Itella’s future mail trial begins in village
Itella’s mail delivery trial to test alternative future mail delivery methods has got underway in the Finnish village of Porvoo. The trial will not be immediately launched on a full scale; instead, it will be gradually expanded as the participants get the necessary training and start using NetPosti. The objective is for the trial to be in full swing within two weeks. The trial will end at the close of 2010.
More than 140 households and companies are voluntarily participating in the trial. They will receive their daily mail in a completely new manner that combines traditional mail delivery and electronic services. The plan is to study which methods the participants find functional and which they do not in order to provide alternative services that are as functional as possible for the customers and which would replace traditional mail deliveries in the future.
In the trial, mail will be delivered twice a week to the mailbox as usual. Moreover, all mail recipient households and companies have a PO box at their local postal outlet, where mail is delivered on other days, and from where the customer may pick up the mail whenever at any time. New mail in the box will be notified by a text message, so that the customers will not have to visit their box unnecessarily.
In addition to physical mail delivery, the customer’s first-class and second-class letters will be scanned as electronic letters which the customer may view on NetPosti using his or her personal codes. The recipients will receive a notification of incoming mail in NetPosti by e-mail or SMS, and the letters are available in an electronic format earlier than those delivered through regular mail, at nine in the morning.
When the letters have been scanned, they will be placed in envelopes and delivered to the customer’s P.O. box or mailbox. This means that the recipients will also receive their actual physical letters. The letters will be scanned separately from other mail handling activities in a unit specializing in scanning by trained personnel. The unit is located in Helsinki. For some years now the Itella Group has scanned physical letters into electronic format for companies and public corporations, such as insurance companies, accounting firms, and the State Treasury. Hundreds of thousands letters are scanned each day. Reliability of the service is of the utmost importance.
A new pick-up method will also be tested for parcel deliveries. At the local postal outlet, there will be a parcel machine from where customers may pick up parcels themselves. The customer will receive a text message when there is a shipment to pick up. However, large shipments and shipments requiring a signature will be picked up from the local postal outlet as usual.
Each participant in the trial has signed an agreement stating that they have agreed to their mail being opened and scanned. Mail recipients are entitled to allow a third party to open their mail.
The trial will not compromise the confidentiality of letters. The letters will be scanned in a facility which outsiders cannot access, and the employees have signed strict confidentiality agreements.
