AI in the Inbox: More Relief for the Rotenburg (Wümme) District

How can AI actually help lighten the workload in an administrative office’s inbox without immediately triggering a major project? That’s exactly what we worked out together with the District of Rotenburg (Wümme) during a half-day AI Design Sprint®: a practical approach, involving their own staff, and with a clear focus on delivering tangible added value in day-to-day administrative work.

Shortcuts to the project

The starting point was an everyday yet time-consuming administrative process: Incoming mail must be opened, pre-sorted, digitized, and routed to the correct department. Manual pre-sorting and determining the appropriate department, in particular, take up a significant amount of time on a daily basis. Our goal was to work with the district administration to quickly identify where artificial intelligence could provide concrete support in the mailroom, which tasks should remain with humans, and what a realistic implementation path would look like. This resulted in a clear vision for the use of AI in mailroom digitization—with the greatest impact in pre-sorting and determining responsibility. The guiding principle here: AI supports, humans decide.

Quickly identify suitable areas of application

Within half a day, it became clear where AI provides real value in the inbox.

Focus on the greatest opportunities for cost savings

Rather than discussing AI in general terms, the focus was on the most complex steps in the process.

A realistic starting point instead of a large-scale project

The focus was not on an abstract vision of the future, but on a manageable first step.

High level of acceptance due to early employee involvement

The solution was developed in collaboration with the people who are responsible for the process on a daily basis.

A clear division of roles between AI and humans

We have specifically identified what AI can handle and where decision-making remains the responsibility of humans.

A solid foundation for the next steps

The benefits could be assessed based on the actual process and translated into concrete next steps.

This is how we reimagined the inbox together

During the workshop, we worked together to map out the existing mail-handling process and analyzed it step by step. To do this, we brought together different perspectives from administration, IT, the document management system (DMS), the mailroom, and the digitalization team. Using the AI Design Sprint® methodology and the 33A AI card set, we applied relevant AI capabilities directly to the specific process. This helped us develop a shared understanding of where AI can provide meaningful support and where its limitations lie.