Quality and
Postal Sorting Solution
Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) Ohio provides disbursement unit services for
the state of Ohio's child support system. They process and send out payment coupons, disbursement checks and overpayment refunds to all parents within the system.
Problem
In the spring of 2006, ACS realized that their overall mailing costs were growing
excessive. Their address management solution offered by Group 1 (a division of Pitney
Bowes) had a significant yearly maintenance fee. It performed the address correction,
presorting and address updating they required for the approximately 50,000 checks
and 160,000 payment coupons sent every month, but the high maintenance costs minimized
the postal savings achieved.
In order to keep the state's address data secure, ACS had an NCOALink® End User
License to host the USPS® NCOALink data on their local network. But because ACS
was processing address data from a third party — the state of Ohio — and then returning
the updated addresses, USPS required ACS to upgrade to an NCOALink Limited Service
Provider license. This was a significant additional expense that ACS wanted to avoid.
So they sought an affordable alternative.
Solution
ACS contacted Satori Software to develop an addressing solution that could process
a large amount of data in real time. Because this address data is from a state government,
privacy laws require that this data remain very secure. MailRoom ToolKit
® Architect
could perform all the address management and mailing functions ACS needed, once
integrated into their system. MailRoom ToolKit Architect is a collection of technologies
that can be integrated into many existing applications or used in building a custom
application. All of its functions are exposed through COM, .NET and ActiveX APIs.
To get the best results from the smallest time investment, specialists from Satori
Software
® Professional Services were brought in to create a custom Architect application
using .NET with a SQL server backend.
Not only did Professional Services create a robust and easy to use custom addressing
application for ACS, they integrated it into the existing ACS mailing operation.
ACS has a complex data and mailing system to transform the data from the state into
printed child support and refund checks. They receive a single fixed-width source
file from the state that contains all the addresses for a mailing. The MailRoom
ToolKit application reads the source file, then corrects and validates the addresses,
checks for changes-of-address and presorts the mailing list before producing five
different text files. Two files go to the state: one lists updated addresses and
one lists addresses that failed to DPV™ confirm and, therefore, could not be associated
with a physical location. One file updates the ACS system, one file directs the
printers and the last file directs the folder inserter. All these files require
different information and have different formats.
Instead of paying for an annual NCOALink Limited Service Provider license, ACS is
now able to use the Satori Software change-of-address service for a small per-address
fee. While all address data is processed on the Satori Software remote servers,
the connection is secure and the data is compressed and encrypted. As a bonus, because
Satori Software is an NCOALink Full Service Provider licensee, ACS has access to
48 months worth of change-of-address data, instead of the 18 months they would have
had access to with either the End User license or the Limited Service Provider license.
Results
Patrick Collins, in the Information Technology department at ACS, estimates that
the switch to MailRoom ToolKit will save his company $165,000 over the remaining
three years of their contract with the state of Ohio. With this new streamlined
solution in place, ACS gained enough additional capability to bring some outsourced
print jobs back in-house and is looking to pick up even more business. "Satori Software's
time and expertise has been greatly appreciated," says Collins.
The custom MailRoom ToolKit application has managed to meet the very strict ACS
security policy. Every month, a third party security firm audits the ACS system
to make sure that none of the private address data is exposed. While some of the
printers in the mailing operation have been flagged by this audit, MailRoom ToolKit
has passed every time.
Whenever issues arose in this custom application, Satori Software Technical Support
has been able to fix most issues with one phone call. When ACS needed to make some
adjustments to the format of the fixed-width files that the custom application creates,
Professional Services quickly modified the application so that the format of these
files was controlled by an XML file, which ACS could modify easily as required.
"Support is a million times better than the previous solution," says Collins. "We
would call for support and they'd say, 'You need to take this class.' Well, that
doesn't solve my problem now. Support with Satori Software has been very responsive."
Other ACS sites are taking notice of the Ohio group's gains. Including the state
of Ohio, ACS processes over half of all child support dollars throughout the United
States at multiple sites. Collins expects that these other sites will want to follow
the Ohio site's lead "as soon as word gets out of our success."
Satori Software is a nonexclusive NCOALink Full Service Provider Licensee of the
United States Postal Service. Satori Software and MailRoom ToolKit are registered
trademarks of Satori Software, Inc. The following trademarks are owned by USPS:
DPV, NCOALink, USPS and United States Postal Service.
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