1. Mailers Technical Advisory Committee Update
Southern Area Mailing Industry Focus Group
Thank you!
Good to be here
Enjoy groups
Behalf of USPS
Always enjoy this meeting and my pleasure to present to this group. So, thank you for that and thank you for your Business.
A lot to cover, so let us get started.
February 14, 2016

2. MTAC Leadership (2016 to 2017) Industry Leaders Postal Service
Classes of Mail
Focus Areas
First-Class Mail
Payment & Acceptance, & Education
Mike Tate
American Bankers Association
Bank of America
Bob Schimek
Idealliance
Satori Software
Pritha Mehra
VP, Mail Entry & Payment Technology
Periodicals
Enterprise Analytics & Data Usage
Randy Stumbo
Gravure Association of the Americas
Meredith Corp.
Angelo Anagnostopoulos
Edison Electric Institute
GrayHair Software Inc.
Isaac Cronkite
VP, Enterprise Analytics
Standard Mail
Mail Preparation, Entry, & Operations
Rose Flanagan
National Alliance of Standard Mailers & Logistics
Data-Mail Inc.
Bob Rosser
Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom)
IWCO Direct
Robert Cintron
VP, Network Operations
Package Services
Emerging Technology & Product Innovation
John Medeiros
Parcel Shippers Association
DHL Global Mail
Steve Colella
The Calmark Group
Gary Reblin
VP, New Products and Innovation
We have MTAC organized in two ways. First – by Classes of Mail and then by Focus Group area. Some of the issues within classes of mail are the same, but some are different and that’s the approach we take with the deeper dives into the four Focus Group areas for 2016:
Payment/Acceptance/Education:
A lot of movement and changes in this area, my team works closely with the Mail Entry and Payment Technology, or BME team to ensure we have the right webinars, the right training. So, we actually added the word “Education” to this Focus Area to ensure its emphasis in 2016.
Enterprise Analytics/Data Usage:
Informed Visibility continues to be very important to both us and the industry.
The new Vice President, Isaac Cronkhite and his team are committed to developing several enhancements to better communicate the status of mail in real time and the engine behind these enhancements comes from this team.
Mail Preparation, Entry and Operations:
Robert Cintron is the new V. P of Mail Preparation, Entry and Operations. This focus group is getting ready for this year’s peak season.
Emerging Technology and Product Innovation:
All of those great ideas to continue to merge the physical and digital worlds of mail and the birthplace of many of the promotion programs came to be as a result of this Focus Group’s discussions.
The industry leaders here also deserve a tremendous amount of thanks from all of us for their commitment to keep these Focus Groups on track with their missions.
Pricing – now we have representatives listening at each of the sessions.
Direct result of feedback from Leadership and a request to be more transparent about pricing initiatives.

3. MTAC Executive Committee Members (2016-2017)
Industry
U. S. Postal Service
Erv Drewek
Industry Chair ( ) Graphic Communications, a Veritiv company
Steve Monteith
Postal Chair Vice President, Marketing
Wanda Senne
Industry Vice Chair ( )
Access Worldwide
Judy de Torok
Postal Co-Vice Chair
Manager, Industry Engagement & Outreach
Marketing
Christopher G. Lien
Immediate Past Industry Chair ( )
BCC Software
Tom Hughes
Manager, Business Customer Support & Service
Sales
Dale Kennedy
Program Manager/Secretary
Manager, Industry Engagement Strategy
Many years of experience on MTAC Board – All of our industry leaders have served many years on MTAC work groups, and a variety of leadership positions. There is a 6 year commitment on the Industry side.
Erv Drewek began his tenure and two weeks ago we had a meeting with more than 150 members. Wanda Senne is our Vice with Chris Lien serving as our Immediate Past Industry Chair.
Steve Monteith has been appointed as the Postal Chair for MTAC. On USPS Co-Vice Chairs are – Judy de Torok and Tom Hughes. Dale Kennedy serves as the Program Manager and Secretary. We all really champion MTAC communication.
As a Board, we collaborate, discuss and vote on issues that we think merit senior leadership’s attention to progress/issues within various MTAC work groups or Task Teams and areas that need to be focused on regarding MTAC meetings and administration.

