Calhoun Community College’s central mailroom receives hundreds of packages a month on behalf of its faculty members. The operation, led by Clint Young, involves receiving, tracking, and delivering packages to three different campus sites and more than 25 buildings. For years, the team relied on a completely manual process involving handwritten logs, photocopied forms, and physical signatures that created inefficiencies and accountability challenges at every step. This past summer, Clint transformed his operations by upgrading to Received Digital.
Challenge
Before implementing Received Digital, Calhoun Community College’s package management process was entirely manual and very labor-intensive. When packages arrived at the receiving area, staff first had to record the last four digits of the tracking number, the carrier, the sender, and the recipient on a self-made paper form. Once completed, the forms were photocopied twice. One copy was kept as proof of arrival and the other two were used for delivery purposes.
A courier then took the packages and forms to deliver them to recipients across the three campus sites, collecting signatures on the courier’s copy as proof of delivery. After delivery, the signed forms were returned to Clint, who scanned them into PDFs for record-keeping. This cumbersome process created multiple pain points that compromised efficiency and accuracy. In Clint’s view, two challenges stood out the most:
Reading handwriting on log sheets, and knowing where packages were in the process.
Since all of the information on the paper-based forms was handwritten, key details were sometimes illegible, making the forms unreliable for tracking and verification. And illegible handwriting wasn’t the only limitation. Occasionally, the courier would miss obtaining a recipient’s signature during delivery, leading to gaps in chain-of-custody.
When packages were reported missing, Clint had no easy way to search through his archive of forms. Despite his careful and meticulous record-keeping, tracking down information was a tedious, time-consuming task.
Solution
Clint’s top priorities were to simplify the receiving process and improve record-keeping. Over the years, Clint had evaluated multiple platforms that just “weren’t clicking right.” All of them were limited to barcode scanning as a means of capturing package information. None provided a way of automatically identifying recipient details, a critical gap that prevented any meaningful automation.
Finally, Clint came across Received Digital and was able to rigorously test the platform for a full month before committing to implementation. This trial period allowed his team to experience firsthand how the solution would transform their workflow. Clint described the implementation process as …
Quick and easy. Very easy to learn.
One of Received Digital’s core differentiators is its vision technology enabled by image capture. With a single image of a package label, Received Digital recognizes and records barcode values, recipient information, and more. This immediately addressed the fundamental limitation of previous solutions Clint had evaluated. All of the information Clint had previously recorded manually could now be captured instantly with a single image, allowing the system to automatically identify the details and assign the package to the proper recipient.
Clint’s colleague reacted enthusiastically to the new solution during the trial, immediately recognizing how much easier the logging process would be with image capture replacing the tedious handwritten paper forms.
Benefits
Since adopting Received Digital, Calhoun Community College has experienced significant improvements in both efficiency and record-keeping. The transformation from paper-based logging to digital image capture immediately eliminated the challenges with illegible handwriting. In addition, the process of logging items is now much faster. With the ability to capture images of packages in rapid succession while the system works to identify information in the background, time-consuming logging sessions are a thing of the past.
When asked which features have been most beneficial for his operations, Clint replied …
[Batch receiving] has sped up receiving, and looking for packages in-app as opposed to waiting on paper copies to return.
Received Digital maintains the entire event history of every item received, from the moment it’s imaged to the time it’s delivered to the recipient. In the past, Clint only attempted to maintain a year’s worth of delivery records. Now, the team has extensive historical data and a more accessible, searchable audit trail for all package transactions.
The ability to access package information instantly has transformed their responsiveness when faculty inquire about deliveries. When an investigation is required, the team is no longer forced to search through scanned documents. Instead, the item can be brought up in Received Digital using a range of flexible search and filtering tools.
The gaps in chain-of-custody have been filled as well. Previously, when the courier was unable to obtain a physical signature from the recipient on the paper form, it would be left blank, and proof of delivery was lost. Received Digital has solved this problem by offering multiple methods for capturing proof of delivery. When a digital signature can’t be collected, the courier can now take a picture of the item upon delivery. The ability to deliver items in a batch is another huge time-saver, as the college’s departments often receive multiple packages at once. This allows the courier to collect one signature or capture one image for an entire batch of items delivered at once. Every item in the batch is updated simultaneously, with proof of delivery automatically attached to each record.
Together, these improvements have reshaped how the mailroom operates, and Clint shared that feedback from recipients and staff has been “all positive.”
Conclusion
Calhoun Community College’s adoption of Received Digital represents a successful transition from a paper-intensive, manually driven process to a modern, efficient digital system. By replacing handwritten logs and photocopied forms with quick and easy image capture and digital tracking, Clint and his team have eliminated longstanding inefficiencies and created a more accountable, responsive package management operation. After years of evaluating solutions that fell short, Calhoun Community College finally found a platform that truly meets its needs and has earned positive feedback from everyone involved.
