Stamford, Conn. – Pitney Bowes Inc., a global technology company that provides commerce solutions in the areas of ecommerce, shipping, mailing, and data, today announced the winners of its 2018 Brilliance Awards: The Croatian Post, Fiserv, Merck, Renkim, and Broadridge.

The annual awards honor leading print and mail organizations for innovation and leadership in streamlining workflow, responding to market changes, increasing competitiveness and blending physical and digital technologies to optimize the value of their customer communications. The Brilliance Awards consists of four categories: Operational Excellence, Industry-Leading Compliance, Higher-Value Communications and Omni-Channel Customer Engagement. Each honoree was formally recognized today during the 2018 Pitney Bowes Innovation Summit at the company’s Global Technology Center in Danbury, Connecticut.

“We are delighted to recognize these outstanding companies with the Brilliance Award for their commitment to innovation and success in optimizing their print and mail operations,” said Grant Miller, president, Pitney Bowes Document Messaging Technologies. “From accurately sorting millions of mail pieces a day, to optimizing inkjet printing technologies that prints on a wide variety of substrates, to digitally managing return mail while still meeting strict compliance regulations, to producing full-color communications for less, to revolutionizing shareholder and regulatory communications with digital channels, this year’s winners are marrying physical and digital technologies to optimize communications. Their vision is driving greater efficiency and productivity while delivering a better experience for their stakeholders.”

2018 Brilliance Award Winners

Operational Excellence: Croatian Post, Zagreb, Croatia

The Croatian Post recently unveiled its new state-of-the-art mail and parcel sorting centers in Zagreb and Split, transforming itself into the premium sortation hub for in-country and out-of-country postal providers. The primary center in Zagreb features the Pitney Bowes Vantage™ Sorter with Business Logic Processing (BLP) software and VariSort™ Mixed Mail Sorter to process mail, flats and small parcels at astonishing speed and accuracy. These integrated systems, which leverage the latest Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology for increased read rates based on Croatian post formats and characters, provide exceptional accuracy, document integrity and security at a rate of 230,000 items per hour.

“We were looking for the best sorting solution available to replace our existing systems, which we could no longer operate and maintain with the sufficient level of security,” said Croatian Post CEO Ivan Culo. “Our new sorting systems are quicker and more reliable and help ensure timely delivery even during our peak loads of 2.5 million mail items a day. This new technology will enable us to be more efficient, while ensuring document integrity and security. Pitney Bowes has extensive experience and knowledge of postal business in general and all aspects of mail sorting, which has proved very valuable to us.”

Operational Excellence: Fiserv Output Solutions, U.S.

Fiserv, a leading outsource provider of high-value business-critical communications and financial services technology, needed a unique print solution to add capabilities to produce a wide-range of output, from transactional mail statements to healthcare ID cards. Fiserv selected the Pitney Bowes IntelliJet printing systems to deliver greater asset utilization, improved print quality, and better uptime than legacy solutions, on a more consistent basis. The new system, which includes five IntelliJet 20 systems and growing, has consistently produced excellent print output across sites, including an amazing 10x improvement in Teslin print throughput. Fiserv also employs Pitney Bowes inserters to seamlessly finish the mail pieces with greater productivity, accuracy and precision. Moreover, Fiserv leverages Pitney Bowes Presort Services nationally, which supports their strategic direction to focus on core competencies and their commitment to client SLAs and enhanced visibility of mail piece data.

“The performance of our new printing systems has been outstanding, which is allowing us to deliver greater value and service to our clients,” said Jason Gaskey, Vice President Operations, Fiserv. “We are very pleased with the results of our partnership with Pitney Bowes and look to continue to drive operational excellence for our clients and our business.”

Industry-Leading Compliance: Merck, U.S. Commercial Operations

Pharmaceutical Industry Compliance Regulations require companies to document and record all return mail as proof of mailing to their clients. One of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, Merck decided to find a better, more efficient way to meet this important requirement. Merck partnered with Pitney Bowes to implement its Return Mail Solution, which enabled Merck to take their physical returned mail pieces and create a digital file to meet their compliance regulations. Instead of warehousing physical returned mail pieces, the new automated solution captures a digital record of the outgoing mail information, the return mail reason codes and critical account information so Merck can tie the mail piece back to their specific client.

“Compliance is at the heart of all our operations,” said Susan Sikora, Director, Master Data Strategy and Integration, Merck, U.S. Commercial Operations. “This new return mail solution makes us more compliant and makes our operations more efficient and effective. Physically processing and storing return mail pieces became so costly we needed a better solution. Our new process not only eliminates those manual processing and storage costs, it speeds up the documentation, improves accuracy and ensures we are meeting our compliance requirements as well as capturing data needed to improve our address quality for future mailings.”

Higher-Value Communications: Renkim, Detroit, Mich.

Renkim Corporation is a leading provider of mission critical print and mail solutions for credit, collection, healthcare and automotive companies. To meet client demands for full color print, Renkim replaced multiple toner-based printers with Pitney Bowes AcceleJet printing and finishing systems.

The company and their clients are delighted with the output from the new printing systems, which not only raised the bar on color output quality, it significantly reduced operating costs by eliminating existing lease and maintenance costs. By moving to color inkjet, Renkim Corporation was able to boost color print productivity by 20% and meet increased client demand for full color document production.

“When we decided to look at inkjet to meet our full color needs, we heard great things about the AcceleJets from several trusted industry colleagues,” said Henry Lenden, Director of Operations at Renkim Corporation. “We were impressed with the print quality, minimal maintenance and flexibility of the new print systems. We gained the ability to print highlight color, full color, monochrome and perforated self-mailer documents using the one device.

“By partnering with Pitney Bowes, we streamlined our print and mail workflow, increased the ability turn jobs quicker and meet client service demands. Our goal is to create more impactful communications for our customers and grow our business. The AcceleJet helps us do that.”

Omni-Channel Engagement: Broadridge Output Solutions, U.S.

Broadridge, a global fintech leader, is helping clients to get ahead of today’s challenges by merging physical with digital through single integration. Broadridge’s innovation solutions allow for the secure distribution of statements, bills, and other documents across popular consumer destinations, such as bank sites, cloud storage providers and digital mailboxes.

Through Inlet, a joint venture with Pitney Bowes, Broadridge has successfully digitalized 64% of their Proxy and other regulatory communications and 30% of their customer communications – saving time and money for their clients and enhancing the impact of their communications. Their omni-channel strategy is revolutionizing shareholder and regulatory communications and transforming the investor communications landscape.

On the physical side, Broadridge continues to raise the bar in terms of operational productivity and performance. In the past year, they installed five Epic inserting systems to process their proxy statements and recently expanded their partnership with Pitney Bowes Presort Services to include more than 133 million standard mail pieces annually, for a savings of more than $1 million.

“Pitney Bowes has been a long-standing and trusted partner,” said Gary Abitz, EVP Operations, Broadridge. “With Inlet, our clients can now create a truly omni-channel user experience by meeting consumers online – which is where they want to be met – and physically. Inlet is just one of the many ways that we are helping clients transform their business to capitalize on what’s next.”

The 2018 Brilliance Awards were presented at the Pitney Bowes Innovation Summit at the Pitney Bowes Global Technology Center in Danbury, CT. Clients and partners from around the world attended the Summit to see the latest print and mail innovations offered by Pitney Bowes.