Our adoption of Intelligent Mail and Full-Service technologies has enabled a significant paradigm shift in the way we accept and verify commercial business mailings. We have reduced reliance on manual processes and moved into a digitized process flow.
These capabilities will empower customers with a suite of tools that will enable payment flexibility, preparation simplicity, ease of entry, multiple access points for account management, and deeper visibility into their mailing status.
Additional value will occur through expanded Full-Service penetration by small business mailers. The increased use of Intelligent Mail barcodes with Full-Service allows the USPS to position these mailers for Seamless Acceptance.
Intelligent Mail for Small Business (IMsb) Tool. The Intelligent Mail for Small Business (IMsb) tool offers a simple and cost-effective online solution for small mailers to prepare Full–Service, seamless-ready mailings. In addition to providing Full-Service access to small businesses, the tool provides simplified mail preparation and entry options, including electronic creation and submission of postage statements, generation of unique IMbs, and the ability to import address lists.
Full-Service Simplification and Promotion. Aspects of the Full-Service program were reviewed and actions were taken to simplify mailers entry into Full-Service and to encourage growth across mailers of all sizes.
Changes included simplification of Full–Service mail preparation requirements, a software vendor certification program, and improved Full-Service onboarding processes.
eInduction. A primary objective of commercial mail entry is to eliminate the reliance on hard-copy forms and processes. The electronic induction process, eInduction, leverages existing electronic documentation, Intelligent Mail barcodes, and hand-held scanner technologies to verify payment for the mail at a container level. This ensures the containers are inducted into the correct destination facility. Increased use of electronic data through eInduction will reduce dependence on paper-driven processes, directly reducing the amount of manual validations conducted on shipments at destination plants. The eInduction program was successfully piloted with several large-volume drop-ship mailers and deployed on 10/1/2013.
Seamless Acceptance (Letters and Flats). Seamless Acceptance will allow commercial mail or letter and flat-size mailpieces to enter the mailstream with fewer manual acceptance and verification activities.
The expanded use of technology through Seamless Acceptance will increase opportunities to use automated processes to reduce errors, improve efficiencies and improve revenue assurance capabilities.
A combination of active and passive scans from the Postal Service’s visibility systems and mail processing equipment will be used to support an automated process to reconcile the containers, handling units and mailpieces scanned by the Postal Service against a mailer’s electronic documentation.
In addition to the processing equipment scans, mailing data will be collected through a sampling process. Enhancements to the Full Service-Intelligent Mail Device (FS-IMD) will allow the data to be collected and matched to data collected through eDoc.
When used in conjunction with mail processing equipment scans, also matched to eDoc data, a ‘big picture’ view of the mailing emerges.
Reporting capabilities are being improved to provide analytical reports for both internal and external customers. Scanning results and sampling will be compared to mailer electronic documentation, allowing us to monitor mailer quality using information about errors and quality trends over time.
Seamless Acceptance is on track to be deployed in 2014.
Electronic Verification System (eVS). The eVS program allows package shippers to seamlessly enter their mailings into the Postal system. The system incorporates manually sampled packages and scans of packages from mail processing equipment that are used to validate postage payment against the mailer’s manifest information.
The eVS program continues to focus on enhancements to the system. These enhancements will position the eVS system for new revenue growth, and will support the business needs of government agencies and package consolidators who have thus far been unwilling to transfer their shipping services to eVS.
Payment. The Payment and Account Management initiatives improved our ability to manage customer incentives, contract pricing and loyalty tracking, while helping us gain deeper insights into how our customers use our products and their revenue contribution.
New technical specifications namely “Intelligent Mail Indicia Performance Criteria” were published for PC Postage and Meter Vendors that will provide the Postal Service with improved product usage information.
Payment and account management improvements reduce the current burden experienced by mailers in opening permits and managing accounts.
Currently, customers must hold a permit account and pay fees at each Post Office where they present mail. If customers hold accounts at numerous Postal facilities, they must go to each facility to make payments for those accounts.
“Mail Anywhere” functionality was successfully pilot tested with several large-volume mailers to allow the use of a single permit at mailing locations across the country. This capability will be open to all mailers in early 2014, which will greatly simplify the account management process for commercial mailers.
Internal Controls. Updated acceptance process for field Business Mail Entry units to ensure SOX compliance. This was achieved through extensive communication and training efforts encompassing more than 25,000 employees.
