Are you prepared for Intelligent Mail® in May 2011? I just did a search of CIO.com and found virtually no discussion on this critical topic.

Here’s the short version of a fairly complex issue. If your organization is printing and mailing documents (like statements) and taking postal discounts by placing a POSTNET barcode on each outgoing mail-piece to qualify for automation rates from the United States Post Office (USPS) — then you’ll need to update your systems to place a new Intelligent Mail barcode before May, 2011. Otherwise the discounts you’re receiving now will go away and you’ll be paying full rate first class mail.

What is Intelligent Mail? Basically it is the USPS’ new business system that consolidates a number of older barcodes that control different postal services into one unified barcode. There are two service levels, Basic and Full. Both services allow unique serial numbers to be associated with each mail-piece, enabling new systems integration opportunities (imagine knowing when a remit payment envelope is in the mail, or being able to schedule a follow-up activity with a customer because you know when their mail went out for delivery).

Companies choosing the Full Service route can receive discounts up to $3 per 1000 first class mail pieces. Not worth it for some, but high volume mailers will certainly benefit from the savings. The process to comply is quite involved. First, all barcodes must be updated. That includes mail tray and container labels. All addresses need to have been processed by address standardization and sorting software. Each mailpiece must be assigned a unique serial number — not to be reused for 45 days — and postal manifests must be transmitted to the USPS electronically.

Is this an operations problem or an IT problem? That depends on your organization. For many, it will be a joint concern. There are many different ways to achieve compliance, including outsourcing it to a mailing presort vendor. But if your organization has many lines of business feeding into one or many print centers, or are printing from legacy applications that were built in COBOL for example — then there’s a lot of work ahead to comply. So I would encourage people to have a close look at this issue now.

Want more information on this? Drop me a line. There’s a number of ways we can explore this issue and expand on the topic.

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