Talk to your customers in a way that works for them.
Our hybrid communication solutions are powerful and flexible, and scale to meet the needs of any business.
Paperpost is revolutionising outbound communication management with its industry-leading Hybrid Mail SaaS solution – H-POD. Combining unparalleled interoperability, scalability, and performance with an intuitive user experience, this innovative software offers a comprehensive suite of features enabling our customers to provide market leading hybrid mail services.
H-POD is a cloud-based SaaS solution, which boasts a robust feature set and seamless integration capabilities. Its versatility allows it to support a wide range of desktop users and systems that generate customer correspondence and is currently used by a diverse clientele.
The platform fuses cutting-edge technology and traditional mail services to deliver a seamless and efficient letter communication experience for both individuals and businesses. It integrates seamlessly with legacy systems and offers electronic delivery options, making it the ideal choice for businesses looking to modernize their communication processes.
The advanced features enhance communication workflows and data management. Its AI capabilities optimise processes, while APIs allow for seamless integration with existing systems. Tracking ensures reliability and metadata tagging supports interoperability.
What can H-POD do for you?
Hybrid Mail combines physical and digital mail processes to streamline business communications, enable cost savings, and enhance customer experience by delivering correspondence via postal mail or digital delivery channels based on customer preferences. Paperpost’s H-POD solution is the SaaS solution that support this.
The standard H-POD service is hosted in Microsoft's Azure Cloud, providing a robust and reliable infrastructure for users. Additionally, the platform offers a self-hosted option for customers who prefer to deploy H-POD on their own Azure subscription. The move to Kubernetes in 2019 further streamlined the service, allowing H-POD to run on multiple cloud services, including AWS and GCP. This flexibility allows customers to choose the cloud service that best fits their corporate standards and in-house cloud support teams.
H-POD offers versatile submission options, allowing users to upload documents through a Windows print driver, web interface, hot-folders, or API. This flexibility enables customers to tailor the system to meet the end users’ specific business needs. Additionally, a hierarchical account structure and role-based permissions allow for further customisation, providing granular control over system functionality ensuring users have access to the functionality they need.
Once documents are submitted, they're processed through a suite of standard modules that verify key elements to determine if they should be delivered physically or electronically, based on the options selected during submission. Business logic can also be customized at the account level to fine-tune the processing experience, such as adding regulatory inserts, modifying envelope sizes, adjusting delivery options, or identifying international mail. This logic is often driven by data extracted from the document, such as a document ID to specify enveloping and delivery options, an email address for electronic delivery, or a unique customer reference for archive ingestion.
Once documents are processed and any necessary inserts or attachments are added, they're securely transferred through H-POD's export process for physical printing and distribution via the postal service. Customers can choose from a range of triggers to initiate the export process, including volume, time, or a defined schedule. The output is industry-standard PDF and XML or JSON metadata, which are typically transferred to the customer via SFTP for automated integration into their printing workflows.
H-POD's metadata collection during the processing stage provides a wealth of information about each individual document, making it easy to integrate with customer archives and CRM systems. Traditional ad-hoc customer correspondence can be challenging to archive due to its unstructured nature and disparate creation across different parts of the business. However, H-POD's solution not only provides the indexing metadata required for efficient archiving, but also delivers fully formatted PDFs with additional components added during processing, supporting a comprehensive, single customer view within the enterprise archive or CRM system.
Management
Role based permissions allow any management function to be delegated to any users of the system. This means that users can be given specific roles such as the management of inserts and stationery.
In addition, H-POD tracks every step of your communications, from print production to delivery, giving you a crystal-clear view of the progress of your communications. You'll even know when your electronic communications have been viewed. H-POD is the ultimate tool for seamless, efficient, and transparent communication management.
Workflow is also built into the service. Documents can be flagged for authorisation based on criteria such as the data they contain, the inserts they use or the signature they bear. Other users with the appropriate authority can then decide whether to release the letter or cancel it. And with H-POD’s sophisticated rule engine, you can trigger document authorisations based on custom criteria - data, inserts, signatures, etc. Authorized users can then make the call to send or cancel the letter, all while maintaining a detailed audit trail for total security and peace of mind. You'll have full visibility of every step of your communication process. A full audit is maintained for security purposes so that any decisions made regarding the production and delivery of a letter are recorded.
H-POD empowers users with tailored roles that align with specific tasks. While users take control of their tasks, the system tracks every move with comprehensive tracking capabilities. When it comes to reporting, H-POD delivers the full package: detailed reports of individual packs, powerful management information reporting, and insightful analytics. It’s the ultimate balance of control and oversight for streamlined business operations.
Frameworks and Mail Merges
H-POD's frameworks enable users to effortlessly upload data files in CSV or JSON formats, merge them with customizable frameworks, and gain full control over document composition - no coding or technical expertise required. And when it comes to mail merges, all you need is a spreadsheet of names and addresses and the desired document, and H-POD will do the rest. It’s the ultimate 'set it and forget it' solution for personalized mass communication.
Secure Electronic Delivery with Enot.es
With H-POD's enot.es service, sending secure electronic communications is a simple. Submit your message as normal, and the system will promptly identify the recipient's email or SMS number and send a notification indicating a letter is waiting. The notification also includes a link to the letter, which requires the recipient to authenticate using a method selected by the sender, such as shared secrets, OIDC, or one-time passwords. This ensures that only the authorized recipient can view the letter, adding an extra layer of security to your communication process.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
H-POD leveraging AI in the communication sphere. The system can analyse the content of each communication to gauge its sentiment, with customizable settings to flag overly negative letters for approval by authorized users. Additionally, machine learning is employed to anticipate system load based on incoming documents, ensuring that the system runs at peak efficiency by analysing user behaviour and utilizing various data sources to optimize scaling capabilities.
Sustainability
H-POD was created to move more communications from physical to electronic delivery for economic and performance reasons but above all for sustainability. The manufacture of a single sheet of A4 paper creates between 4 and 6 grams of CO2. In the UK, Royal Mail estimates that each business mail letter delivery creates 20g of CO2. Paperpost have reduced the CO2 generated per pack for an enot.es delivered letter to 0.198g pf CO2. A reduction of well over 99%.
And we continue to improve. We have halved our CO2 emissions whilst doubling our document throughput. We use only renewable energy in our data centres. Our emissions are almost all from the manufacturing, transport, and disposal of the hardware we use. Our entire annual CO2 production is less than half that produced by heating the average UK home.
By offering such an efficient and sustainable communication solution, we allow our customers and their end customers to make huge improvements in their corporate carbon footprints.
