For our customers, value is defined by quality of service, price, and ease of use. Over the next five years we will continue to improve the value of our products to promote growth. We will add new features to First-Class Mail to make it a more powerful communication tool for advertisers and financial service providers. Small businesses remain an enormous engine of the nation’s commerce, and we are developing ways to make advertising mail more accessible and easier for them to use. In the advertising market our focus will be to offer services that help our customers’ businesses grow. Customers will see continued improvements in package delivery services as we continue to automate operations, increase ease of use, and expand track and trace capabilities. These changes will better serve households and small businesses that use end-to-end package services. Improvements will also benefit consolidators who rely on us for delivery only. We earn 85% of our revenue from businesses and institutions, all of whom have choices in how they communicate, bill, and ship. To meet the needs of large business customers, we will develop integration strategies to tailor pricing to take advantage of the benefits of customer preparations, packaging and drop-shipping capability utilizing our network where possible.

Customers are finding that our services are more convenient. Services are available via usps.com, 1-800-ASK-USPS, by mail, self-service kiosks, grocery stores, ATMs and through new expanded business hours at Post Offices in the evenings and on Saturdays. The Web is making it easier and faster to deposit commercial mailings, as transactions such as manifesting, postage payment, and entry scheduling move from paper to electronic media.

Each day we receive and deliver almost 700 million pieces of mail. Distribution and transportation of these letters, parcels, catalogs, and magazines occur across a network of more than 37,000 Post Offices and retail outlets and 675 mail processing facilities. The mail is securely and reliably delivered to more than 144 million addresses. Over the past four years, we have improved our operations to produce better, more consistent service with fewer resources. Today, we deliver fifty percent more mail than we did two decades ago, with the same number of employees.

In the next five years, there will be more change. Delivery has become our largest cost center and will be the focus of intensive efficiency efforts. We will streamline the entire mail flow, to make it more flexible and responsive to the changing needs of our business. In the longer term, we will create a standardized network that contains fewer types of processing facilities. Larger regional distribution centers will serve as primary nodes for multiple products, and smaller local processing facilities will process all mail with destinations in their geographic areas. These changes will reduce costs and improve reliability.

We will continue to implement industry best practices throughout the mail value chain to eliminate costly rework and standardize operations resulting in benefits for both us and our customers. We, and the mailing industry, must work together to raise quality levels by assuring correct and complete addresses and routing information. As we streamline our networks and deploy new automated processing equipment, new tools will help us handle fluctuations in demand at the lowest possible cost. Tracking systems will show how mail flows across operations and advance notification systems will report how much mail is arriving. Planning models will calculate required resources.

We will hold ourselves accountable to our customers to deliver more consistent quality and higher levels of customer service. The higher the quality of service targeted, the greater the importance of identifying and maintaining a skilled and committed workforce. Our goal is an environment that encourages employees to strive to be the best. Therefore, we will continue to build a performance-based culture and improve the skill sets of our workforce at all levels. In our training and leadership development we will emphasize teamwork and customer focus. Our employees are known for a deep commitment to service, which is witnessed daily in the thousands of communities they serve. Building on this commitment, we will increase employee involvement at all levels and will continue to recognize high performers. Employees will have the opportunity to move up in the ranks of the organization through outstanding performance and career development opportunities.

We exceeded most of the aggressive targets that we set in our first phase of Transformation. In the course of executing that Plan, our employees gained new levels of confidence in the organization’s ability to meet challenges. Despite the challenges ahead and the unresolved status of pending postal reform legislation, we are confident that we will also achieve the goals we have set for ourselves in this next phase of Transformation.

Services (Products)

The Postal Service is the centerpiece of the U.S. mailing industry. We provide a wide variety of services and products to meet almost any mailing need. Some of our major services and products are: