Mailing/Fulfillment - Postal Trends

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has plans of its own to try and reduce the record-breaking losses that continue to rack up every year. It announced plans earlier this year to end Saturday delivery of mail, which it says it can do without Congressional approval. If USPS continues with its plan, Saturday delivery would end on Aug. 5.

Rep. Blake Farenthold supports the Postal Service's desire to halt Saturday delivery. "I don't understand why the Saturday delivery [plan] isn't a no brainer...The big argument against not delivering on Saturday was how do people who work Monday through Friday get their medications

At the National Postal Forum in San Francisco this week, Postmaster General and CEO Patrick R. Donahoe said that technology and changing consumer expectations are helping to transform mail into an even more powerful communications channel. “With imbedded QR codes and augmented reality, mail becomes much more functional and creative, creating an even more influential experience.”

A new report has been released by the Panel of the National Academy of Public Administration, that advocates that mail processing, collection, and transportation be performed by private-sector companies and that the delivery function—“the last mile”—be reserved for the USPS.The

The U.S. Postal Service added more than 4,000 jobs in February, but the postal workforce is actually shrinking.

The Postal Service reports that it had 468,000 full-time employees in late February, a decline of almost 35,000 (7%) in one year. Half of the loss occurred after Jan. 1, spurred by early-retirement incentives for APWU-represented employees.

We’ve all seen the signs for years. Three pieces one day. Five the next. Mondays, now that’s another story...10 pieces in my mailbox this week. While our e-mail inboxes are bursting from perpetual overload (I’m lucky if I keep mine under 100), our physical mailboxes become emptier and emptier.

Clearly, the USPS must take steps to relieve uncertainty and ensure long-term financial viability of printing’s primary distribution channel, and $2 billion per year in savings seems like a good step in the right direction.

The U.S. Postal Service’s cash crunch could cause a “catastrophic” disruption of mail service this year, according to a government official who wants USPS to reveal its crisis-management plans.

The Postal Regulatory Commission “should request a description of the Postal Service’s priorities and plans for providing service across the Nation and across classes in the event cash shortages require services to be reduced,” PRC staffer Kenneth E. Richardson told the commission Friday.

Keeping an open mind, recognizing profit potential and identifying a point of entry was all the fodder that Quad/Graphics needed to embark on its mobile technologies platform, Interactive Print Solutions (IPS). Actually, it was a direct result of QIC (Quad Idea Catapult)—the company's innovation process management framework—vetting the technologies and creating IPS as a vehicle toward delivering mobile technologies to customers. It helps that Quad/Graphics CEO Joel Quadracci not only gave the endeavor his full blessing, but acts as an evangelist for the mobile technologies.

USPS invested more than $1 billion in FSS machines to automate the labor-intensive process of handling catalogs, magazines, and other flat mail, but so far the results have been mixed at best. Meanwhile, the agency continues to seek special rate increases on some types of flat mail, such as Periodicals, on which it claims to be losing money.

The USPS debuted a new app this week at CES 2013 that worked well and could increase a company’s interest in sending mail again. The app, which was developed with Aurasma, scans a piece of mail and uses augmented reality to make the paper an interactive ad.

“We worked on this to show companies that hard copy mail can be a part of their editorial content,” Chris Karpenko, head of USPS outreach, told me on the CES show floor. “It’s all about the customer experience.”

Karpenko said the app will likely be released “before the end of 2013.”