1

Developing Business

Intelligence Capabilities

In The Postal Organisation

Bernard Markowicz, Ph.D.March 2011

The Changing Business Environment

● Decline of reserved product volumes and revenues (-4%/year

for First Class in the U.S. (1))

● Growth of packages (+3%/year in the U.S.)

● Greater elasticity of competitive products (in average(2))

● Increased competition and integration between marketing

channels (direct mail, email, broadcast, etc.)

● business intelligence is needed to support products and

services decisions

2

(1) BCG Study for USPS (2) Alan Robinson Study for Pitney Bowes – 2007-01

Business Intelligence Investigation

● In the fall of 2010, d/ap was tasked with evaluating

business intelligence capabilities at USPS

3

• P&G • Toyota of North America

• Pitney Bowes• Xerox

• Quad/Graphics

• Gannett • Disney

• AT&T • Verizon• ADS - Epsilon

• TJX - Chadwick – Zayre – HomeGoods

• Best - BuyUSPS Interviews

Canada Post

Secondary

Industry Best

Practices

Business Intelligence

• Customer segmentation (Attributes, needs, etc.)

• Criticality of needs

• Share of wallet

Customer Intelligence

• Market characteristics

• Market trends

• Players, value chains, participants, shares. etc.

Market Intelligence

• State of competition by segment

• Basis of competition (production, distribution, products)

• Dependence on key product attributes

Competitive Intelligence

4

Threshold Needs

(e.g., On-time Delivery)

Performance Needs (e.g., Price)

Outstanding

Poor

Poor ExcellentPerformance Relative to Competitors

Cu

sto

mer

Sati

sfa

cti

on

an

d L

oyalt

y

Excitement Attributes

(e.g., flat-rate boxes?)

Three Categories of Customer Needs

5

The Business Intelligence Process

6

Collect & Compile

Sift, Sort, & Verify

• Customer

Surveys

• Market

Research

• Experts

• Events,

Pubs

• Database

/Systems

• Data

cleansing

• Reduce

size of

data

• Needs vs

behaviors

• Mini DW

Analyze Interpret

• Analytics

• Integrate

internal/

external

• Score

cards

• SWOT

• Trends

• Identify

gaps &

opportuni-

ties

• Predictive

analysis

Organize Present

• Dashbrd

• Roadmap

• Segments

• Focus on

results

• Support

decision

making

• Communi

cation

playbooks

Analyze

Search

Index

Filter

The Business Intelligence Process

7

conversion of information to insight

Key Intelligence Topics

Collect & Compile

Sift, Sort, & Verify

Analyze Interpret Organize Present

Key Postal Intelligence Topics

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Business Intelligence Instruments

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• Household Diary Study (USPS)

• Media panels

• Focus Groups

• Satisfaction Surveys

• Direct mail response tests

• Industry Assessments

(Analyst reports, Press, Events)

• Retail data mining

• Acceptance units data mining

• Satisfaction Surveys

• Focus groups

senders receivers

Organisation of Business Intelligence

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Domestic Int’l

Finance Ops

DECENTRALISED

Int’l

Finance Ops

B/IDomestic

CENTRALISED

• Better data integration value

• Analyst cross-training

• Help build “Intelligence

consensus” across enterprise

• Immediate and direct access

• Facts closer to decisions

• Low value data marts

• Idea silos

Moving Forward

● Business intelligence is now a requirement for postal

operators

● Identify key intelligence topic and develop briefs

● Establish an “intelligence” consensus - Look for early wins

● Gradually bring together resources in a centralised unit

● Learn to develop insights from, and beyond information

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Accepted Encouraged Required