Reading Borough Council is using hardware and systems from Pitney Bowes to process its increasing volume of postal mailings to its 230,000 citizens, such as electoral registration forms, housing benefit communications, planning applications, and promotional materials for arts and leisure centres, and its need to track and allocate postage costs to the correct department.
Roy Alder, post-room assistant, Reading Borough Council, said, “We chose Pitney Bowes’ MeterNet accounting software and two DM925 mailing machines. The two mailing machines are in constant use, handling up to 20,000 letters per month of up to A4 in size and 100 grams in weight, from 100 departments.”
The digital mailing system can automatically feed, seal, imprint postage and stack up to 250 letters per minute. Its weigh-on-the-way inline weighing with shape-based rating maximizes efficiency by processing mixed-weight and mixed-sized materials automatically.
MeterNet provides the council with a mailing accounting and consolidation package, offering unlimited departmental accounting, transaction details, statistics and reporting. Alder said, “Before MeterNet, our annual postal costs were difficult to trace. Now each of the 100 departments has a barcode reader which speeds up the data capture process, reduces operator error and, more importantly, allows us to monitor departmental expenditure.”
