Tag: North America

Pitney Bowes open to Indian acquisitions

Posted by | Jun 16, 2008 | |

Pitney Bowes Inc. is open to acquisition in India. Provided the potential company’s business is complementary to Pitney Bowes business plans.
Pitney Bowes has been on acquisition trail in the last six years acquiring close to 70 companies in the last six years. The company is branching beyond the postage meter business and has invested USD 2.5 billion in acquisitions since 2000 to make inroads into the document services market.
Among the high profile acquisition for the company has been location intelligence provider MapInfo, which the company acquired for an undisclosed amount in 2004.
Pitney Bowes made its direct presence in India in 2004, though the company had an indirect presence in country through its distributors from 1970.
More than 10,000 of its two million customers worldwide are from India and half of 2007 revenues came from the sale and operation of postage meters.
Speaking about company business in India, Eric-Yves Mahe, said Pitney Bowes is hugely excited about its prospects in India.
Eric added that company looked to leverage its existing relation ship with its 10,000 customers in India.
The company also has recently signed an MOU with India Post. Under the MOU, Pitney Bowes will set up its network infrastructure to enable Indian postal franking meter users to remotely recharge franking machines without having to physically carry them to a post office.

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Consumer Electronics and E-Commerce

Posted by | Jun 16, 2008 | |

Many consumers to pull back on gadget spending

Despite the jittery economy, eMarketer predicts that retail e-commerce sales in the US will reach USD 146 billion this year, up 14.3% over 2007.

However, some categories of retail e-commerce may not fare as well as others. Two traditionally strong online sales categories—computers and consumer electronics—may see a slowdown, based on a Piper Jaffray study of online buyers. Along with jewelry and watches, more respondents said they were likely to decrease spending on these categories than on any other.

That conservative approach will also affect total retail sales for those categories, judging by a similar study by The NPD Group. More than one-third of responding consumers said they planned to spend less on entertainment products and devices, compared with 18% who said they would spend more. Almost one-half said they would keep spending the same amount as last year. As a result, NPD said that sales of such products would slow slightly.

Seasonality is another important trend to watch. For online retailers, the holiday season is the best time for consumer electronics sales, according to Nielsen Online data. In November 2007, the average order size for consumer electronics hit an annual high of USD 135, a rise from October’s USD 127 average, settling to USD 132 in December. The rest of the year, Nielsen data shows the average order size hovered around USD 93 to USD 100.

By contrast, online sales of computer hardware peak in summer based on strong back-to-school demand. The category had monthly average online sales of USD 272 and USD 256 in October and November 2007, respectively. These sales were far larger than those in the consumer electronics category—but also far lower than the averages posted for computer hardware in July (USD 455) and August (USD 387).

While last year’s monthly sales patterns will likely hold true this year, exactly how much consumers will spend remains in question.

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New complex to streamline mail processing in Oklahoma City

Posted by | Jun 14, 2008 | |

The U.S. Postal Service is streamlining its mail processing operations in Oklahoma City.
A new facility that opens Monday will merge three mail processing locations with administrative offices for the marketing, training and human resources departments, medical unit, labor relations and consumer affairs offices.
The complex west of downtown includes more than 830,000 square feet and 100 docks. It replaces the processing and distribution center located near Union Station south of downtown Oklahoma City. That facility had 58 docks.
Postal service spokesman Larry Flener says the switch should result in more efficient service for customers.

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Esker Launches Online Resource to Inspire Paperless Business Practices

Posted by | Jun 13, 2008 | |

GreenerDocs.com calculates organizations’ paper consumption and provides ways to reduce the paper trail with document automation
Esker announced that it launched GreenerDocs.com, an online web portal providing valuable statistics about paper consumption and tips for how to reduce that amount of paper used, and misused, for business communications. The site targets organizations seeking ways to adopt socially responsible, green-focused initiatives.
GreenerDocs.com features an interactive Green ROI Calculator, designed to help businesses determine exactly how much paper their employees are consuming through order and invoice processing. The user enters information about the number of sales orders and invoices processed daily, the length of each document, and their daily volume of paper business correspondences. With that information, the calculator measures the number of trees, gallons of water, watts of electricity and pounds of CO2 saved by implementing more environmentally friendly document processes. With that information in hand, users can look to GreenerDocs.com to get a clear understanding of how their paper waste negatively impacts the environment.
The site builds upon Esker’s Quit Paper campaign, a campaign aimed at challenging today’s enterprises to reduce the unnecessary use of paper. Esker’s mission is to demonstrate that by quitting the paper addiction, companies will not only help the environment, but also lower operational costs, experience higher efficiency within order-to-cash and procure-to-pay cycles, and develop stronger relationships with customers and suppliers.

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ATA Airlines sues FedEx over military charter deal

Posted by | Jun 12, 2008 | |

ATA Airlines is suing FedEx Corp. over its decision to end a military charter business, a move the airline says forced it to seek bankruptcy protection and left it financially destroyed.

ATA accused FedEx of breaking a written agreement when it told the airline
in January it would no longer receive military passenger service for the
government fiscal year ending in 2009, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis.

FedEx notified ATA of the cancellation in a letter that came “out of the
blue,” said Kenneth Broughton, a Houston-based attorney representing ATA. He said ATA was counting on the military charters to be a “significant
profit center.”

The charter flights of military personnel and their families generated more
than USD 400 million in annual revenue and were expected to remain a “cornerstone” of the airline’s future business, the lawsuit states.

ATA filed for bankruptcy April 2 and abruptly ceased operations the next
Day. FedEx spokeswoman Sandra Munoz said her company had no contractual
obligation to ATA beyond the current fiscal year, which ends in September.

The military contracts commercial airlines for charter flights organized
through two teams of companies. ATA had flown military charter flights as a member of the FedEx team for more than 20 years. In late 2006, it spent more than USD 50 million to buy seven DC-10 planes from Northwest Airlines.

Broughton said the airline bought the planes and then spent additional money on hiring and training, because the military prefers wide-body aircraft. He said ATA did this after receiving a written commitment from FedEx that it would continue to receive military charter business through the fiscal year ending in 2009.

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