Each quarter, a group of representatives from the mailing industry meet with USPS personnel to get an update on where USPS is going and how it did over the past year. The Mailers Technical Advisory Committee (MTAC) is a great place to meet people from all parts of the mail stream. For more information about MTAC, and a link to presentations given at the conference, see the MTAC page on RIBBS. Here is a summary of some of the topics covered in the Fall 2010 meeting.
Potter set to retire, Donahoe takes the reins
The current Postmaster General, John Potter, was all smiles as he talked with MTAC members. With his retirement only weeks away, he praised the members of MTAC as an important role in developing USPS going forward. He also stated that, while they may not have always agreed on his actions, that he was “always acting in the best interest of the mail.”
On December 4, Deputy PMG Pat Donahoe will become Postmaster General. He was a bit late to MTAC after meeting with key members of congress that morning. Donahoe said that his main focus for 2011 will be to create a “better customer experience” for those that use the USPS. Additionally, he wants to grow mail volume by at least 5 billion pieces over the year, and to help create a “leaner, faster, smarter” postal service.
Mail volume is down, efficiency is up
It’s no secret that USPS is struggling financially. With a reported $8.5 billion dollar loss for 2010, USPS is only $3 billion away from its borrowing cap from congress. Without major changes to retirement funding and pricing laws, they will run out of money in 2011. It is notable that the majority of the USPS deficit is due to the retirement pre-funding that congress requires. Without this pre-funding, USPS would have only lost $0.5 billion in 2010.
One of the key issues facing USPS is the decline in mail volume. In the past year alone, First-Class Mail has declined an astonishing 6.9%. In contrast, Standard Mail has increased an impressive 8.9%, which shows that advertisers have faith in direct mail. Meanwhile, USPS has continued to cut where they can, chopping operating expenses by 50% in the last year alone.
USPS passes SOX testing
One of the requirements of PAEA stated that USPS must be Sarbanes-Oxley compliant by the end of 2010. Some mailers felt the effects of this testing as USPS tightened the reins on mail acceptance. Fortunately, after one of the largest SOX testing efforts in history, USPS received a clean bill of health from the testing efforts.
Intelligent Mail has unexpected results
One of the reasons USPS has been pushing Full-Service Intelligent Mail is the additional benchmarking it can provide. Unfortunately, due mostly to varying definitions of “start-the-clock”, less than 25% of Full-Service Intelligent Mail is valid to count for service performance. Incomplete or incorrect drop times are used when mail is deposited after the posted Critical Entry or Critical Acceptance times. However, the biggest reason for these ineligible pieces is that 42% of the containers used in these mailings are not associated with an appointment. USPS did not say how they will handle this, as they have recently removed the mailer requirement to associate each container with a FAST appointment.
Otherwise, USPS is happy with the adoption of Full-Service Intelligent Mail by mailers. Over 600 mailers have passed TEM testing, and over 400,000 postage statements containing over 40 billion mail pieces have been processed using Full-Service.
Problems continue with PostalOne!
USPS updated the PostalOne! system again on November 7 — and the upgrade was not as smooth as they had planned. There were periods of slowness and times when users were unable to log into the Business Customer Gateway. VP Tom Day stated that the changes in this release were necessary to ensure the stability and reliability of the system going forward, and that we shouldn’t see several-day outages like those in February earlier this year. IT has modularized the system with this update, and is backing up everything three times daily.