Biggest News From IDEAlliance Print Distribution ‘08

Las Vegas

USPS is getting out of plastic pallets for bulk printed matter. Printers are restless as this cost-cutting “improvement” is actually a step backward to the need for forklifts at all USPS facilities, the frailty and ultimate cost of wood, its extra weight (~ 40 pounds) which increases everybody’s carbon footprint with over the road freight. Strenuous pushback is needed

Mail Piece Design. Good tips on USPS testing of new tabbing, item thickness, emerging return address, address quality and legibility, location (for Intelligent Mail Barcode, IMB, catalogs and publications may have to change.

Ominously, one direct mail client vows to invest a dollar in electronic delivery for every dollar they now invest in postal compliance and qualification. In the interest of mitigating now-annual costs, the rules and regulations get more arcane and implementation more technically challenging.

Take IMB for example. Inkjet scan standards for pallet-container flags have to change again for Postal employees to be able to scan successfully from their forklift equipment. Addressed IMC on pieces still being ironed out by a joint equipment manufacturer-industry-USPS task force so that catalogs and pubs especially can meet the IMC address specifications consistently. IMB takes effect May 2009 across several classes of mail. Postnet fades out a year later. The companion requirements for address hygiene and customer mail unique IDs take hold around the same time or sooner, like Move Update frequency for customer lists (November this year).

The major printers and 3PLs are revising their drop ship strategies every year, with every rate adjustment. The rate filings come fast enough that the industry is hard pressed to do the software revisions and equipment investments fast enough to get their arms around the ROIs and at the same time minimize their customers’ postal costs by the effective dates. Worrisome complexity department: USPS is doing some fancy footwork with local, little-documented annexes for delivery of classes and types of mail, creating a multiplicity of physical addresses for what logically can be known as “Atlanta SCF.”

Emergence of paperless documentation and payment: Outlined for us at last year’s Santa Barbara Top Management Conference, the beat goes on. With adoption of expanded Mail.dat data standards for postal mail, the Form 8125 and most of the traditional first, Standard, Periodical and Parcel mail payment forms will vanish, referenced only by a line on the truckers Bill of Lading plus all of the new advance ship notices that seamless acceptance mailers will deploy. The rates (incentives) will come to favor significantly mailers and service providers who adopt. Of course an industry of assisters like Pitney Bowes, the list houses and third party logistics providers will be there to help the medium sized printer.

My sense: Mail.dat will shortly be replaced with Mail.xml standards for interoperability between customers, mailers and USPS. The legacy systems will be put to a merciful death. 

-- Bob Whitton, R&E Council of NAPL