Another Delay for Intelligent Mail?

With the Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMb) program veering off the tracks, prominent mailers called for the U.S. Postal Service to hit the brakes today on the much-delayed program.

“There is a general consensus that even if the USPS stays with their commitment of May 18 it will be almost impossible for the program to begin in a successful manner,” says a memo written by Jack Widener, a respected industry consultant, that Idealliance released today to its members. Widener, a former Newsweek executive, chairs the IMb users group for the major trade association.

Dead Tree Edition has previously noted that IMb, a major strategic initiative for the Postal Service, is "a train wreck waiting to happen" because of failures in coordination, communication, and planning.

Mailers and their vendors complain that the rules and procedures for IMb are still in a state of flux. Even today, the complex and critical “Service Type Identifier Matrix” in one USPS document contained the qualifier, “Final Revision will be completed as soon as possible.

“When will the changes stop so the program can by implemented by USPS,” Widener wrote. “There are 11 open issues that are not assigned and that must be resolved with only 21 days to go.”

Among the “show stoppers” listed by another report Idealliance sent to members today is one that would force Periodicals-class co-mail participants either to “leap to electronic payment without sufficient testing or pull out of co-mail/co-pall.” The report lists other restrictions for various classes of mail on co-palletization, co-mail, palletization, and firm bundling that would result from glitches in programs related to IMb.

Perhaps postal executives realize, Widener writes, what even their underlings admit -- that USPS will not be ready on May 18 date.

If so, he argues that they should “tell us now so that all can plan accordingly and alert their customers and suppliers in the mailing supply chain. And don’t blame it on their customers; if they do this it will be not due to lack of mailer preparation. We have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and invested people’s time to implement as soon as information was received from the USPS. But we must be given adequate time to implement the numerous changes that are happening."

Watch out! It's the IMb Express!

If you’re one of those sick people who like to rubberneck at accidents, keep an eye on the U.S. Postal Service’s Intelligent Mail Barcode initiative. It’s a train wreck waiting to happen.

Industry contacts report continuing frustration getting problems resolved and questions answered regarding IMb, one of USPS’s major strategic efforts. Mailers are having trouble getting postal officials even to discuss the challenges that might derail the program and are questioning whether IMb, already delayed twice, will be ready for implementation next year as scheduled.

USPS last month pushed off implementation of IMb once again to a three-phase process -- as Dead Tree Edition predicted -- that is to begin in May. Some chastised me for improperly abbreviating the name, which USPS refers to as IMb. That seems DUMb to me, but so be it.

Representatives of mailers, printers, and mailing-industry vendors in such organizations as Idealliance and the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom) are nearly unanimous in their frustration with the Postal Service’s lack of communication and planning regarding IMb.

“How can we implement IMb when we customers are uncovering things at the eleventh hour? When the switch is flipped will it work?” reads one of a litany of concerns recorded at a recent Idealliance meeting. “There is a lack of direction,” reads another. “We seem to take one step forward and two back."

Some in the mailing industry who must communicate IMb requirements to their own organizations now find themselves in hot water: Their bosses can’t believe the Postal Service’s decisions, planning, and communication regarding IMb could possibly be so bad.

Since the Idealliance meeting, yet another communication breakdown has emerged: Postal officials have decided that mailers must presort addresses before assigning an IMb. That will force mail vendors to undo much of the work they have already done on IMb because they were planning to assign bar codes before presort. Perhaps the Postal Service's IMb folks have been attending the William Burrus School of Customer Relations. (See “When business is down, kick the customers.”)

Intelligent Mail Barcodes are a printing issue as well as a postal issue because there have been questions regarding how well USPS equipment can read IMbs produced by printers’ current inkjet machines. Despite their complaints about implementation, mailers are generally supportive of the IMb concept, which should enable the Postal Service to track mail as it moves through the system, spot problems, and optimize its processes.

A source reports that when he asked an industry expert to explain what was going on with the program, the expert replied that “IMb is too complex for mere mortals to understand.”

To get a taste for the complexity, check out the slide below from an IMB DPP that had MTAC LOL because the TWTDSTR. Translation: At a recent Mailers Technical Advisory Committee meeting, industry representatives laughed at a postal official's Death by PowerPoint presentation because of this slide in which the type was too darn small to read.

Not that anyone could have understood the slide even if the type had been larger.