Standardized Approach

Long known for making its customers more productive, Stamford, Conn.-based Pitney Bowes turned its expertise inward. The $5.6 billion company, which employs 33,000 worldwide and provides software, hardware and services that integrate physical and digital communications channels, recently identified a pivotal opportunity for increasing the company’s own efficiency as well as its service offering.

Pitney Bowes Director of Research and Development Steven Innerfield says, “It became obvious we were missing a piece in the records life cycle in our document services practice. We have document creation, distribution and storage and records management but were missing the end stage, document destruction.”


Narrowing the Field
A highly risk-adverse corporation, Pitney Bowes endeavored to secure the destruction equipment it required by exploring suppliers it felt had demonstrated and proven expertise in this specialized field. To that end, Cambridge, Ontario-based Shred-Tech, in addition to others suppliers, was engaged in dialogue by the company. After providing Pitney Bowes with literature on its various equipment offerings, the company was included in a comparative analysis that Pitney Bowes conducted. When the time came for checking Shred-Tech’s references, Pitney Bowes enquiry team members were met with positive endorsements of the equipment company and its machinery.

Innerfield recalls, “As we progressed through our due diligence, Shred-Tech proved to be the obvious choice for us.” He continues, “And given their market presence and service excellence, they were able to accommodate us in every city we’re targeting, which once again underscored the value this relationship could bring to us.”

Throughout its search for a shredding equipment provider, Pitney Bowes says Shred-Tech continued to distinguish itself as a company. Shred-Tech proved reliable, forward thinking and remained true to its word, Innerfield says. “Commitments made are just followed through on as a matter of course with the people you deal with at Shred-Tech—it’s just that simple,” he adds.

Executing the Plan
With the Pitney Bowes selection process now complete, the staff at Shred-Tech directed its focus on the project at hand: the design and development of the custom system that would enable Pitney Bowes to close the loop on document life cycle management.

The Shred-Tech team’s input resulted in the initial setup of two new plants, one in Newark, N.J., and the other in Brisbane, Calif. (The Newark plant has served as the standard for Pitney Bowes as the company moves forward and builds additional document destruction facilities). A single shredder model was selected as the standard to provide a certain degree of predictability and reliability for the Pitney Bowes staff. Select in-plant and mobile shredding equipment was installed and put to work.

“Now that we’re at the end of Phase One, I can report that the equipment does what we were told it would, and, to be honest, probably even a little bit more than that,” Innerfield says, “even though we haven’t yet challenged it with volume.” However, tonnage output per hour has met Pitney Bowes’ expectations, he adds.

“For our second plant, it’s important to note that Shred-Tech acted as a single source for all aspects of the project—from design through to completion. In fact, their acting as the engineering resource resulted in significant dollar savings for us, which brings another time and dollar savings situation to mind,” Innerfield says.

“Recently, the baler broke down. The remarkable thing here was the [Shred-Tech] service technician was on site within a half-hour to get us up and running. That’s an almost unheard of service response. Having the same person responsible for the shredder and baler resulted in rapid response and very little downtime. That’s what you can expect when you engage Shred-Tech.” 

Innerfield continues, “We’re not in a business where we have a high tolerance for surprises, and, I’m happy to report to date, we haven’t had any.

“We also like that the management team at Shred-Tech actively looks ahead. Forecasting and readying for possible future trends and the impact such innovations could have on our businesses impacts positively on our designs, plans and decisions. This helps to position us well for continued success,” he adds.


Expanding its Range
With that once-missing piece of the document life cycle loop now firmly in place, Pitney Bowes is emerging as a formidable player in the information destruction space. According to the company, its clients enjoy the certainty of knowing Pitney Bowes performs to the standards established by the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID), the Phoenix-based trade association representing information destruction professionals.

A welcome addition, document destruction fits nicely with the professional services traditionally provided by Pitney Bowes. With this enhanced capability, Pitney Bowes says it is attracting prestigious, high performing organizations and business professionals who are searching for a full document management solution. Pitney Bowes claims it now offers a safe, secure, efficient and compliant way to process and destroy business information.



This article was submitted on behalf of Shred-Tech (www.shred-tech.com), Cambridge, Ontario, and Pitney Bowes (www.pb.com), Stamford, Conn.