Association for Postal Commerce
"Representing those who use or support the use of mail for Business Communication and Commerce"
"You will be able to enjoy only those postal rights you believe are worth defending."

IT'S TIME TO PUT ON THE THINKING CAPS

The following is a perspective by postal commentator Gene Del Polito. The views expressed are solely the author's.

With the Postal Service in a world of hurt, one would hope that postal executives might be more open to looking for cost-efficient, value-building alternatives to their current schedule of postal services and prices. Here are just two ideas that ought to be laid on the table.

DROPSHIP ALL DISCOUNTED MAIL. The first idea is designed to expand as maximally as possible customer worksharing efforts to provide the Postal Service with mail that is most cost-efficient to process and deliver. The way to do that would be by requiring that all discounted mail be prepared for destination-entry. By encouraging mail users to move their mail as far into the postal system as possible, the Postal Service could save a bundle by eliminating all present day origin-level operating costs. It would substitute private sector for postal transportation. It would make greater use of private sector resources to could provide much of the front-end work associated with mail processing and transportation.

AGGRESSIVE PRICING FOR HYBRID MAIL. The idea of mail that originates and is transmitted for entry in an ink-on-paper form at some near-destination postal facility is nothing new. "Hybrid mail" has been around for years. Even the Postal Service has tried to develop and market a hybrid mail service of its own without much success.

Why no success? Simply put, the Postal Service simply cannot organize, finance, market, and pull-off as cost-efficiently as the private sector can a service that consists of mail-related elements that are electronic in character. Bureaucracies just don't function well in free markets.

In addition, the Postal Service's abortive efforts were handicapped by an unwillingness of those who design and price such services to reflect in the product price all of the cost-saving steps that go into a hybrid mail service. Since hybrid mail originates and is transmitted electronically to a near-destination production facility there are no origin-related collection, processing, transportation, and distribution the Postal Service should need to provide. Hybrid mail prepared by mailers for destination entry would provide the Postal Service with the "greenest" and most cost-efficiently prepared mail. All the Service would have to do is prepare mail for delivery at the receiving destination facility. Mail could be prepared in a fashion that could minimize carrier handling and ready it for distribution on the street.

It's time for everyone to put on their thinking caps. The two ideas detailed above should not be the only novel solutions mailers have to offer. The two ideas detailed above may not be perfect, but at least they can help stimulate the juice that's needed to transform our postal system into one that better meets the needs of a changing market.