Print and Mail Outsourcing - History in The United States

History in The United States

In the world of statement processing and critical variable print customer communications, outsourcing first became popular with the largest financial services firms in the 1990s. The volume of printing and mailing and associated operational overhead on their balance sheets commanded considerable visibility. Consultants helped firms to ask the question, "What are my core competencies?" Can someone else do this better for me? The answer, unless corporations were mega print and mail experts running load-leveled operations, almost never included "print and mail" as a core competency. The answer was usually "yes".

The term "outsourcing" became very common in the print and mail business and later expanded to be very broad and inclusive of most any process by the year 2000, including offshore outsourcing, which rapidly became most synonymous with the term because of the political visibility.

But print and mail outsourcing has continued to grow with advancing technology supporting the industry since the onset of laser printing. Now color laser, digital presses and high speed full color commercial ink jet printing are coming into full production environments. "Print to mail" or "Print and mail" are now common terms for referring to the process of utilizing outside firms specializing in print and mail to handle these common production tasks.