January 20, 2016

Postmaster General Megan Brennan pledged at the January 12, 2016 Mailer’s Technical Advisory Committee (MTAC) open session the following commitments to the mailing industry: service improvement, industry engagement, minimizing barriers to entry, and innovation. The pledge of service improvement included predictable delivery in order for business and nonprofit customers to grow their involvement in the mail.

Once predictable service improvement and ease of use are gained, industry engagement in areas such as MTAC, Postal Customer Councils (PCCs), and the National Postal Forum (NPF) will follow suit as the USPS becomes more predictable and less complex for business mailers both small and large. The USPS looks to offer innovation into the mailing industry; but who better to innovate than the mailers themselves? The next MTAC meeting will be March 21 – 23 at the National Postal Forum in Nashville, TN. The MTAC representatives are open to comments from stake holders of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers and will provide representation of these comments to USPS officers and management.

Contact your Alliance MTAC representatives at: Trista Niswander, Deborah Damore, and Steve Smith.

David Williams, Chief Operating Officer& EVP addressed the group providing an operations update.

Year to date service performance:

FCM overnight 95.4%

FCM 2 day 93.7%

FCM 3-5 day 88.6%

Standard composite 89.2%

Std DSCF letters 92.4%

Std DSCF flats 77.6%

Std DNDC flats 83.6%

Periodicals 80.5%

Joe Corbett, Chief Financial Officer& EVP reported controllable net income through November was $800 million, and the USPS expects to report a very positive December.  The 10Q will be filed on February 9^th.  Transportation expenses are flat, but with oil trending to below $30 a barrel, USPS may begin to realize some savings in fuel.

Pritha Mehra, VP Mail Entry & Payment Technology, and Randy Miskanic, Acting Chief Information Officer, reported to the group that in the past 180 days PostalOne! Averaged over 99 percent availability, but did acknowledged that the two major outages in the last month are not acceptable.

Payment & Acceptance, Education

USPS notes that it is still tracking towards automated Full Service Invoicing in July 2016.

The USPS is working on a new document called Publication of Streamlined Mail Entry for Letters and Flats.  This publication is currently in draft format at 120 pages, and the review is being completed to help simplify use and availability of guides and pubs. At present there are over 26 supporting use and technical applications of Intelligent Mail.

Improvements have been made to the Business Customer Gateway mailer scorecard reports.  Additional testing is scheduled with the mailing industry for eInduction, Full Service, and Seamless throughout January to confirm that updates have satisfied earlier issues included in reports that made them questionable for use.

Product Innovation/Emerging Technology

Five promotions are planned for 2016.  The earned value, and personalized color transpromo are open to First Class Mail, the tactile sensory & interactive mail piece engagement, along with the mobile shopping promotion are for Standard Mail alone, and the emerging advanced technology promotion is open to both First and Standard Mail.

The USPS is in full pilot mode with the Informed Delivery™ program.  The New York Metro pilot area is planning to expand its consumer participants from current MY USPS users to invite others in the area to sign up.  This programs allows consumers in the available area to sign up to receive an email with notification and picture of incoming daily mail.  The Alliance encourages nonprofits to participate in the as mailers if you currently mail to the New York area. You would add direct click-throughs and enhanced graphics to the digital copy of your mailpiece that the consumer receives when the hard copy mail is delivered.

Enterprise Analytics/Data Usage

Informed visibility continue to move forward.  The USPS intends to do a national deployment of web-enabled mail tracking on June 20, 2016.  In September 2016 they plan a roll out nationally that will meet One Stop Visibility needs.

Mail Preparation & Entry Operations

USPS reported a 15 percent growth in packages during December, with 18.5 percent more volume during the peak period around the holidays. The biggest mailing day was December 14th.

The USPS is working with industry to improve the accuracy of reporting of driver arrival, and unload times at receiving facilities, in an effort to identify the trouble areas.

© 2016 Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers