Office Document Strategies Blog

In 2014 Canada Post announced a five part restructuring plan designed to turn around its money losing operations.  The plan indicated that with the steps outlined Canada Post would be profitable within three years.  In fact, based upon the 2014 annual report the corporation moved much more quickly to accomplishing its profitability goals earning an operating profit of $299 million dollars.  Revenue also increased by just under $420 million for a 5.5% change.  

These are pretty significant numbers and upon review they may not be quite as surprising as first thought.  The news is not all rosy however.  Volumes in some areas, especially lettermail continued to drop, 5.4% and this drop was higher than in the previous year.  Transaction mail declined by 6.1% per address indicating that alternative methods are continuing to replace the mailed invoice for many activities.  Think of the push you receive from your personal as well as business vendors for you to accept electronic invoicing.  This is a trend which continues to grow.

On the good side the volume of domestic parcels increased by 9.2%.  One potential for this growth is an increase in online purchasing by consumers resulting more parcel deliveries being necessary in the marketplace. "Online shopping is growing our business from a position of strength," is how this phenomenon is described in the report.  It is an area which is anticipated to grow even though the parcel business is very competitive.

One reason there was growth in both revenues and profit was the change in the pricing structure for lettermail which was introduced in 2014.  Using a tiered pricing structure which provided for a lower price for those using postage meters and running higher volumes of mail when compared to occasional users buying single stamps, a three tiered price was introduced.  The base cost of a single first class stamp rose significantly over the 2013 level.  It is possible that this new higher cost aggravated the move away from mail to other forms of communication for low volume users.  It may also have affected the commercial use of mail as well.  Combined they probably account for a major portion of the drop in lettermail volume but potentially had a lower effect on the revenue associated since the per piece cost was higher.

Other changes in the plan are still being seen as controversial as Canada Post moves to end the final third of home delivery that was made to individual residences.  There is a significant back lash against this decision, including potential court action in some jurisdictions.  Just check on the stories from the City of Hamilton about the challenges to Canada Post's installation of new 'super boxes' to get some sense of the frustration.  Canada Post indicates that as the market changes there is a real need for them to reduce the costs of individual mail delivery and that the elimination of individual home delivery is one step in this fight.  Of course the reduction in workforce that is needed to be able to do this delivery will be a big help in meeting Canada Post's long term profitability goals.

Some commentators think that with the fast turn around in profits shown in 2014 Canada Post could move away from some of the more controversial parts of their plan but at this point there is not much indication this will happen.   According to one commentator the lettermail windfall in 2014 amounted to $238 million in extra revenue, more than half of the total increase realized.

No matter what your take on the 2014 results it is evident that Canada Post is making changes and that postal delivery in Canada is going to be different than it ever has been before.  Some of these differences are going to be great for most users and some may not.  

Every once in awhile an article comes across your desk that really capsules a challenging topic for IT operations.  This happened this week when I came across a listing for a recent publication from Europe which summarizes the security benefits and risks that come with cloud computing.  
Even better this publication is targeted directly at SMEs, (Small and Medium sized enterprises).

Microsoft is planning to release the commercial version of Windows 10 this fall.  Two days ago they released the Windows 10 Preview which will permit some users to test out the new system.

I have just had the experience of spending a couple of weeks traveling in  Europe and one of the things I realized quickly is that pre-planning is needed if you expect to be able to communicate reliably using email or online services when moving around the continent.  As North Americans we have become pretty complacent about being able to instantly communicate almost wherever we are.  

Over the past fifteen years a revolution has occured in the printing industry.  I can remember when the typical office copier was an analog device with super advanced features like the ability to expand an image to a larger size.

The window is becoming very short before the price increases created by the lower Canadian dollar flow into the MFP (multifunction printer, copier) and the IT hardware markets.  The low oil prices are putting significant pressure on the Canadian dollar which is great for Canadian manufacturing but is having serious impact on Canadian imports of products sourced from China and some other jurisdictions,  

While far from the top of the world when it comes to the impact of IT data breaches, Canada still experiences its fair share of the problems they create.  Recent reports indicated that over 276,000 records were breached in reported incidents in 2014.  

Every business has been affected by the disruption of business practices which the digital revolution of the past twenty years has created.  Virtually every aspect of operations have been affected by the changes in technology and latterly in communication which has been fostered by the low cost of computing power, the creation of portable instant communications and the world wide spread of easy access to information,

One common IT related scam that often flies under the radar is the domain registration scam.  In this situation a notification gets sent to a registered owner of a website domain address from some official looking email address such as 

Scanning is a popular tool in most businesses.  There are several ways to attack the need for scanning and each has its purpose and benefits. One of the methods which often gets over looked in the office due to the preponderance of network scanning tools around is desktop document scanning.