U.S. Postal Service – How Will You Move Your Documents?

The U.S. Postal Service is facing an enormous budget shortfall – and might run out of money without Congressional help. The U.S. Postal Service recently announced it was cutting 3,000 jobs and asked Congress for flexibility in reducing its costs associated with mandated retiree health benefit payments. Other possible cost cutting measures include reducing mail delivery from six to five days a week, a $3.5 billion savings and closing small and rural post offices. Currently, the U.S. Postal Service has cut millions of man-hours, frozen executive salaries, halted construction of new facilities and put existing ones up for sale. 

Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.), House Oversight Post Office Subcommittee chairman, responded to the service reduction plan, saying:
“With the Postal Service facing budget shortfalls the subcommittee will consider a number of options to restore financial stability and examine ways for the Postal Service to continue to operate without cutting services.”

Other than cost cutting, Congress could also appropriate taxpayer dollars to fund the struggling U.S. Postal Service, which currently does not rely on public funding outside of a subsidy for international voting mail and services for the blind.
Officials said the recession has contributed to a mail volume drop of 5.2 billion pieces compared to the same period last year. Without an economic recovery, the U.S.Postal Service projects volume for the year will be down by 12 billion to 15 billion pieces of mail. Last year, high fuel prices also took their toll on post office funds. The post office operates more than 200,000 vehicles and every one-cent increase in the price of fuel costs the post office $8 million.
We’ve discussed the expense of shipping physical documents before, especially once you factor in fuel prices. The post office has done the math – each one-cent increase is an $8 million cost, at scale. Reducing delivery by 1/6 can lead to an estimated $3.5 billion in savings. Post office trucks will only be on the road five, instead of six days each week.
How could this affect your business efforts? ?
If you’re shipping physical items, you’ll have to account for one less day of service – you might have to send things earlier or use other shipping services. Say you needed to send contracts. If you physically mailed them via U.S. Postal Service, you’d have to account for the extra handling time. More time in transit means longer sales cycles. If it were a complex transaction and you discovered a missing signature and had to send the document back… you can imagine the hassle, not to mention the additional needed time.?

DocuSign’s electronic signature and online contract execution processes takes contracts and other paperwork from the physical realm to the digital one. ESIGN and UETA legislation support the validity of electronic and digital signatures and electronic contracts. Using electronic signature and electronic contract execution services like DocuSign means that you can send and receive documents as long as you have email access. No need to worry about operating hours, how many documents or shipping logistics when sending electronic contracts and other documents via DocuSign.  It’s fast, cost effective, reliable and secure – And we deliver 24 hours a day – 7 days a week!

Image courtesy of flickr user yeowatzup under creative commons