STAMFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Pitney Bowes (NYSE:PBI), a global technology company that provides innovative products and solutions to power commerce today celebrated the two-year anniversary of the Epic Inserting System by announcing several innovations that will make the company’s first multi-format inserter even more versatile and user-friendly. Pitney Bowes is showcasing the latest model of Epic this week at the Messe in Lucerne, Switzerland during Hunkeler Innovationdays 2017, the event where the solution was first launched in 2015.

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The Pitney Bowes Epic Inserting System is engineered to drive a reduction in total cost of ownership for high-volume mailers. US-based Financial Statement Services and UK-based Communisis are among the production mail and marketing services firms who have chosen the solution. (Photo: Business Wire)

In just two years, Epic has become the company’s flagship production mail solution, helping Pitney Bowes grow revenue in the inserter space and strengthen its position as the global market leader in production mail inserting solutions. The three largest transactional mail service providers in the world have installed Epic Inserting Systems and the solution won a Readers’ Choice Top Product Award from Printing News in the mailing and finishing category.

With up to 50 percent fewer outsorts and less reconciliation time compared to other high-speed inserting solutions, clients leverage Epic’s agility to move swiftly and easily from job to job and from letters to flats in a single workcell. For clients with multiple, varied jobs, this provides flexibility and ease of use. Through its enhanced, fully automated setup, Epic can change between formats in less time than it takes to load envelopes. Engineered to drive a reduction in total cost of ownership, the technology delivers a higher yield per operator for both simple and complex jobs with significantly reduced, repeatable make-ready times.

These benefits have led production mail and marketing services organizations like US-based Financial Statement Services, Inc. and UK-based Communisis to select Epic. Communisis, one of Europe’s leading providers of customer communications for major brands, plans to install two Epic Inserting Systems following Hunkeler Innovationdays.

“The Epic Inserting System is a key driver of our plans for growth,” said Tom Webb, Operations Director-Produce at Communisis. “Epic’s power, speed and efficiency means we can provide a better customer experience with faster output, improved production and greater value. We can offer faster turnaround as the automation makes it easy for us to switch quickly between different jobs and formats, and we can assure clients of the highest standards of integrity.”

Client-led innovation and The Epic Changeover Challenge

“We’re pleased with the results Epic is delivering for our clients,” said Jason Dies, President, Pitney Bowes Document Messaging Technologies. “We started the design process for Epic by truly listening to our clients and understanding their common challenges. They wanted a solution that would raise productivity and lower operational costs, while also being easy to operate. We’ve achieved those goals and we’re confident in Epic’s future success because we are constantly working with our clients to refine and strengthen the offering.”

At Hunkeler Innovationdays 2017, Pitney Bowes is demonstrating Epic’s latest functionality upgrades, including enhanced automated setup and 60 percent greater flats filling capability. This new platform will also support dynamic stitching and booklet feeding to meet client requirements.

To demonstrate Epic’s ease-of-use, Hunkeler attendees are encouraged to take “The Epic Changeover Challenge” and experience first-hand how intuitively, quickly and easily anyone can convert set-ups from letters to flats and process a short-run job.

Other product innovations since Epic’s 2015 launch include:

• Engine Scanning
• Merging Input
• DM Infinity
• Resettable Meter
• Gapping Folder
• Output Area Scan
• Insert Batch Feeding
• Feeder to Feeder Match
• PPM & 14K Flats PPM
• Back Space/White Paper Removal
• Output Linescan
• Manual Handfeed Station
• High Speed Batch Feeding
• Privacy Guard
• Introduction of Epic Select

Leveraging the power of the Industrial Internet

Also new to Epic is the availability of the Pitney Bowes Clarity Solutions Suite for the Industrial Internet. Clarity is a SaaS-based offering hosted on GE’s Predix platform that collates, integrates and organizes data collected from sensors on production mail machines. Pitney Bowes then helps its clients use the data and real-time insights to drive predictive analytics and prescriptive maintenance, optimize operational performance, and improve outcomes.

From the performance of a specific motor on a single machine to the productivity benchmarks of leading print and mail operations around the world, Clarity is designed to provide the client with a view of their operations and the overall industry on a micro- and global-level that was never before visible. The insights derived from Clarity help clients plan and manage production downtime, resource allocation, investment, productivity, service levels, capacity management, job scheduling and forecasting.

“With Epic and Clarity, what we’re really delivering is productivity,” said Dies. “Our industry is measured in tenths of pennies and fractions of seconds. Our clients are being tasked with meeting extremely challenging SLAs. Every advantage we can give them in terms of keeping their machines up and running and managing workflows as strategically and efficiently as possible can help their bottom lines. That’s the value we offer with these solutions.”

Case Study: Epic improves productivity for financial statements provider FSSI

Specializing in the printing and mailing of financial statements, healthcare documents and other sensitive information, FSSI is a business subject to work-level variations. During its busiest times, the company mails up to 15 million documents each month.

FSSI needed to improve mailing speed and efficiency to accommodate the demands of a growing clientele. Many of these clients are served through same-day service level agreements requiring that documents be printed, inserted and entered into the mail stream the same day the print file is received by FSSI.

The company also wanted to reduce downtime. “One of our requirements was to significantly reduce set-up and reconciliation times between applications,” said Henry Perez, FSSI Chief Operating Officer.

Capable of handling up to 270,000 pieces of mail and more than 70 changeovers per day, the Epic Inserting System helped FSSI process items much more quickly while also reducing the downtime that occurs between different types of job runs. It accomplishes this by combining letter and flat insertion capabilities in a single machine. Automation capabilities allow mailers to quickly switch between flat and letter jobs, helping to reduce downtime and improve capacity planning. The Epic inserter’s modular nature also allows organizations to add further inserting capabilities as work volumes demand.

The speed and automation of the Epic inserter has helped FSSI dramatically reduce changeover time between jobs while automating smaller jobs that would have previously had to have been processed manually. This has helped FSSI meet stringent SLAs and target new jobs.

As Perez explained, "If we're running an inserter that's processing letters then we have to set the machine up in a flats configuration and a significant volume is needed to make it worth the changeover time. For a smaller job, it would take more time for changeover than to actually insert the job. But if we can changeover in six minutes, it makes sense to do it. With Epic, we can now automate smaller flats jobs with the confidence that we can switch back to high speed inserting quickly."

About Pitney Bowes

Pitney Bowes (NYSE: PBI) is a global technology company powering billions of transactions – physical and digital – in the connected and borderless world of commerce. Clients around the world, including 90 percent of the Fortune 500, rely on products, solutions and services from Pitney Bowes in the areas of customer information management, location intelligence, customer engagement, shipping, mailing, and global ecommerce. And with the innovative Pitney Bowes Commerce Cloud, clients can access the broad range of Pitney Bowes solutions, analytics, and APIs to drive commerce. For additional information visit Pitney Bowes, the Craftsmen of Commerce, at www.pitneybowes.com.

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