Microsoft Technology Innovation Helps Bring Postal Industry Into the Electronic Age
How do you send physical mail to a business person whose most frequent address is at 37,000 feet? That may sound like a riddle, but to Earth Class Mail Corp., it’s a serious question.
This week at POST-EXPO 2007 — an international postal technology conference held in Barcelona, Spain — new and innovative offerings are being showcased that address this question. Earth Class Mail’s solution is a Web-based software system, developed on Microsoft .NET, that seeks to do for postal mail what cellular technology did for telephone calls: make it mobile by making it digital.
Earth Class Mail’s software is a compelling example of the kind of innovation Microsoft champions through a postal vertical industry team within its public-sector organization. Focused on meeting the needs of the worldwide postal industry, this team aims to apply Microsoft’s solutions, technologies and global partner network to help postal service providers and organizations gain new efficiencies and business opportunities in the Internet era.
To learn more, PressPass spoke with Maxim Lesur, Worldwide Postal Industry managing director at Microsoft. Ron Wiener, CEO of Seattle-based Earth Class Mail, joined in the discussion.
PressPass: Maxim, can you begin by explaining how Microsoft’s focus on the postal industry came about and the strategy that drives it?
Lesur: Microsoft is focusing on the postal industry because of the incredible transformation taking place in the postal sector and the opportunities we see for postal organizations to play a key role in the digital world, as they’ve done so effectively in the physical world. Our strategy for posts has three pillars.
First, we use Microsoft technology and our partner network to help postal organizations build solutions that address enterprise efficiency, sales and marketing efficiency, supply chain visibility and optimization, branch renewal and e-postal services. Second, we focus on innovation to meet customer needs. We work closely with postal operators and listen to the ideas they want to bring to market, and we work with them to apply technology to make those ideas real. The third pillar of our strategy is a longer-term value proposition. It involves building secured communications services that bridge the physical world and the electronic world. The Earth Class Mail solution, which enables people to see their physical mail in electronic form, is an excellent example there.
PressPass: Ron, what challenges does the postal industry face today?
Wiener: The biggest is the advent of the Internet, which is driving down the volume of first-class mail worldwide. That’s a huge issue for post offices because it’s their main profit source. Along with that, you have the growth of Internet advertising, which will eventually have an impact on direct mail revenue. Direct mail is still the largest sector for advertising spending in the United States, but some countries are already seeing a decline, due in part to environmental concerns and in part to Internet marketing, which is growing 10 times faster. Bottom line, as companies continue to move toward paperless transactions and paperless advertising, post offices have to figure out how they can remain relevant in the Internet age. At the same time, they’re dealing with ever-increasing operating expenses due to rising fuel and healthcare costs and pension liabilities. The revenue per delivery point has actually been going down for the past six or seven years. In the United States, for example, this is the first time since Ben Franklin started the U.S. Postal Service that revenue per delivery point has declined. As populations keep growing and post offices can’t squeeze any more productivity improvement out of their current automation technology, they face the problem of what they will do in the future.
The declining market affects countries differently, depending on which of three economic tiers they fall into. In the first tier are a handf
