While there’s been a lot of bad news surrounding the United States Postal Service lately, a heightened level of innovation exists  both within the postal service and externally in an attempt to transform the organization, as well as the concept of mail delivery itself. This past June, the PostalVision 2020 conference in Washington, D.C. brought together senior USPS personnel, technologists, analysts, and journalists to openly discuss the future strategic direction of the postal service under the premise of what it should look like in the year 2020. Many companies are engaged in laying down the building blocks of what could potentially be the future of mail distribution and delivery for the United States and even abroad: digital mailboxes.

The concept of a digital mailbox or digital mail delivery is certainly not new. In the enterprise, vendors like Esker, Océ, and Pitney Bowes offer digital mail delivery solutions whereby each piece of mail that comes into the company is scanned and delivered electronically to employee recipients. EarthClassMail is an early service for smaller businesses and consumers that also scans and manages mail. With a mix of new entrants and existing players, there is aggressive development of digital mailbox services for consumers, designed to reach every household in the United States, just like the USPS. There are a number of key players to watch in this space:

• Accenture, the worldwide consulting and outsourcing firm, is taking the approach of partnering directly with national postal services to help them develop digital mailbox services. It has clearly stated it is aiming to help global posts design their own services to compete directly against some of the independent digital mailbox services listed below.
• doxo is a technology start-up that takes a broad approach to the digital mailbox, enabling users to not only import electronic bills and statements, but also many other types of documents that can either be uploaded or scanned in via its mobile phone application.
• Manilla, started by Hearst Corporation, provides access to over 1,000 companies to enable users to consolidate and manage bills and loyalty programs, including major wireless carriers, cable & satellite TV providers, utilities, financial companies, airlines, and more. Certified Manilla partners can also present targeted advertisements to Manilla users alongside the sender’s content, which offers an intriguing TransPromo play.
• Pitney Bowes announced its Volly digital mailbox offering at the beginning of 2011, although the offering is still in beta. According to my colleague Matt Swain’s blog post on the service after its announcement, “Think of Volly as an extension of a conventional consumer bill consolidation model, incorporating other types of mail into the same platform.” There is no doubt that PB will be highlighting Volly at Graph Expo this year.
• Zumbox, another technology start-up, has made waves recently with its million-dollar giveaway contest to get people signed up for its service. The company has a unique twist on its service in that it uses your physical mail address as your digital mailbox address, as well. Like others, its concept is to digitally centralize the management of all mail being sent to a household.

There is a great deal of innovation occurring in this space right now, and considering the rapid pace of technology proliferation and adoption these days, it would not be surprising if these companies and their services make a big splash in the near future. InfoTrends is investigating this market right now, currently conducting a research study entitled The Emergence of Digital Mailbox Services: Moving Beyond Online Bill Consolidation in the U.S. This research initiative will identify the opportunity for secure digital mailbox services in the U.S. and will include a growth projection through 2015. I’m excited to see how this space shapes up, as these services could have a major influence on how we delivery, accept, and manage our mail.

In my last post I talked about the impact of workflow on in-plants and how it can help them stay relevant to the organizations they support. Now, as we shift our focus to the commercial print environment, there’s a temptation to focus on the similarities. Both serve customers, both aim to grow volumes and both are under pressure to offer more services, improve efficiency and compete more effectively. That’s where the similarities end.

While in-plants are under the gun to justify their value-add to the enterprise and prevent defection to external providers – those same external providers are wrestling with their own set of challenges.  Not the least of which is relentless pressure to deliver a profit month after month. In addition they must combat print suppression efforts,  satisfy the diverse requirements of more knowledgeable and demanding customers and make the transition from purveyor of ink to integrated service provider. All this at a time when core commercial print applications are under siege by alternate communication channels, the commercial print market is consolidating, volumes are declining and business in general remains stuck in an aimless recessionary grind.

Amidst this potent brew of challenges, digital print is increasingly seen as a requirement for survival, one that opens up new applications, opportunities and sources of revenue. Despite overall decline, the total print opportunity for 2011 is estimated to be an astounding 10 trillion pages. Of that number 2.1% or 216 billion pages are digital print – a number that’s expected to nearly double to 3.9% by 2014.

So if you’re a commercial printer looking to get your share of the growing digital opportunity, what’s workflow got to do with it? A lot, as it turns out. In fact, workflow can mean the difference between a print operation that’s rooted in the dark ages and one equipped to satisfy the expectations of 21^st century customers. Can streamlined digital workflow help commercial printers survive – or better yet, thrive – in the second decade of the new millennium? Yes -and here’s how:

1. As commercial print shops invest in digital print production, through workflow, they can expand their product offerings and expand into new markets that were originally out of market, becoming a true marketing services provider.
2. Software opens up the potential for commercial printers to handle multiple file formats and sizes, which allows for greater flexibility in the number of applications supported.
3. With a digital workflow, commercial print shops can store jobs electronically and print them digitally on demand. This, in turn, eliminates the need for longer runs and warehousing printed inventory.
4. With the ability to store files electronically, commercial print shops can turn jobs around quickly with minimal labor and processing, enabling a just-in-time production process.
5. As access to information increases and marketing messages become more targeted, a digital workflow that supports variable data and marketing messages enables commercial print shops to produce targeted, relevant communications that generate a better return on investment.
6. To meet demand for faster turnaround, shorter runs and variable data requirements, commercial print shops can implement web-to-print solutions that will offer the benefits of an online ordering system.
7. With digital workflow products that enable variable data document composition or streamlined make-ready, commercial print shops can diversify their product portfolios with value-added products and services.
8. With web-to-print and variable data solutions and increased application flexibility, commercial print shops can further strengthen customer relationships.
9. Overall, with digital workflow solutions that seamlessly route applications to digital print engines, commercial print shops can reduce production costs and improve efficiency.

In summary, an efficient digital workflow can facilitate the transition to integrated services provider, improve productivity and efficiency, enhance customer relationships and position commercial print shops to capture new opportunities. Want to weigh in? I’m interested to hear your take on the impact of a digital workflow on commercial print shops.

The clock started ticking on May 22, 2009 when the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act was signed by President Obama. It is a landmark piece of legislation that provides American consumers with stronger protection against unfair credit practices than previously imposed by the Federal Reserve under changes to Reg Z and Reg AA. It also gave issuers less time to comply than the Fed: the first date for compliance is this month, only 90 days after the law was passed. Tick. Tick. Tick.

On August 20, 2009 the first provisions of the CARD Act go into effect. By this date, card issuers must have made the changes necessary to ensure that:

• - Cardholders have a minimum of 21 days to pay their bill;
• - Cardholders receive 45 days’ advance notice of significant changes to their card agreements;
• - Notice is provided that cardholders have a right to opt out of significant changes in their account terms, including interest rate and fee increases, as long as they are not more than 60 days overdue on their payments.

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Heidi Tolliver-Nigro noted in a recent posting that 1:1 print jobs are rarely repeated. Let’s think about that for a minute. First, what do we mean by 1:1?? Name and address with a customer loyalty coupon? Some real estate post card application? Those are nice, but they have little or nothing to do with the notion of TransPromo. These 1:1 jobs are one-off projects, simple promotional mailings usually composed in a PostScript of PDF creation tool and printed on cut-sheet machines – usually color. Transactional printing on the other hand is done in huge volumes using AFP/IPDS. When promotional messaging is integrated into these kinds of document you get a whole new thing. First of all you have the opportunity to dump all of the blow-ins, inserts & generic coupons. The result is something currently called TransPromo. TransPromo and 1:1 are two distinctly different kinds of print jobs for two distinctly different markets and different types of customers.
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