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Presort First Class is a full-service mail provider, offering a complete turnkey operation with the ability to import customers’ data into its own systems, print and fold their documents, insert them into envelopes, and then seal and meter the mail before submitting it in bulk to the U.S. Postal Service.
Presort First Class works hand in hand with the USPS, is closely involved with a number of mailing industry organizations, including the PCC Postal Council and National Association of Presort Mailers, and also provides education back to its customers. “We have a huge communication network going back and forth with the postal service. We are interfacing with the postal service almost daily on some level, and we have a standing weekly conference call with postal personnel to work out any issues we might have with how our mail is being submitted,” explains Eric Dilbeck, supervisor of maintenance and information technology at Presort First Class.
The Challenge
A critical aspect of growing the business is staying current with new technology. “Every piece of mail is tracked with a code. Mail is becoming a high-tech operation and it is a huge benefit for our customers that they don’t have to deal with the consequential issues involved,” says Dilbeck.
Based in Oklahoma City, the company started in March 1982 by presorting finished mail for customers and expanded its range of services to support their growing requirements. Today, Presort First Class mails out approximately 275,000 to 300,000 First Class letters each day, and all that mail is serialized in databases, analyzed and uploaded to the USPS so it knows what mail to expect. The company also provides address hygiene services and purchases mailing lists on behalf of customers. “We do a lot of postal cleansing and work closely with the postal service. We are our customers’ knowledge base when it comes to all things postal,” says Dilbeck.
Revelation Software has been core to the business for as long as Dilbeck can remember. In the early days, when the company was only doing mail presorting and a handful of other services, its billing processes were handled by a highly customized RevG system from Revelation. “But as we grew, it was not designed to handle the magnitude of services that we had, so we worked with Revelation and WinWin Solutions, its consulting firm, to build a new OpenInsight-based system, and that is what we are still running today,” says Dilbeck. OpenInsight, Revelation’s flagship database development suite, provides Windows, Web 2.0 and .NET tools to develop and deploy applications.