Pitney Bowes Inc: Innovation Process

Franking machines can be used in companies with high postal levels to minimise costs, these are usually leased from suppliers like Pitney Bowes.

Sending catalogs, a powerful marketing tool, yields a 5-10% order rate among previous customers and a 1-2% order rate among previous recipients and contacts from rented mailing lists. The greatest potential growth market for the company are customers who are not accustomed to the mail

Over the years, the Postal Service has played many roles. By statute, the mission of the Postal Service is to “bind the nation together.” This is typically thought of as providing hard copy delivery. But, historically, the mission of the Postal Service has been broader, including educating and informing the public, enabling commerce, and representing the federal government in local communities. The key to determining the appropriate future business model of the Postal Service is clarifying its role. What future role does the

Postal Service is facing a major financial crisis and imminent collapse due to new technologies coupled with national economic struggles that have led to an incredible drop in mail and postage revenue (USPS receives no money from taxes). On top of these revenue drops, the Postal Service is burdened with unfair and difficult financial obligations that were imposed by Congress. This dangerous combination has sent the Postal Service into an economic downward spiral.

In Daniel Stone’s editorial article, “Flying Like an Eagle”, he advises the USPS some guidance to boost up their profit and their usage to the community. One of his inputs on the

If I were the current CEO for the United States Postal Service, I would be gravely concerned about the future of my business, as it has recently taken a steep plummet from its success and popularity in the 19th and 20th centuries. The USPS is now faced with the decision to renovate itself due to the extreme loss of business as technology takes over the 21st Century. Some say that the USPS should be entirely reconstructed because the business is only headed further downhill, while others say that paper mail is still very practical, more so than e-mail, and we must each write more letters to do our part in reviving the business to profitability again. Because the USPS has been such a vital part of our country through

By 1906 Sears was operating the largest mail order plant in the world, but that necessitated that the company’s focus shift from design dominance to products and process. Sears has entered the transitional stage of the Abernathy - Utterback Model. Sears is tasked with the need to handle mass orders economically and efficiently, and develops the ‘time scheduling system’, which brings chaos to the mail order industry and defines a significant core competence (Sears Archive, 2012). Around the same time, Sears’s customers are shifting their focus to quality, which drives the need to replace the fancy Sears catalog with a factual based catalog. Sears’s core competencies are innovation, mail order process, quality products, perceived value, and factual based advertisement (catalog).

Royal  Mail  is  the  largest  provider  of  postal  services  in  the  United  Kingdom  and   one  of  the  largest  postal  service  providers  in  the  world.  This  paper  analyzes

Q1. How and why has the express mail industry structure evolved in recent years? How have the changes affected small competitors?

The industry is defined as the Domestic US Express Mail industry. This includes overnight and second day delivery. In order to assess the attractiveness of the industry, a Porters' Five Forces analysis has been conducted as follows.

The strength of the unit is based on the fact that the company is built on an innovative and entrepreneurial culture with a decentralized management philosophy with Knowledge sharing and dissemination as a key part of Art’s business philosophy. Despite the high level of decentralization and profit accountability, technology and human capital were both widely shared among divisions. The company also moved quickly to bring products to market. An idea which showed promise was funded as funds were always available for small beta batch productions. This allowed market testing to achieve proof of concept within ART. Investment funds were readily available to fund an investment once an innovation has been approved.

The express mail industry can easily be considered an inherently tough industry to operate within given the myriad of factors that come into play, such as unions, government regulations, cost of technological advancement, and international borders to name a few. Despite this, the industry could be seen as offering opportunities, which could be seized by attracting customers based on the quality of the service being offered. Consequently, this also encouraged mimicking between

The USPS is at a point where it does not have the financing available to maintain its operations. One reason for the annual net losses is due to the declining rate of first-class mail. The second reason has to do with the required prepayment of $5.5 billion per year toward retirees’ healthcare costs. In order for the USPS to overcome this deficit, they will need to consider their short time frame, government restrictions and labor union backfire in considering the best alternative. One alternative would be to privatize postal services operations which would allow the USPS to change its pricing structure, yet it would potentially significantly reduce market share. A second alternative would be to undergo a system-wide

Established an internal design division reducing “time to market” for new products; cross-functional integration required for successful development of new products [Grant p 135].

Trends and opportunities of the parcel service industry include globalization, e-commerce, and supply-chain management. Internet logistics was FedEx and UPS’s fastest growing business. The internet enabled customers to link directly to retailers and their manufacturers. In 2001, parcel carriers served almost all of the online market. They were able to provide information on packages to customers through tracking systems on the web. This allowed customers to plan ahead and decrease delays in deliveries. It also allowed for faster transactions and lower communication costs. Parcel companies created partnerships with large Internet retailers. These partnerships allowed parcel service companies to expand its overall delivery volume. Parcel companies improved tracking by implementing several technological innovations. These included “laser scanners and bar codes, state of the art software programs, satellite and cell phone communication equipment, electronic information interchanges, and the Internet.”