Tag: Royal Mail

EU postal operators failing to communicate

Swiss Post and Royal Mail have been praised for their regular news bulletins by Hellmail, the European postal industry news site.

Editor for Hellmail, Steve Lawson, said “Many Euro postal operators have been rather slow to market themselves and communicate in the wider context since Liberalisation began.” he said.

He said that some postal operators should be praised for their efforts. Swiss Post particularly, with a whole section devoted to media communications including an impressive image library. Royal Mail too has a dedicated press office with almost daily news.

“Oddly, Lithuania scores well in terms of news output, but France’s La Poste, Turkey, Slovakia and Slovenia fall far behind. Italy, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria rarely update their news, The Ukraine, Latvia and Luxembourg have no translation facility at all for news, and Romania stopped producing translated news altogether in 2007.”

Hellmail found that most web sites were reasonably easy to navigate except for Denmark & Greece which had a Flash into that was very difficult to get past. Swiss Post and Royal Mail scored the highest for news output, closely followed by DHL, Malta, and Russian Post.

“Clearly there is much room for improvement and we have emailed most of these operators asking them to look closer at the way they communicate. Obviously some European postal services are heavily tied into state ownership, and in some cases, political regimes, but even so, with Europe pushing for closer ties under postal liberalisation, some countries have simply failed to exploit the potential here. From our perspective, its so important that smaller European countries can be heard. We really do want to know what they’re about.” he said.

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EuroDirect to join Royal Mail data partners (UK)

Royal Mail is strengthening its investment in data services by adding EuroDirect to its panel of data partners.

The move is designed to better service Royal Mail’s customers with dedicated data solutions, and assist them in using data tools to improve the effectiveness of their direct mail campaigns.

Royal Mail’s clients will now benefit from EuroDirect’s Data Exchange prospect pool consisting of 40 million records, its suite of Cameo Consumer Classifications, credit-scoring service CallQualify, and consumer insight and marketing intelligence system Microvision.

EuroDirect joins Dataforce on the panel, which was set up in January.

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GLS Germany upgrades vehicles for more safety

GLS is equipping all its new lorries with special reflection markings for safety reasons in order to increase the visibility of vehicles in road traffic during night.

To minimize this risk, the company is pasting up the backside or long side of trailers and trunks with retro-reflecting stripes on purchase or varnish renewals. Up to now, the EU directive 2007/35/EG does only apply to newly produced vehicles in Germany. With effect from 2011, all vehicles over 7,5 tons will have to be equipped with reflecting markings. In some states of the EU like Italy and Poland, this is already obligatory for all heavy vehicles.

“As we purchased new transport vehicles in Germany last year, we equipped them with reflecting material straight away”, said Klaus Conrad, managing director of GLS Germany. “High quality of transport services should not negatively impact the road safety. With the retro-reflecting markings we increase the visibility and thus minimise the risk”, he added.

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Royal Mail goes hands-on (UK)

Royal Mail is finalising contracts with a range of suppliers for the provision of handheld devices to track letter and parcel information.

By the end of this summer, more than 25,000 staff handling items tracked by special and recorded delivery will use the devices, which are intended to speed up and modernise postal processes.

The devices will enable Royal Mail van drivers to capture signatures at the point of delivery. The data will then be transmitted over a wireless network, allowing customers to check via the web whether or not items have arrived at their destination.

Royal Mail is in the final stages of making contractual adjustments with the pool of partners chosen to carry out the project.

While contracts await final sign-off, suppliers are understood to include hardware specialist Intermec and systems integrator CSC.

Training will be done in-house and will begin in the weeks prior to the implementation.

Some 70,000 staff who deliver items by foot or bicycle will continue using a paper-based system to record signatures and delivery times, but the devices will roll out to all postal delivery workers in the future.

Trials for the handheld computers began late last year.

The project is the first stage of Royal Mail’s GBP 1.2bn IT-based infrastructure upgrade and will underpin a series of customer-focused initiatives.

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