4. MTAC November Meeting Recap & Upcoming Items
Opening Session speakers on Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2016:
PMG Megan Brennan – Opening Comments, New structure to integrate all aspects of customer experience under one function, introduced new VP, Marketing and MTAC Postal Co-chair Steve Monteith
CCMO & EVP Jim Cochrane – Customer-Centric Focus for Organization Changes. Name change of Standard Mail to Marketing Mail.
Sr VP, Sales and Customer Relations Cliff Rucker – USPS made some major organizational changes to make the customer experience our first priority Merging BSN and Care Centers into Sales Organization.
Executive Director, Customer Insights Dan Barrett – Discussed mail engagement trends.
During our November MTAC meeting each member of the Executive Leadership team addressed the attendees and provided updates on policies, programs or other initiatives that they oversee.
Customer-Centric Organizational Changes:
Changes to Marketing and Sales structure with the movement of Consumer & Industry Functions under new VP, Marketing and VP, Sales and Customer Relations.
Marketing Mail notes:
USPS acknowledged feedback from the Industry and promised to continue discussion around the issue. Some mitigating plans included: the 18 month implementation plan, allowing use of alternate wording from USPS Marketing Mail for indicia, possible elimination of the indicia requirement
Mail Engagement Trends:
As digital content rises, digital advertising delivers clear benefits to marketers, and represents an increasing portion of the media mix.
To demonstrate how transparent the USPS is, we discussed potential pricing and costing strategies. We responded to the request to provide Mail Service Providers with Political and Election mail seminars. There was the big announcement for those who are currently taking advantage of the discounts offered to Full Service mailers that assessment period will begin. Mailers who present Full Service mailings that exceed certain error thresholds will be assessed, for the first time, beginning November If you are a Full Service mailer, contact your local Business Mail Entry Unit to avoid losing your full service discount due to a threshold error.

5. MTAC November Meeting Recap & Upcoming Items
Important Issues discussed during November MTAC meetings
VP Pricing & Costing Sharon Owens – Discussion on Market Dominant & Competitive Price Filings
Chief Sustainability Officer Tom Day – Global Reporting Initiative is an international organization promoting standardized, comprehensive sustainability reporting. The GRI framework provides organizations with methods to measure and report sustainability performance.
VP Network Operations, Robert Cintron – Provided an Operational Update on service performance, Peak Season Planning, and Election/Political mail season.
VP Mail Entry & Payment Technology Pritha Mehra – Payment and Acceptance Updates. Full Service assessments began Nov
During our recent MTAC meeting each member of the Executive Leadership team addressed the attendees and provided updates on policies, programs or other initiatives that they oversee. To demonstrate how transparent the USPS is, we discussed potential pricing and costing strategies. We responded to the request to provide Mail Service Providers with Political and Election mail seminars. There was the big announcement for those who are currently taking advantage of the discounts offered to Full Service mailers that assessment period will begin. Mailers who present Full Service mailings that exceed certain error thresholds will be assessed, for the first time, beginning November If you are a Full Service mailer, contact your local Business Mail Entry Unit to avoid losing your full service discount due to a threshold error.
Payment and Acceptance Updates:
First statements were to go out November 14, (Local BMEU can assist with your preparation.)
Lastly, the publication which lays out the process and plan for streamlining the acceptance of Letter and flat mail is again open for review and public comment. The deadline to provide comments on the document is Aug. 15, 2016.

