The secret to cutting down on postal costs

The secret to cutting down on Public service postal costs

Pressure on finances is an often heard phrase at this time of year as public sector organisations start their annual budget planning process.  Across the UK, local authorities, health bodies and regional and national governments continue to look at ways to reduce expenditure without impacting on service delivery.

There is an old phrase ‘look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves’ and in the case of reviewing your postal service contracts, it could not be more true. However, cost of delivery is not the only factor that influences service cost.

A key driver to achieving cost efficiencies is improving mail quality. Ensuring your mail is clean and presentable enables it to move much more efficiently through the print and post journey and ensures households receive their mail on time. So how do I improve mail the way my mail is presented? First of all, look at the following descriptions and see if they apply to your mail items:

• Misfolded mail
• Handwritten mail
• Non-standard envelopes
• Misaddressed mail
• Over-sized envelopes
• Badly positioned labels
• Postcodes not being the sole text on the last line of address

Do any of them apply to your mail, if so, you can follow these simple steps to improve your mail quality:

1. Ensure your letter is machineable – its shape, flexibility and paper colour all matter
2. Ensure your address is machine readable – correct font size and colour, full address details shown clearly in the right location.
3. Ensure you have the correct envelope layout – ensuring address zone and indicia zone are in correct place.

However, having mail machine readable mail is not the only way to reduce your postage costs and ensure quality of service; working with a quality specialist in mail delivery is crucial.

Working with Whistl will help you connect with your communities on time and on budget.  Whether you’re sending letters, brochures or leaflets Whistl are the specialists in efficient mail solutions with a 98.34% network handover quality for 2015 and higher at 98.42% in peak. 

Our outstanding account management and ongoing consultancy identifies efficiencies that help our customers deliver better quality mail and even reduce their costs.

We offer ongoing training and support to continue to keep mail clean. We help you understand where you can make further improvements that could have a dramatic impact on your postal operations. For example, during a recent training session we helped one of our hospital customers improve mail quality by almost 50% within one week! The three-day intensive training programme included 13 presentations to 285 members of staff across two hospital sites to support the whole team and drive immediate results.

Over the past ten years, Whistl has gained unprecedented experience of working directly with public sector organisations and through public procurement bodies.  We work with over 400 current clients through our listings on the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) RM1063 Postal Goods and Services Framework and the Welsh National Procurement Service (NPS) Postal & Courier Framework (NPS-CS-0023-15).  We are also delighted to have just been appointed as the first sole provider of postal services to public sector organisations in Northern Ireland through the award of a contract from the Central Procurement Directorate for Northern Ireland.

Some of the success our public sector clients have had include Craven District Council where we saved 20% on their annual mailing costs and Hull City Council where we improved machinable mail by 30%.

Whistl works in partnership with our clients and these testimonials illustrate why Whistl is the leading provider of mail to the public sector:

“Whistl have provided an excellent service, always willing to help with issues we have around the quality of post and always respond immediately to any queries or problems we may have.” Stockport NHS Foundation Trust

“The collection of post at the end of the day has always been very efficient and works well for Norwich City Council. I would recommend Whistl to other public sector organisations and businesses due to the value for money and the efficient way our Account Manager handles our account.” Norwich City Council