The Paper Independence Project
How a Victorian Council automated end-to-end email processing, eliminated manual document handling, and freed their team to focus on work that actually mattered.
A Council leading on digital transformation. Held back by a paper problem.
This Victorian Council had already championed one of the largest information quality projects in their organisation's history. They were digital transformation leaders within local government. But their incoming correspondence process had not kept pace.
Paper mail, webmail, emails, and attachments were all arriving daily. Every single one needed to be manually read, classified, and registered in their EDRMS. Staff were spending a growing share of their time on processing work that added no strategic value.
They chose to explore automation to better manage and control the growth in incoming written communications, and to find a way for their team to focus on higher-value work.
The problem in plain terms.
Four things were making the status quo unsustainable.
Volume
Incoming correspondence was growing rapidly. What the team could manage manually was hitting a ceiling, with volumes heading toward 10,000 emails per month.
Manual effort
Every document required a staff member to read it, classify it, and register it in the EDRMS by hand. Paper, webmail, and email attachments all required individual handling.
No existing solution
No supplier in the market could provide technology capable of automatically registering documents and integrating seamlessly with their EDRMS and other business applications.
KPI pressure
Staff were expected to process correspondence efficiently and within team KPIs. The growing manual workload was making that harder to sustain consistently.
The cost of manual correspondence handling is not just the time spent processing. It is the compliance risk, the inconsistency, and the ceiling it puts on what your team can actually achieve.
Receipt to registration, without a single manual step.
Exedee's Intelligent Email eSolution was selected for its end-to-end automation capability, ease of implementation, and the AI powering it, alongside deep experience in processing council documents specifically. No other supplier could match the offering.
A focused pilot to prove the concept before any broader rollout. Real results, contained risk, clear decision point for management.
The system automatically reads, classifies, and extracts metadata from every incoming document across all channels without staff involvement.
Documents registered directly into the Council's existing records management system. Built around their infrastructure, not as a replacement for it.
The pilot results were clear enough that management authorised full implementation across all incoming correspondence channels.
One person doing the work of five.
The productivity numbers were significant. But the broader impact went further than the metrics.
The Corporate Information Team, initially uncertain about what automation would mean for their roles, embraced the change. Freed from manual processing, they shifted focus to higher-value projects, internal training, and building new skill sets across the team.
The work did not disappear. It improved. The Council went on to be recognised among the Top 100 Innovative Organisations across Australia and New Zealand.
Industry Award for Excellence in Records Management received within two years of go-live, alongside recognition as a Top 100 Innovative Organisation across ANZ.
Where are you on the automation journey?
The Council started with a focused pilot on three document types. That is all it took to prove the value and unlock a full transformation. Find out where your organisation sits and what a realistic first step looks like.
