Clint Bolte, a print consultant, recapped the conference in three points:
1. Congress will never let the USPS go under, 2. USPS can only embrace digital technologies via work share contracts with the private sector, and 3. despite cascading physical mail volumes, the USPS is still a $50 billion dollar business projected to handle half the world’s mail volume by 2020.
While USPS may have the largest network in the world, the system is held back by rules and regulations that were dictated before Television. Syed Hoda, General Manger of Cisco Systems Emerging Solutions Group, offered up a comparison between the USPS and the NYC metro. His analogy finds that they are both mediocre, but both effectively network the physical boundaries assigned to them.
So where can improvements occur within this huge industry? Ruth Goldway, Chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission PRC, suggests six tactics:
1. Allow private sector more access to the network,
2. Capitalize on geographic reach of the postal network (digital is fragmented but physical mail can reach every home),
3. Leverage trusted nature of Postal Service (expand Vote by Mail service, emergency medical countermeasures, mail-in test kits),
4. Tap intellectual capital of Postal Network (national addressing system, employees’ institutional knowledge, patent portfolio, hybrid mail, lessons from other national postal operators),
5. Provide customers more control over the mail (high value recycling, partnered return package pick-up & drop off points, partner with mail back repair services, enhanced merchandise return), and
6. Partnerships (federal, state, and local government agencies, credentialing services to Government customers, prize contests, retail reinvention).
Unfortunately, the USPS is a cumbersome and inadaptable system, so making changes in the next ten years is a challenge. As the think-tank summarized, however, the USPS, progressive or not, will always be a fixture in the United States mail delivery industry.
Image from Inquisitr.com
Written by Maggie Young