Case Study: City of Gouda achieves 60× faster mail processing and automated classification with Tungsten Automation

City of Gouda Provides Information to Case Workers 98% Faster, Speeding Response to Citizens and Partners

The city of Gouda, led by Document Management Services director Chris Bellekom, launched a digital mailroom to modernize its front office and prepare for a new document management system. Faced with roughly 140,000 incoming items a year that had to be opened, read, classified and routed across 600 municipal processes (the city’s archiving plan, DSP), Gouda needed a way to cut processing time and costs while improving accuracy amid budget pressures.

Gouda piloted a Kofax-based solution (Kofax Capture and Kofax Transformation) with implementation partners, linking capture to the DSP and using four automatic classification methods (fixed fields, layout, text/semantics and keywords) plus self‑learning. In a five-month pilot of 4,500 documents, about 63% were recognized with ≥95% accuracy and average handling time fell from 7.5 minutes to 7.5 seconds per letter; handwritten items still required manual review. The project is being rolled out department-by-department, with a Verseon DMS for downstream processing, delivering faster routing, fewer errors and substantial efficiency gains.

City of Gouda

Chris Bellekom

Director of Document Management Services for the city of Gouda