Postal Strikes are good for e-trading

Here in the UK we are now looking forward to yet another postal strike. The Royal Mail workers have decided that to protect their jobs they need to withdraw their labour.

What has this to do with e-trading? Well it's a sales opportunity ;-). The last postal strike was at the end of June. What that meant for a number of companies was that their invoices to their customers, produced at the end of the month were delayed. Not delayed by the 24hours of the postal strike but, because the strike was on a Friday and there were no Friday collections, the invoices were not collected until the Monday, and then the Royal Mail were dealing with a backlog. Invoices arrived not 24 hours late but in some cases over 96 hours late.

For large volumes of invoices some people are now looking at switching from Royal Mail to their competitors in the business postal arena. But if they look at it logically why post an invoice. Send it electronically. In most cases electronic invoices arrive the same day, in some cases we have experience of them arriving in the same minute. If people choose the correct transmission methods (e.g. AS2) then they can even receive an electronic receipt showing that the document arrived on the recipients system (No more "Invoice, What Invoice, we didn't receive it?" from the payments department :-)).

All this and it is cheaper than people and more environmentally friendly.

Damn it this is so easy I think our Sales Quota should double. Better go and discuss this with the Sales Director....