B2B 101

Hugh Bessant

Quite a hullabaloo about our Postal Service, isn't there? Mandy wants to sell bits off to fund a huge pension gap, and maintain current service levels, and the Tories support him...unlike a sizeable number of Labour MoP! But why isn't anyone asking (and then answering) the important questions?

Firstly, why are we trying to protect something we don't need anymore? A daily postal service to every nook and cranny of the country is an anachronism these days. Around a third of our post is direct marketing...at the very least. Not necessarily time sensitive. Then there are all the bills, another sizeable chunk. As long as they are sent out in good time, no time sensitivity there. Birthday and Christmas cards take up the next big chunk, and if people knew it might take, say, a week to arrive, they could post it earlier. We do not need daily postal deliveries, just a reliable, regular service. How about three times a week in built-up areas, and twice a week in rural ones? Can anyone honestly tell me it would matter one jot?

Secondly, think about email. It is called electronic mail, because that is what it was intended to be...mail. The trouble is we have let it grow into something else, and something not necessarily desirable. Sometime you have to sit back and start with a blank piece of paper, and ask yourself what do we want email to be? My answer is secure, to the individual and the receiver.  Because it is given away free, more or less, we treat it as almost unimportant, and suffer spam, phishing and all other sorts of missuse. For goodness sake, that x you just sent your partner by text on Valentines Day costs what? 10p? We put up with that, in fact we lap it up. So here is my bright idea to save the Royal Mail.

Having reduced snail mail deliveries and saved millions, reinvest in a server farm and offer each citizen of these British Isles a secure, personalised electronic mail address, tied to their postal address. RM should take the responsibility of linking the two, and providing secure access, possibly by NI number coupled with a personal password. The idea would be to make this good enough to be legally binding as an electronic signature. Anyone moving house would update RM in the same way as they do now, and their email address would move with them. And...here's the good bit, Mandy, if you are reading this...RM charges a penny, or even a fraction of a penny, for delivery...an electronic stamp. Bingo, a profitable mail service (without even going into the data sales aspect to a hungry marketing industry).

Obviously, we would all have to treat these addresses differently. No more wacking it on Facebook and then being surprised when you are invited to enter into a Nigerian lottery, or buy your weight in penis enhancing drugs...but that would be a good thing. It would become grown up email, for communicating with your bank, or receiving electronic bills (Yes Mandy, it's green too!).

Why should we pay for what we currently get for 'free'? Well, because nothing is free. Facebook, Google and the rest have tremendous power, and earning potential, because they are sucking up data and selling it to the highest bidders. I would rather RM did that, on balance, despite the fear that someone might *** it up.

Anyway, thoughts please?