The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, LA proved to be a terrific site for the National Postal Forum, recently held from Sunday, May 18th to Wednesday May 21st. Attendees and vendors alike were very happy with the location, the facility and the show.

With the competition between the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and private carriers such as Fed-Ex and UPS getting hotter and hotter, the USPS was very proud to unveil and display several very exciting systems, products and services which will become more and more visible to the general public as their various test procedures and systems are implemented, and the results gathered and advertised.

Many of these new USPS services will open new and exciting doors for vendors who can develop and provide elaborate technologies to integrate with them. Again, the sharing of and access to various types of real-time information and data is becoming more in demand to businesses of all sizes.

Services such as USPS Priority Mail delivery confirmation are already in the testing stages and should have 10 live-test markets up and running by the fall. If things go to plan, the USPS hopes to have all mail carriers, the appropriate facilities and vehicles fully functional and automated with scanning & transmitting equipment by some time in 1999. Anyone who is involved and familiar with "Year 2,000" systems projects will agree that 1999 is not far away at all, as business goes. The funding for this project has already been approved and the wheels of implementation are turning quickly.

There are already tests being performed with a sample of USPS vehicles being tracked as they make their delivery rounds via on-board transmitters and remote satellites. The new program is called "Enhanced Street Performance" and it enables the USPS to track it's trucks to review and analyze routes every 24 hours, rather than every two years as was the case under their old manual system. Although still in the live-test stages now, all of this new automation is coming in as fast and furious as a tidal wave which will devour a great deal of revenue which currently goes to the competition.

Although similar technologies have already been in place and are being used by other carriers such as Fed-Ex and UPS, this new boost of modern technology will surely put the USPS a few notches higher on the boards. It will also make it much tougher for the USPS' competitors, who for years have been preaching that their tracking and tracing capabilities are the primary reason why customers should pay more to use their services instead of the more economical Priority Mail.

Mailers were very happy to see and hear that Global Priority mail even offers volume discounts, and the USPS is aggressively working to add more countries and options to their international delivery services.

The smart equipment dealers and vendors of mailing systems and computer equipment will be thoroughly keeping track (no pun intended) of the USPS' moves in the game and will develop and provide equipment and solutions which interweave with the USPS' efforts and services as the opportunities arise.

Applications which produce things such as Barcoded Mail Tray Labels and High Speed Traying, Sleeving and Strapping Systems will become increasingly in demand and justified by the terrific postage discounts made available through Classification Reform.

While scoping out the large collection of USPS booths at the show, it truly seemed like the majority of the topics on the banners, signs and display stations started with (or at least included) the word "electronic". Electronics are also being used by the USPS to make it easier for mailers to manage their postage money and coordinate mailings if they have Postage Permit Accounts at more than one Post Office. Using this service called "CAPS" (Centralized, Automated Payment System) mailers can wire money into their CAPS account and then draw from that account from different post offices as each mailing is submitted. No longer do mailers have to figure out ahead of time which of the post offices it has permits at they will use to drop any particular mailing or have to scramble to get the right amount of money over to the right office.

In addition, the USPS has already made many JAVA forms available right on their web site. It seems that every time we turn around we want to add one more specialized link to their web site from our web sites "links" page. Mailers can now download forms such as the many various postage statements (3600 and 3602 series, etc.) and fill in the blanks and print them right out locally. These are the types of services and resources that make mailers lives more convenient and allow things to move quicker.

The mailing equipment manufacturers, computer systems vendors and VARs who follow the USPS' lead and provide the same kind of helpful services to their customers will surely be the winners and maintain loyal, happy customers. They should work closely with their customers to thoroughly determine and understand their needs, examine and evaluate existing methods, procedures and systems and then develop and provide more beneficial, appropriate and improved solutions. All of these new services offered by the USPS will surely sprout new systems opportunities for the creative developers and vendors.

The USPS also had an Automated Barcode Evaluator (referred to as "ABE") on display. ABE is the machine that has the business mailers wrongly panicking and sweating bullets. You see, what ABE does is check postnet barcodes for readability. It will be used to test barcodes on mailings submitted for automation discounts and if the quality of the barcodes fail, the mailer will forfeit all of, or a portion of their discounts. Think of the consequences and nightmares that could occur if a mailer dropped off a couple thousand or million pieces expecting to pay the discount rates and they were then informed that the mailing was to be charged at full rate!

ABE provides an excellent opportunity for equipment dealers to sell new, better software, printing, addressing and barcoding systems because of this. Customers who are not quite sure whether they want to upgrade to a better system may be pushed over the edge by a friendly reminder of what could happen if their old system's barcodes were to let them down when confronted by ABE.

In all fairness to the USPS though, mailers shouldn't worry and cry so much about ABE because if they operate and maintain good equipment and train their people well to know how to read and spot a bad barcode (as the better mailing operations do), then any problems would be recognized and corrected way before the mail would ever have been brought to the USPS anyway.

On the contrary, we should all be happy that the USPS is in fact interested in maintaining quality so that we can ALL get better, faster and more accurate mail delivery.

Of course it will be important that the ABE equipment works well and has feasible reporting capabilities and maintains credibility so that mailers are not wrongly cheated of discounts. This is mainly why ABE has not already been implemented as initially planned as there are still a few bugs and flaws in the system to be worked out. ABE currently also lacks adequate reporting capabilities to show the bad pieces/barcodes it read and prove what it determined.

More USPS automation in the form of the new Mail Cartridge System (MCS) was also explored. MCS consists of specially made mail trays which connect right onto the sorting machines and enable mail to be "swept" and collected from the sorting bins without human intervention. They are currently working on a robotic process which will enable the trays to then be brought to the next machine, hooked up to the feeder and emptied automatically.

On the vendor side, many exciting products have either been officially launched or are in the test stages. As usual, Digital was toting their products from a large booth, this time dressed up to mimic "The Blues Brothers". This brought about many smiles from the crowd and was a natural conversation starter. It was kind of refreshing to be able to conduct serious business and review their new compact computer boards while joking and checking out their "costumes" for lack of a better word.

W.A. Charnstrom Co., Inc. was showing some of their newest lock boxes and file systems that as a Professional Mailing Operations Consultant I can definitely say are becoming more and more popular due to corporate downsizing. Many companies are looking at having lock boxes or mail stations for people to come and pick-up or deposit their mail or internal distribution items (internal/interoffice materials) in their facility in order to reduce the amount of time or people needed for desk drop or departmental delivery.

Envelope Manager Software displayed their fascinating new on-line address correction system which enables users to run mailing lists through their Envelope Manager Software locally and with the click of a mouse, reach into designated servers on the internet and have the lists automatically standardized and assigned zip+4+2 codes as needed to clean up their lists and prepare postnet barcoded mailings more economically.

The internet and corporate intranets are increasingly playing a more visible and functional part in the overall big picture of speed, service and options. Many good systems are being invented and many previously existing systems are quickly being made better by utilizing these technologies.

As more people are taking advantage of these terrific resources and technologies and are being made aware of what's possible, developers, manufacturers and systems/equipment providers are hurriedly being pushed into the soup, or they will quickly be left behind in the dust.

Scott DeMayo, CMDSM, MPQCS is President of DeMayo Mail Management and DMM Web, Mailing Operations Consulting and Web Site design firm. Questions or comments are welcomed at (201) 361-0278 or E-mail scott@demayo.com Readers are also invited to visit the DMM Web-Site and download free software at http://www.demayo.com