Thames Card Technology

Background

Established in 1995, Thames Card Technology Ltd (TCT) is one of Europe’s largest and most experienced plastic card manufacturers, having previously traded in the plastics industry for 40 years. With 250 employees, TCT operates from a single secure site in Rayleigh, Essex where it manufactures, personalises, fulfils and mails plastic cards for customers all over the world in markets ranging from banking and retail to telecoms and identification.

The organisation has one of the largest printing capacities of plastic cards in Europe and is accredited by VISA and Mastercard. One of the main benefits to these clients is that TCT offers a full end-to-end service from one location, keeping costs down and lead times short.

The Challenge

TCT mails approximately 4,800,000 items a year, which includes the cards and associated mailings, such as Personal Identification Number (PIN) notices. Around 80% are sent via Royal Mail’s postal service, with the rest being sent by TNT.

Due to growing customer demand, in 2000 TCT decided to take advantage of the mailing discount schemes offered by Royal Mail, including Mailsort, Walksort and Presstream. To do this, it would need software that would sort and categorise the items to be mailed, in order to produce labels that could be processed by Royal Mail. “After a large amount of research, we felt that Capscan was the market leader in their field, which made it the obvious choice to provide the software required,” comments Project Manager at TCT, Ian Baldry. 

The Solution

Today, as part of the fulfilment process, customer contact data files received from clients must be input into bespoke software written by TCT’s IT team, to accommodate individual customer requirements for each card. It is at this stage that contact data is processed for mailing.

TCT has now been working with Capscan for almost 10 years, using its Sortcode mailing software. Sortcode is used by nine employees to sort large volumes of customer data for mailing, so that TCT achieves the maximum savings available via Royal Mail and TNT’s discount schemes.

Benefits

Mail carriers’ discount schemes for bulk mail are designed so that the most complicated part of posting a letter – the sorting – is passed onto businesses that mail in large volumes such as TCT. Sortcode ensures TCT’s bulk mail conforms to postal discount criteria by pre-sorting, formatting and adding selection codes to address data prior to a client mailing and before it reaches Royal Mail and TNT. The simple interface and automatic processes ensure that the process is as streamlined as possible. TCT is rewarded with faster delivery and better accuracy in its large volumes of mail reaching its destination.

Seamlessly integrated into TCT’s bespoke software, Sortcode ensures bulk mail conforms to postal discount criteria by pre-sorting, formatting and adding selection codes to address data prior to a mailing or direct mail campaign, before it reaches mail carriers. More recently, TCT has benefited from increased support from Sortcode for TNT’s Premier Downstream Access (DSA) service, enabling the company to achieve additional discounts on top of Royal Mail’s Mailsort, Walksort and Presstream.

Adds Baldry, “Sortcode processes customer contact data in an efficient and speedy manner. As long as our clients cleanse and validate contact data at their end and at least 90% of the postcodes are correct, TCT experiences mailing cost discounts of up to 30% with some schemes.”

“We’ve continued to build a strong, long-term relationship with Capscan,” says Baldry. “The support from our account manager and the help desk is excellent, responding well to the few issues we have experienced. Communication of updates and new versions of Sortcode is managed in a timely and informative manner; Capscan always keeps up with the changing demands of data management and cleansing. In addition, the software is flexible and because of our strong experience with Capscan’s technology we can tailor any of our developments to suit.”