Making sure your mail is delivered to a high standard, both internally and to your customers and suppliers can have a massive impact on your reputation. And being accredited for this can help your reputation even more.

Accreditation recognises your achievement within your mailroom, but has other advantages too. It can help you highlight other areas where you could develop your business to save time and money.

Royal Mail's accreditation service is designed to help you improve your mail handling services. A Royal Mail consultant looks at all aspects of the processes involved in your mail collection and distribution and uses a set of 13 criteria to benchmarks your mailroom against Royal Mail standards, identifying areas for possible improvement.

Cambridgeshire County Council invited Royal Mail to accredit the way they worked in their mailroom. They knew the way they worked was good, and wanted to prove it. Before the accreditation, they even made their own improvements, no mean feat given that over 11,000 items a day come in to their postroom, and around 2,200 franked letters go out.

Once they were assessed, they got the gold award. At first attempt, this was quite an achievement of which they're very proud. Eddie Carvalho, mailroom supervisor for Cambridgeshire County Council, said that "it has been very healthy and very useful. I would certainly encourage other district and county council mailrooms to put themselves forward for accreditation."

Certainly anything that proves you to be the best is no bad thing. And if you learn something at the same time - all the better. Great for morale and teambuilding, the Royal Mail accreditation service helps show your team what a great job their doing and helps improve your reputation in the marketplace too.