14 May 2002

World Mail Awards 2002 - Winners Announced - Focus on Innovation

Postal industry organisations worldwide are becoming ever more innovative in their drive to meet new commercial and technological challenges.

Such innovation ranges from total process re-engineering and the implementation of sophisticated state of the art electronic systems to the development of relatively simple but very effective product enhancements.

That was the clear message to emerge from the World Mail Awards 2002 ceremony organised by UK-based Triangle Management Services and held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands last night (May 13). Prominent among the latest winners of the prestigious annual awards, for example, was Dutch company Innovation Affairs, which took the “Innovation” category with a lightweight cardboard foldable letter weighing scale it has developed called EasyWeighs.

The desktop device, which costs less than one stamp, is designed to enable small businesses and private customers, at home or at work, to determine postage easily and correctly. Basically, the calibrated scale works as a balance and will tip if a letter is put in a slot for which it is too heavy.

Another winner was Poste Italiane S.p.A. (Italian Post) which won the “Enterprise” award for its development of engineering processes leading to cost reductions and improvements in quality. Since 1998, the organisation has introduced a range of measures designed to achieve such improvement, including strict new processing and quality standards published and notified to customers by means of a “Quality Chart”.

The accelerating pace of innovation in the global postal industry as a whole was further highlighted by the master of ceremonies at the Mail Awards 2002 ceremony, Dutch television presenter Astrid Joosten.

“Post offices have been quick to extend into growth areas like e-messaging, airfreight and logistics. This trend has helped post offices to benefit from substantial collection and distribution synergies, although this has often happened in areas outside traditional regulated home markets,” she told guests at the awards dinner in the Hilton Hotel, Apollolaan.

“The boom in home deliveries, driven by the Internet, will provide post offices with a major opportunity to boost sales using their existing comprehensive delivery networks,” she added.

Altogether, postal industry organisations from Europe, North America, South America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa submitted nearly 100 applications - more than double the number the previous year - for the latest World Mail Awards which are designed to encourage and publicise best practise within the mail industry.

This year’s awards covered seven categories, all of them representing key areas of activity for that sector. The winners were:

• Internet Commerce (sponsored by Accenture): ihavemoved.com (UK) Ltd for a system developed to notify service providers of a mover’s change of address through a “one stop” interface.

• Marketing Campaign of the Year (sponsored by Triangle Management Services): Australia Post for its “Retail Post” programme of retail outlet modernisation and electronic point-of-sale system incorporation.

• Enterprise (sponsored by Spring): Poste Italiane S.p.A. (Italian Post), for its development of engineering processes leading to cost reductions and improvements in quality.

• Customer Service (sponsored by Posten Sverige AB): Empresa Brasileira de Correios e Telegrafos for a national programme in Brazil to deliver 115 million textbooks to public schools.

• Innovation (sponsored by Pitney Bowes): Innovation Affairs, the Netherlands, for its lightweight cardboard foldable letter weighing scale.

• Security: Postal Security Service of the Russian Post for detection, prevention and recording of postal security violations throughout the Russian Federation, and for the transfer of that knowledge and skills to other countries.

• e-Messaging (sponsored by ErgoIDP): AN Post, Republic of Ireland, for its “Electronic Business Exchange (eBX)” electronic bill presentation and payment system with a secure payment module.

More information on the judges and the Awards presentation can be found at www.mailawards.com

Triangle Contacts:

Neil Jackson
on +44 (0) 8709 507900