6. Current User Groups
#1 - PostalOne!, SASP, Intelligent Mail (Bi-weekly) #2 - eVS/Product Tracking System (Monthly) #3 – FAST & eInduction (Bi-weekly) #4 – Informed Visibility (previously IMb Tracing) (Bi-weekly) #5 – Addressing (Technology & Business Strategy) (Bi-weekly) #7 – MTEOR (Bi-weekly) #8 – USPS Promotions (Monthly) #9 – Presort Reference Data (Bi-weekly) #10 – Mail Acceptance and Payment (Bi-weekly)
Summary of purpose for last meeting:
UG10:
Purpose of last meeting: To provide update on Mailer Scorecard, publication and discuss concerns on undocumented process
Topics discussed:
Federal Register Notice on Move Update
Update to Microstrategy 10.2
Full Seamless
UG 9:
Collaborate to create and discuss the efficient communication, deployment, and accuracy of USPS presort reference data. Creating visibility into any issues around this presort reference data distribution and usage will lead to recommendations for improvements.
Topics discussed at last meetings:
In-depth review of issue list starting with the most recent issues including inadvertent publishing of FSS zone expansion, L011 and the most recent Mail Direction File.
Label List files on FAST now have Download (text files), CSV, PDF and View options available.
Customer EPF suggestion to allow customers to be able to get drop ship files and other files from one location. Under consideration by USPS.
UG 8:
The Industry and the USPS will work together to create and discuss new promotion ideas to enhance the value of mail. In addition, this team will work through the implementation of approved Promotions including (but not limited to); industry software requirements, USPS system and business requirements, documentation requirements, communication of issues and resolution with mailers, and industry education.
No meeting updates available.
Task Team 24 is offshoot of this UG to identify opportunities of promotions geared to Mail Service Providers and Mailing Partners.
UG 7:
The Mail Transport Equipment Ordering System (MTEOR) was rolled out to the mailing industry in September With more than six months in operation, the MTEOR program now has 438 mailers, many of whom have had extensive experience using the application. With this amount of user experience available to us, we now have an opportunity to leverage that experience by establishing a users group to identify and recommend opportunities for future enhancements to the MTEOR program.
July meeting addressed Label Holder order levels and planned enhancements. New release of MTEOR will include: ability to Modify orders instead of Withdraw; New Order Status – Ready for Delivery; allow local mailers to order Plastic pallets at piece level instead of by pallet stack; and new max Label Holder level set at 80 boxes.
Future proposed enhancements: rollout new report showing Ordered vs Shipped; Inventory submission reminder messaging; and added visibility of orders shipped based on connectivity with Surface Visibility.
UG just resumed more frequent meetings (every 6 weeks).
Additional MTE purchases underway for Peak Season.
UG 6:
This was a special UG #5 meeting to review three recently announced Federal Register Notices:
Clarification of the Move-Update Standard
Privacy Act, Systems of Record
Address quality Census Measurement and Assessment Process
IEO is working with NCSC Address Mgmt to highlight internal UAA project to train employees on how to code UAA and properly handle UAA mail. This project is designed to improve our proper coding of UAA reasons to provide the industry with better information to help reduce UAA volume.
UG 4:
The purpose of this meeting is to provide an ongoing forum to facilitate communications between the Postal Service and the mailing industry on Mail Visibility and Informed Visibility, and to define and review improvements in process/production functionality and to address and resolve issues.
Explain links to RIBBS Resources for MTAC and IV™
IMB Tracing® Issue - The significant drop off in flats scan data coming out of an FSS operation was determined by Engineering to be due to a software issue with the IOS controller (a communication link) that was losing connectivity. Other flat sorters were not affected. A fix is going to be put in place as Release 3.4 in the August- September, 2016 timeframe.
IV Update
 RIBBS Document Updates
 Feedback on circulated draft documents (IV™ Data Dictionary and Sample Data Set)
 Release 1 Pilot Feedback Form
UG 3:
The mission of the FAST User Group is to address and resolve issues identified and to define and review improvements in functionality across the FAST and eInduction systems. The User Group will recommend MTAC Workgroups to address specific issues as necessary.
No current meeting minutes available
UG 2:
The mission of the eVS/Product Tracking System (PTS) User Group will be to address and resolve issues identified and to define and review improvements in functionality across the eVS and Product Tracking System (PTS). The User Group will create ad hoc subgroups to address specific issues as necessary.
UG 1:
The mission of the PostalOne!, SASP, Intelligent Mail User Group will be to address and resolve issues identified and to define and review improvements in functionality across the PostalOne!, SASP and Intelligent Mail systems. The User Group will create ad hoc subgroups to address specific issues as necessary.
Move Update FRN filed and posted
The Federal Register Notice (FRN), has been posted on the Postal Pro site and on RIBBS. To provide feedback on the FRN one must go to the Federal Register website:
Recent PostalOne! Outage Summary
IT provided a summary of the recent PostalOne! Outage.
R /R44 Updated Release Notes Review
R and updated R44 release notes were reviewed with the group. Concerns were expressed with the accuracy of the updated release notes. USPS will have the R44 Release Notes reevaluated for accuracy and repost.
External Issues List
The External Issues List was reviewed with the group

