The 3rd Postal Directive – establishment of an internal postal market
The 3rd Postal Directive – establishment of an internal postal market
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Changes to the fuel surcharge of Express, Parcel and Unitised Transport services
Itella Logistics will revise the basis and rates of fuel surcharges applicable to its services: for parcels, the new fuel surcharge is 7.15 pct and for unitised transport services, 8.2 pct. The new rates will take effect on 7 July 2008.
From that day on, the fuel surcharge will be tied to the fuel factor of Statistics Finland’s cost index on the road transport of goods. The change will not influence agreements in any way, and the usage of services will continue unchanged in other respects.
– The current price trends have forced us to revise the basis and rates of the fuel surcharges applicable to domestic and international Express, parcel and unitised transport services, says Pekka Stenqvist, director in charge of Express and domestic freight services at Itella Logistics.
In recent months, fuel prices have increased drastically: the price per litre has gone up by approximately 25 pct this year.
Read MoreNew corporate IT model at Correos
Correos contracted a service package aimed at building, implementing and maintaining its corporate IT architecture and the application integration standards to guarantee the efficiency and quality of its IT system.
With the development of this new corporate architecture, Correos aims to reduce IT system development and maintenance complexity, time and costs. At the same time, as associated advantages, it will attempt to optimise overall application performance, favouring modularity and scalability. Another advantage will be to maximise service standards and quality whilst minimising the human resources necessary to manage the different processes.
The investment allocated for this project is EUR 1.8 million. CORREOS has chosen IBM, the tender awardee, to carry out the necessary actions to improve its IT system user service standards, as well as to start up the construction of the different J2EE, ORACLE and SAP system architecture-based IT applications.
The introduction of this new corporate IT model is part of the “Integra” Plan, CORREOS’ strategic project aimed at improving and guaranteeing its IT system quality. This Plan includes a group of actions designed to promote the availability and use of IT tools and systems, both in postal operations, and in monitoring and control. The end objective is to have a technological platform with sufficient capacity to face the new requirements of an increasingly competitive postal sector.
Postal mail still gets results
Text and instant messaging are fine for friends, but not for marketers.
That was the main finding of ExactTarget’s “2008 Channel Preference Survey.”
Nearly two-thirds of US Internet users surveyed said e-mail was their preferred channel for written communications between friends, with text messaging the next-favorite choice. The phone was the most popular way to communicate with friends overall, with 41% of respondents naming it as their channel of choice.
“There is a clear trend within younger demographics toward communication via text messaging and social networks,” said Morgan Stewart, director of research and strategy at ExactTarget, in a statement.
But Mr. Stewart said those preferred personal communication channels were not necessarily also preferred channels for marketing.
Asked to judge the acceptability of various channels for marketing purposes on a scale of 1 to 5, respondents gave direct mail an average score of 3.9, followed by e-mail at 3.7. All other channels averaged under 3.
Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said they had made a purchase because of a marketing message received through e-mail. More than three-quarters said they had made such a purchase in response to direct mail.
Read MoreRivermine wins telecom expense management contract from US Postal Service
The US Postal Service has awarded Rivermine a contract to deploy telecom expense management solutions for its entire nationwide data network.
According to Rivermine, it will deliver its patent-pending solutions to automate the US Postal Service’s existing telecom expense management (TEM) processes, manage and optimize the full telecom life cycle including procurement and order management, invoice processing and auditing, inventory management, dispute management and reporting/analytics.
The Rivermine solution will be used to help maintain a data network connecting approximately 400 distribution outlets and 37,000 retail locations.
Mark Logan, president and CEO of Rivermine, said: “Rivermine and the US Postal Service share a common vision for an integrated end-to-end automated process from initial telecom service orders through invoice payment. We look forward to working with the US Postal Service to achieve the highest level of visibility into and control over data network expenses – further reducing network costs.”
Read MorePost & Parcel Magazine
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