Hays unveils competitor to the Royal Mail
Hays DX today launched Total Mail Solutions — a collection service that finds the most cost effective method of sorting and delivering company letters and parcels.
DX, part of the Hays PLC logistics and business services group, is promising major cost savings over conventional postal routes, as well as improved reliability.
The official unveiling of the competitor to the Royal Mail comes on the day that Cosignia said it would be shedding 15,000 jobs.
Around 5,000 of those people will go from the Parcelforce operations, which will see its workforce drop 60 pct to 6,700.
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Hays DX, the UK's leading private sector mail company, has today announced the launch of its new Total Mail Solution (TMS) service which is set to revolutionise the way businesses manage their mail output and signals a new era of choice in the postal services market.
Total Mail Solution is a new service whereby Hays DX will collect a customer's business mail at the end of each working day, sort it and then redirect the mail through the most cost-effective mailing network available.
TMS has a number of significant benefits for business:
further cost savings associated with reduced investment in the mailroom, such as franking machines, and future opportunities to buy mail services from Royal Mail more competitively.
Neil Tregarthen, Managing Director at Hays DX said, "Liberalisation of the UK mail market will provide customers with new choices in terms of service, price and tailored services. We have developed Total Mail Solution to allow the outsourcing of mailroom functions which otherwise will become very complicated in the future.
"This is the first of a range of services which we intend to bring to the market and which, importantly, are complementary to those of Royal Mail. We believe it is up to all service providers in the postal industry to work responsibly to defend the overall mail market from the emerging threat of electronic substitution."
The combined business-to-business and business-to-consumer postal market was worth approximately #4.5billion in 2001 and is set to grow with the liberalisation of the postal market. Hays DX's Total Mail Solution service is the biggest innovation in business mail for decades.
Once mail is collected it is sent to one of Hays DX's national network of newly automated sorting centres. Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Voice Encoding technology, Hays DX's sorting machines will read recipient addresses and match them against its delivery database.
Mail that can be sent via the DX mail network will be isolated and residual mail will be sorted further, franked and transported to the most appropriate Royal Mail sorting office in time to achieve Royal Mail's promised delivery targets. Hays DX will also combine different customers' mail to enable them to take advantage of bulk mail incentives currently available only to the largest users.
When a new customer signs up for Total Mail Solution, Hays DX will profile the mail output to determine the volume and type of mail that is sent. Hays DX will then agree with the customer a fixed monthly rate covering total postal costs and thereafter will manage the whole mail output over a contracted term.
Neil Tregarthen commented "With liberalisation of the postal market likely to bring an influx of new delivery networks, Total Mail Solution will make the most advantageous decision for the customer in terms of reliability and price."
Businesses sending post to London, Edinburgh and Manchester will also benefit from access to Metro DX, Hays DX's new business mail service, which provides pre-8am delivery to over 20,000 businesses located in a number of postcodes in these cities. Metro DX was introduced following Postcomm's decision to award Hays DX with the first ever license to operate a new service for the delivery of mail in the UK, which saw Hays DX become the first postal competitor for Consignia in the 350 years of the postal industry.
Notes to editors:
1. There are currently 36,000 DX members who send over 1 million items of mail by DX each day. DX is a pre-9am business mail service to a network of local collection and delivery points across the UK at a saving of up to 30% against Royal Mail rates. The TMS service is available to all medium to large businesses.
2. Hays DX introduced the Document exchange service in 1975. Today Hays DX is the leading private sector mail player in the UK and is perfectly positioned to support its customers in achieving better service and greater value from the ongoing liberalisation of postal markets.
3. Hays DX has invested heavily in infrastructure and technology, breaking new ground in the field of business mail services. Hays DX strongly believes that business critical mail deserves proven reliability, tailor-made solutions and ever improving value for money and is committed to using the changes in the regulation of the mail market to provide its customers with just that.
4. Hays DX currently operates in the following sectors: Legal and Judiciary, Financial Services, Retail Finance, Property and Construction, Government, Health, Utilities, Optical and Commercial. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hays plc, the business services group.
For further information, and photography, please contact: Andy Rowlands – Bell Pottinger Communications – 020 7861 2439/ 07932 042 656 Jane Atkinson – Bell Pottinger Communications – 020 7495 4044/ 07802 260 865