7. Status of Workgroups and Task Teams
In-Progress
TT 23 - Readiness for Trend Based Verification
TT 25 – Mail Quality Data via Informed Visibility
WG FSS Multi-scheme Pallets
WG Payment Modernization
WG 175 – Streamlining CSA Mail Preparation
WG 176 – Streamlining RIBBS Information (PostalPro)
WG 177 – Improvement in Address Quality Methodologies
WG 179 – PostalOne! Roadmap
WG 180 – Presort and Prep Optimization Work Group (PPOWG)
WG 181 – USPS Marketing Mail Name Transition
TT 23 - Readiness for Trend Based Verification -This task team has helped reduce the errors found on the Mailer Scorecard and was instrumental in the improvements to the communication of the Full Service Assessment process.
Discussion Items
• Walk through of Federal Register Notice (FRN)
• Currently mailers can submit eDoc with Non-Full Service pieces (Reporting is determined in Mail.Dat>Service Level Indicator)
• Streamlined Publication posting schedule discussed (concurrent with FRN posting)
• Make announcement that assessments will start in October (Announce at MTAC Webinar)
• Industry on TT-23 call provided concurrence for FS Assessment October date implementation
• USPS has ongoing Outreach for Full Service Non-Compliance Mailers
• EIN has CR for Mis-Ship- Patch in September for fix (9/25)
• Overview of Mailer Hotline Calls o New call set up to explain mailer concerns on PAF
o Clerk data entry errors
o Creating a deck to be presented to TT-23 Prior to all Industry
• This is final week of MU testing with Industry o Mailer concern with not getting feedback when a correct STID is used
o Kai Fisher is looking at concern above (Heather)
• Dave Horton-Seeing duplicate errors in the SC reporting and Monthly Data extract not matching o COA data provided to Dave each month from Chip
o Mailer identifying errors for correction  Number of records provided by Chip does not match SC
 Mail Preparer counts are also off
 Mailer is provided a Monthly Extract
• Undocumented Process discussion o Industry feedback includes that USPS is making them account for every piece of Undocumented
o USPS Operational Variance determined to be 0.05%
o Mailer’s also have Operational Variance should be addressed  Mailers follow documented process to identify Known Undocumented causes
• Walked through Undocumented Process and USPS Operational Variance
TT 24 – MSP Incentive Implementation for Growth - This was a new task team which will explore developing new incentives for Mail Service Providers who work with customers who take advantage of promotional discounts.
In 2015, MTAC User Group 8 proposed the formation of a specific incentive to assist Mailing Service Providers (MSP) to encourage more mail volume and participation in future USPS promotion programs. These suggested MSP incentives would allow the USPS to leverage knowledgeable MSP Sales forces and their Operations teams to retain and grow the value of mail. This Task team will assist the USPS in exploring the User Group 8 proposal by defining certain methodologies and changes necessary in procedures, data, Mail.dat, and Mail.xml that will result in a PRC approved incentive specifically for MSPs. The Task Team will provide specific recommendations with a minimal amount of USPS/Industry changes regarding: reliable method to prove new promotion program participating volume (i.e. growth), credit and attribute earned incentive, and help build project plan for successful automated implementation of this supply chain based solution.
Recommendations have been submitted to VP Product Innovation and Emerging Technology for review.

