Tag: Mail Services

Mobile working solutions sought by Royal Mail

Posted by | Mar 17, 2008 | |

Its intention is to establish contracts with providers in the areas of service management, mobile application, systems integration and in-life management support. The deal will provide up to 130,000 hand held devices and is thought to be the largest of its kind in the UK and possibly the world.

Having put out a tender, Royal Mail is aiming to enter negotiations with up to five service providers. The hand held device management will be the subject of a separate contract to oversee hardware operation and updates.

Included within the tender is a service management requirement. This is intended to handle various aspects such as incident, problem, release, security and change management.

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La Poste CEO says eyes Germany's PIN Group

Posted by | Mar 17, 2008 | |

La Poste is considering taking over insolvent German postal firm PIN Group, Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper quoted exectives at the French company as saying.

“It goes without saying that we are looking at it,” La Poste Chairman Jean-Paul Bailly was quoted as saying in a preview of the paper’s Tuesday edition.

Raymond Redding, head of La Poste’s mail division, was quoted as saying: “Parts of PIN are viable and therefore interesting. Takeover possibilities in the mail business are very rare.”

La Poste planned to reach a decision by the end of this month, the paper added.

La Poste, which is owned by the French government, did not have any immediate comment on Monday when contacted by Reuters.

PIN ran into financial difficulties after German publisher Axel Springer, which owns 64 percent of PIN, gave up on a rescue for the business in December after the German government agreed to a minimum wage for postal workers.

This came ahead of liberalisation of the sector and amid pressure from dominant German mail company Deutsche Post.

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Newspaper sites attract more nonprint readers

Posted by | Mar 17, 2008 | |

Last week, a comScore study showed that younger people interested in news–a natural constituency in previous decades–are ditching print newspapers at an alarming rate. The good news: online newspaper sites are attracting many of these non-print readers.

Specifically, comScore found that 18- to-24-year-olds were 38% more likely than the general population not to read a newspaper in a typical week. The 35-44 cohort were 9% more likely not to read one. The flip comes with the 45-54 cohort, which were 24% more likely than the general population to read one.

Some would argue the data simply reflects the fact that young people are less interested in news in general. But the comScore study says it’s just the reverse. Non-newspaper readers consume more news in general than heavy newspaper readers from a variety of online sources, including newspaper Web sites.

That’s a plus for newspaper Web sites, with nonprint readers 4% more likely to visit The New York Times Web site, 6% more likely to visit The Wall Street Journal, 12% more likely to visit the Los Angeles Times, and 8% more likely to visit the Chicago Tribune.

But the news is tempered by the presence of myriad online competitors, as online news consumers also crave variety. They were 29% more likely to visit FoxNews online, 15% more likely to visit CBS News digital, 24% more likely to visit Topix, and 18% more likely to visit Google News.

The finding is further tempered by the relatively small size of online revenues compared to the rest of their operations. Online contributed about 10% of total revenues for The New York Times Company in 2007, 8% at McClatchy, and about 13% at The Washington Post and 5% at Gannett. However, in the latter two cases, the percentage growth is partly attributable to steep declines in overall revenues, meaning the basis of comparison is shrinking.

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Canada Post seeks new ways to protect carriers from dog, bear and human attack

Posted by | Mar 17, 2008 | |

Canada Post is looking for a new weapon to protect its carriers from dogs, bears and the occasional violent human.

The Crown corporation is asking manufacturers to come forward with alternatives to the small pepper-spray cans that posties now carry, which can be ineffective in a strong wind or when dogs move too quickly.

“We’re looking for the latest technology or products that are out there to protect our employees,” corporation spokesman John Caines said from Ottawa.

About 300 Canada Post workers are bitten on the job every year, Caines said. Most bites are minor. Some, however, are debilitating.

“I had a gash along my leg – about five inches long and an inch wide – and I had to get a skin graft,” said Gary Garbutt, a retired postal worker who still clearly remembers a 1986 pit bull attack in Winnipeg’s tony Charleswood neighbourhood that left him in hospital for 10 days.

“He got me on the inside of my wrist, too, and made a gash there of about two inches (before the owner called him off).”

Pepper spray might not have made much difference in Garbutt’s case, he said, because the dog was on him before he knew it.

“I turned around, he was eight feet away. He was on my leg before I had a chance to do anything,” Garbutt said.

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Poste Italiane signs Technology Innovation Partnership with Egypt Post

Posted by | Mar 17, 2008 | |

Poste Italiane and Egypt Post have signed an agreement for the technological development and improvement of Egypt’s postal service. Poste Italiane has chosen Finmeccanica to be its partner in this initiative of international importance. Finmeccanica is a leading Italian group at a global level in the production of technological systems and platforms applied to a variety of production sectors.

The international agreement signed by Poste Italiane with Egypt’s postal service provider is aimed at promoting an overall improvement in the quality of mailing, and increasing the system’s innovation, including through the introduction of value added services.

The partnership between Poste Italiane and Egypt will take the form of regular bilateral consulting sessions and joint technical working groups which will allow for the sharing of technical information and the diffusion in Egypt of more advanced solutions which can be implemented within the postal sector.

Poste Italiane will make available its knowledge and experience with regard to updating and improving postal mechanisation systems. With the aim of introducing innovative technologies into Egypt and providing technical support for the optimisation of logistic processes.

The know how of Poste Italiane and Finmeccanica will make it possible to offer Egypt Post solutions to improve the organisation of its postal service, automation and distribution of correspondence and deliveries, security systems, hybrid mail, applications for the peripheral network of Egyptian post offices, innovation in the ICT sector and staff training.

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