Tag: Mail Services

USPS releases final address standards for commercial flat-sized mail

Posted by | May 9, 2008 | |

The USPS has published its final rule for new address standards for commercial flat-sized mail in the Federal Register.

The new standards, published May 7 and set to go into effect March 29, 2009, will require mailers to adopt new address placement and formatting requirements for periodicals, Standard Mail, bound printed matter, Media Mail and library mail flat-sized pieces sent at automation, presorted or carrier route prices, the USPS said. The standards also include similar revisions for automation and pre-sorted First-Class Mail flats.

According to the new standards, mailers will need to place delivery addresses within the top half of their mailpieces. Mailers will also need to address presorted, carrier route and automation flat-sized mail pieces using a minimum of eight-point type. Or, if the piece has a Postnet or Intelligent Mail barcode on it, a minimum of six-point type in all capital letters will be required.

In the notice, the USPS said it will publish a quick service guide and other additional materials to help mailers prepare for the change.

The new address standards will assist the USPS in its implementation of its new Flats Sequencing System (FSS), which will sort flat-sized mail into delivery sequence, thereby reducing carriers’ time spent manually sorting mail.

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Deals with mass-mailers, labor unions hurt customers

Posted by | May 9, 2008 | |

On Monday [May 12], the price of a first-class stamp will rise by a penny. With gas now costing nearly four bucks a gallon, a 42-cent stamp may not sound like much. But while stamp prices climb, the Postal Service keeps offering sweetheart deals to bulk mailers and the postal labor unions.

Ordinary consumers ought to ask why the Postal Service is delivering for everyone but them.

In the last decade, stamp prices have gone up 31 percent. Following sweeping congressional reforms in 2006, the Postal Service hinted at annual rate increases. With Monday’s increase — the second in as many years — the Postal Service seems to have settled on raising prices each year in mid-May.

At the same time, the Postal Service has taken to offering discounts to big mailers based on how much mail they send. When done right, such agreements can save both the Postal Service and the mailer money. But in several previous agreements, the Postal Service has either granted a discount for mail that would have been sent anyway or granted discounts deemed excessive by regulators.

In 2006, the Postal Service’s regulator issued a decision on an agreement with Bank One. The report wondered whether discounts were necessary in light of expert analysis revealing “tremendous growth in the amount of direct mail solicitation undertaken by the credit card industry.”

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Wincor Nixdorf takes over majority stake in IT services provider prosystems and expands outsourcing portfolio

Posted by | May 9, 2008 | |

Effective retroactively from January 1, 2008, Wincor Nixdorf AG has assumed a majority stake and the operative management of prosystems IT GmbH. prosystems, which is headquartered in Bonn, specializes in the provision of IT services in the Sparkassen environment. This new stake is part of Wincor Nixdorf’s targeted expansion of its activities in the area of IT operations management for retail banking. “We’ve seen that the trend toward outsourcing and automation in retail banking continues. So we’re strengthening our outsourcing portfolio with prosystems IT. We already have customers in this area, but we want to attract additional banks with our portfolio so that we can continue to grow,” explains Eckard Heidloff, President and CEO of Wincor Nixdorf AG. For Wincor Nixdorf, this is the second joint venture specializing in the operational management of information technology for branch-related processes.

prosystems IT was created in 2004 when the IT operations of two savings banks, Stadtsparkasse Köln and Kreissparkasse Köln, were merged with the subsidiary of the now amalgamated Sparkasse Bonn and Kreissparkasse Siegburg, PROSERVICE GmbH, and with the SDZ Sparkassen-Dienstezentrum, a savings bank service center. The participating Sparkassen have outsourced large parts of the operational management of their IT to prosystems IT.

prosystems has 223 employees and had sales last fiscal year of approximately 43 million euros.

In the future, Wincor Nixdorf will hold 51% of the interests in prosystems. The remaining interests will be held by Kreissparkasse Köln (20.17%), by Sparkasse KölnBonn (26.38%) and by SDZ Sparkassen-Dienstezentrum (2.45%), which itself is the subsidiary of the savings banks Verbandssparkasse Goch, Sparkasse Wiehl, Stadtsparkasse Wermelskirchen, Stadtsparkasse Bad Honnef and Kreissparkasse Düsseldorf.

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Swiss Post: Competition calls for entrepreneurial freedom

Posted by | May 8, 2008 | |

Swiss Post believes in offering a top-quality basic service. And it intends to do so, efficiently and successfully, even in a postal market completely deregulated by legislation. This is certainly possible, providing Swiss Post is granted the necessary entrepreneurial freedom as part of this new legislation. In its feedback during the consultation process, Swiss Post requested a number of amendments, the most important of which being – in the absence of any state guarantee – the opportunity to determine for itself in which markets it will operate. There was also mention of a banking licence and a basic service mandate without the limitations that result from having to define individual infrastructure elements.
Swiss Post expects this new legislation to completely open up the postal market. Over the coming years, therefore, it wants to develop and thus prove itself capable of providing an efficient basic service in an open market. Thanks to successful restructuring, improved levels of efficiency and positive performance figures in recent years, it is already well on the way to achieving this goal. The current positive results mean that Swiss Post can make important investments in advance of complete market deregulation in what is expected to be just under four years. It can also continue to promote innovation and customer orientation, consolidate the pension fund and compensate the Swiss federal government for capital it provided.

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