In 2006 Document Outsourcing recognised the significant changes taking place in Postal marketplace, particularly the introduction of the Down Stream Access (DSA) competitors to Royal Mail, introduced by Postcomm, the government regulatory body whose directive was to make the postal marketplace a ‘level playing field’

Allow Document Outsourcing to optimise your postal budget... primepost it.

This is an accredited postal access agreement which permits Document Outsourcing to trade direct through the Royal Mail wholesale division which was established to specifically service Downstream Access providers offering a competitive postal service to Royal Mail Retail division, although it is in fact the same retail postperson who delivers the letters to the recipients.

This licence allowed Document Outsourcing to introduce primepost, a bespoke, highly localised postal service based on delivering to Royal Mail post code subdivisions known as ‘Zones’

The service differs from the standard Royal Mail retail operation in that under the standard retail service Royal Mail vans pick up mail at agreed times from our premises and take it to the local Royal Mail inbound mail centre where it is sorted and redistributed to local mail sorting offices and finally to the postman for delivery.

Under primepost Document Outsourcing software analyses the data and splits the output mail into delivery Zones. Documents are then printed in this order and the envelopes are then packaged and injected into the same Royal Mail inbound mail centre by Document Outsourcing transport personally and not using Royal Mail transport, thereby saving Royal Mail logistical collection costs.

These savings then allow Royal Mail to offer Document Outsourcing access to the lowest possible postage rates, better than can be achieved with the current postal discounts available through Royal Mail retail.  Generally Zonal pricing rewards densely populated mailings, hence it will not work across all applications or market sectors but is particularly attractive for government mailings and mailings where the output is local e.g. for Scottish mailings to Scottish recipients it is an ideal model.

We anticipate there being 3 rates of pricing - Unsorted mail volume less than 4K, Sorted mail volume more than 4K and Walksort.

Using primepost numerous mailings have been sent, substantial savings realised, and the service has been enthusiastically embraced by Customers.

The primary benefits of primepost are

• Lowest possible localised postal costs, subject to data qualification criteria
• Customers can specify on which day of the week they wish their mail to be delivered.
• Environmentally attractive – local print and delivery avoids mail road trucking vehicles

For a prospective customer to adopt the primepost there is no technical or customer resources required, other than for the customer to agree to their envelopes indicia being shown as primepost.
Consequently the service can be introduced very quickly, within days if necessary, with little or no customer resource effort.

Any residual mail outside of primepost scope can still attract postal discounts and a postal analysis by Document Outsourcing will quantify this.