British Airways is partnering with Xerox to cut “up to a quarter” of the cost of its mail and digital print operations as part of a wider document management plan to improve process efficiency.
BA, which already uses Xerox for other services, has signed a five-year enterprise print services contract with Xerox.
Mark McCarthy, procurement executive at British Airways, said: “With Xerox focused on printing and streamlining our document processes, we can use our energy and time to focus on giving British Airways customers an improved service.”
To manage more than 1 million items processed through British Airways’ mail-handling operation at London Heathrow and London Gatwick airports, Xerox has partnered with MITIE Business Services to create a mail and distribution services hub in Uxbridge, about six miles from Heathrow Airport.
The 32 staff at the dedicated facility will carry out full security screening of all inbound mail items and associated courier deliveries. Before this deal BA had employed Pitney Bowes to manage its mail.
The next phase of the project will be to migrate the airline’s mail processing to a digital platform that feeds directly into its internal workflow systems, introducing further efficiencies, said Xerox.
Before this deal, Xerox already provided BA with printed materials such as technical publications, in-flight services and training manuals, as well as payroll printing. These operations, which produce around 26 million documents per year, will also be run from the new Uxbridge facility.
BA has not disclosed exactly how much it will save from the new contract or the value of the five-year deal.
Inefficient document management means western European businesses are effectively losing billions of pounds of potential profits because of “wasted time”, according to a report earlier this year.
Research conducted by Coleman Parkes on behalf of Ricoh suggested that employees across Europe responsible for managing business critical document processes spend around 362 million hours of their time per year on the function. This equates to a rough overall business cost of 147 billion (£133 billion), Coleman Parkes said.
