Transaction Mail
FROM THAT LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE BY YOUR CHILD’S SCHOOL TO THE MONTHLY UTILITIES BILL, MAIL IS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF EVERY CANADIAN’S LIFE. BUT THE ECONOMIC DOWNTURN ADDED TO CHALLENGES FACED BY OUR TRANSACTION MAIL BUSINESS IN 2008.
Transaction mail includes bills, statements, invoices, payments and other letters, and comprises three distinctive types of delivery services: domestic Lettermail™, international Letter-post and epost™, Canada Post’s online bill presentment service. Canada Post has the sole and exclusive privilege of collecting, transmitting and delivering letters up to 500 grams within Canada. Transaction Mail accounted for $3.2 billion, or 53% of revenue for the Canada Post segment (or approximately 42% of The Canada Post Group revenue) in 2008. Revenue was relatively flat compared to 2007.
As Canadians have continued to shift to email, instant messaging and other means of electronic communication, and businesses have consolidated mailings and encouraged their customers to go online, the Canada Post segment has faced increasing pressures on the largest and most profitable part of its business. Total volume declined for the second straight year, to 5.32 billion Lettermail pieces in 2008, and has been relatively flat for several years. As the total number of delivery addresses continues to increase by approximately 200,000 per year, the amount of Lettermail pieces per household is declining, reaching 355 pieces in 2008, down more than 6% since 2004.
To address the marketplace’s changing requirements and to provide customers with multi-channel, end-to-end solutions, Canada Post has developed several new services over the years that complement our traditional services. They include epost and our SmartFlow™ Document Management Services, which help businesses communicate seamlessly and easily with each other through the channel of their choice — physical mail, epost, email and fax. In 2008, the SmartFlow Recover/Respond services experienced triple-digit growth for the second year in a row. To help promote epost, Canada Post ran an extensive campaign in Southern Ontario to raise awareness of the environmental friendliness of this service.
While we have captured some of our customers’ shift online, the market remains fiercely competitive. The economic downturn that started in 2008 has put tremendous pressure on many customers to cut costs where they can. We expect that this situation will continue through 2009 as businesses continue their cost-reduction efforts, reducing their mailings and offering further bill consolidation, for example.
In spite of these difficulties, Canada Post remains committed to making sure the country communicates efficiently, securely and on time. In 2008, we delivered Lettermail within our service standards 96% of the time, a result that ensures mail continues to be one of the most reliable services in Canada.
Moving business forward with SmartFlow
Every organization’s critical business processes stream through it as documents: invisibly, continually and, ideally, flawlessly. When these documents — orders, invoices, payments, customer response forms, and so many other records — do not move fluidly, business slows down. At the same time, business customers are demanding more choice in the form that these documents take, digital or paper, which adds new complexities to the process. Frustrating and costly errors and delays can result.
Canada Post’s SmartFlow Document Management Services improve various parts of this critical document workflow. SmartFlow marries up with our customers’ existing processes and software, and changes what is often seen as an unfortunate obligation — “the paperwork” — into an opportunity to enhance an operation’s effectiveness. SmartFlow can also raise delivery accuracy, speed customer response and reduce overall cycle time for the complete back-and-forth of business communications.