8. Status of Workgroups and Task Teams
Congratulations! Mission Accomplished!
Task Team 24: MSP Incentive Implementation for Growth
Industry Leader: Bob Rosser
Postal Leaders: Victoria Stephen and Coakley Workman
Sponsors: Gary Reblin and Bob Rosser
WG 178: IMpb Compliance Quality Metrics & Thresholds
Industry Leader: John Medieros
Postal Leaders: Juliaan Hess and Vicki Bosch
Sponsors: Gary Reblin and Steve Collela
WG 170 – Certificate of Mailing (COM) Improvements
Industry Leader: David Marinelli & Cynthia Muldoon
Postal Leaders: Steve Monteith & Karen Key
Sponsors: Gary Reblin & Steve Colella
Three workgroups recently completed their cycles. Each workgroup submitted a resolution statement and recommendations were approved by the Work Group sponsors and MTAC Executive Committee.
Task Team 24-
Leverages existing technology repurposed for promotion implementation with minimal modifications in a cost effective manner
Increases unique mail owner participation in promotions by 23% per survey results. Those mail owners involved in promotions demonstrate better results in mail growth and retention.
Enables MSPs to invest in technology needed to support mail owner participation
Leverages a proven worksharing incentive method with MSPs that has worked well to grow other USPS programs
WG 178 – Impb Compliance Quality Metrics and Thresholds-
Reduce original 64 quality metrics and thresholds to 10;
Reduce 6 quality categories to 3
Moved implementation from July 2016 to January 2017 for 9 of the quality metrics and their thresholds.
Moved implementation of final metric (Secondary addresses in electronic files) to January 2018 with the formation of a new WG or TT In July 2017 to review data to agree on the threshold mark for January 2018.
For updates on active groups, see separate WG summary document.

9. Industry Engagement Association Recruitment Member Involvement
New association added this year: Council on Safe Transportation of Hazardous Articles (COSTHA)
Seeking additional association membership with industries not fully represented on MTAC
i.e. Health Care, Insurance, Legal, others
MTAC Industry Vice-Chair to manage recruitment and membership
Member Involvement
Encourage increased member engagement
Workgroups, User Groups, Task Teams
Several associations have open slots
Internal recruitment for new Leadership positions
Our goal is to:
Keep MTAC going for another 50 years and want to continue to use it as a one of the primary communication channels with the USPS and industry.
Get new associations – recently signed up American Association of Political Consultants (New Blood)
Timely – Political Mail – didn’t know some basics about mailing and great way for us to get direct mail into the system and for them to get questions answered.
Let us know if you have some ideas. MTAC leadership has reached out to some Health Care/Pharmaceutical groups. Many changes in laws – requiring these organizations to communicate about the mail.
Member Engagement: Responsibility on both USPS and industry side to keep minutes up to date and information current on line.
At one of our recent meetings, we discussed the need for regular communication between focus, class and USPS leaders and we came up with some strategies to do that.

10. 2017 Meeting Schedule
2017 MTAC Meeting Dates- February 28 – March 1, April , August , and December 5 - 7
Contact an MTAC Association Executive if you would like to attend as a guest!
Postal Pro:
RIBBS web address:
Our final session for the year will be held in November – tough with the election, Veteran’s Day and then Thanksgiving. So, as you see, our final meeting date for calendar year 2017 is late February. We will followed the normal meeting flow with the Open Session and Reception on Tuesday. Wednesday we will feature each Focus Group and hold a Business meeting. We are a hardworking dedicated group of Postal Service and Industry representatives.
If you are interested in highlights from past MTAC meetings, we invite you to the RIBBS website and look for the MTAC link in the left column. The address is R-I-B-B-S dot USPS dot G-O-V. We also encourage everyone to check out the Postal Pro Beta site being developed as a successor to RIBBS. You can reach Postal Pro at

11. Questions? MTAC@usps.gov.
Thank you for this opportunity to share the exciting ways we are working with the industry.

12.
Thank you for this opportunity to share the exciting ways we are working with the industry.