• Major project is part of the Government’s “Digital by Default” strategy to improve customer experience through enabling digital communications
• 20 million pieces of inbound mail per year will be digitised and routed to the correct recipients at HMRC – reducing the time taken to process enquiries from weeks to days
• EDM will provide leading edge technology, highly automated production capability and proven ability to manage digital mailrooms

EDM Group, the information management specialists, announced that it has been awarded a significant three year contract worth £4 million by HMRC.  A key element of HM Government’s “Digital by Default” strategy, the contract begins on April 28^th 2014 and will involve EDM digitising, indexing and managing around 20 million pieces of inbound mail from individuals, businesses and intermediaries every year.

The contract is part of HMRC’s programme to transform how it deals with businesses and citizens via paper channels, helping HMRC to reduce post handling costs and improve its flexibility to meet demand through greater transparency and workflow.  EDM’s solution will enable HMRC to track inbound correspondence online within days rather than weeks.

The new solution is built around EDM’s industry-leading secure Digital Mailroom production hubs in Wolverhampton, where all HMRC post will be securely opened, prepared and scanned.  EDM will then use a state-of-the-art range of intelligent data capture technologies to index and classify all correspondence and forms before presenting digital images and associated metadata in an agreed format for uploading directly to HMRC’s digital document management repository and subsequent workflow.  From there HMRC staff will access and carry out business processes arising from each piece of correspondence.

HMRC engaged with over 30 companies during the course of an intensive and carefully managed procurement process throughout 2013 before selecting EDM.

Sam Ferguson, CEO of EDM Group, said: “This is a significant new contract for EDM and will play an important part in supporting our ongoing revenue growth expectations for 2014/15.  Our experience with HMRC will signpost the way forward for other public sector organisations in meeting the challenge of the government’s Digital by Default agenda.

“EDM is by far the UK’s leading provider of digitisation services of this kind and we have geared our operations up to deliver rapid ROI for organisations seeking to achieve step change efficiency gains whilst reducing costs, improving service, security and risk management. We’ve done all of this in the private sector and are delighted that the public sector, led by numerous NHS Trusts and now HMRC are taking bold steps to follow suit.”

EDM has provided a range of information management services to the public sector for a number of years and understands the importance of secure digitisation as part of the efficiency agenda.  In addition to its digitisation and capture capabilities and proven EDM Online document repository, EDM has developed a range of business process management/workflow solutions that enable public sector organisations to achieve huge efficiencies in business process handling. EDM is ISO27001 approved and provides services to a range of organisations with similarly stringent security requirements to those of HMRC.

EDM Group’s clients include Nationwide Building Society, Companies House, Legal & General, Lloyds Banking Group, Grant Thornton, NFU Mutual, Pfizer and numerous healthcare providers, including many NHS Trusts, and Bupa and BMI hospitals.