What is One Stop Shopping and why would I use this method?
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One Stop Shopping is when one Mail Service Provider can manage all processes and produce all aspects of the mail piece from inception to submission to the USPS. This may include designing the mail piece, doing any data work associated with addressing the mail piece, producing the physical mail piece, sorting the mail piece to USPS mailing guidelines, then submitting the mail piece to the USPS for delivery. With this method, you work directly with one provider, typically through a project manager. They are in direct contact with others within their organization and typically have visibility to the mail piece and its progression at all times.
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Why not One Stop Shopping?
The One Stop Shopping model served well over the 90's and into the 00's in other industries but just hasn't been as successful in the mailing industry. Internal departments compete for time and cost savings. While not all who have tried this have failed, many have moved on, relying on an outside commingling vendor to take it the last mile. In part because the differences between sorting a single job as compared to sorting a commingled job are quite different.
It is not a very uncommon practice for One Stop Shopping operations to modify their sort in an effort to gain back lost processing time resulted from delays prior to the sorting of the mail. This also happens simply to save the operation hard costs such as labor or to get more done in a reduced window.
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Here are 2 prime examples of how this happens...
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Qualification Minimums are Raised - The minimum for qualifying letters in a tray destination is 150 pieces. 150 to a 5-dg zip range, 150 to an AADC range, etc... 150 pieces justifies a tray by USPS standards. Since full trays can hold upwards of 400 or more mail pieces, it is impossible to hit qualification or destination discounts normally achieved at 150 pieces if the minimum tray quantity is raised by the mailer. This is typically done to minimize the number of sorter separations when sorters have a limited number of bins. If it takes 300 separations to finalize mail to a specific region and the sorter only has 250 bins, the 2 options are to re-pass a portion of that mail to get to 300 separations or to increase the qualification minimum to eliminate the 50 destinations over the sorter capacity, losing qualification discounts.
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Destination Minimums are Set Too High - Just as the previous method is done at the tray destination level, pallet minimums are also commonly raised to reflect only shipping full sized pallets. This could slow delivery by one or many days and could increase postage costs as a result of mail being qualified as Origin or NDC as opposed to SCF. Comminglers are looking to get as many pieces to an SCF as possible. Their profits are in postage savings. They generally have a calculated method that determines an optimum piece count or weight needed to take advantage of the speed of delivery and discounts.
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Now what?
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One Stop Shopping operations that allow you to pay the postage directly from your EPS account aren't typically as concerned about how much money you spend in postage. Do you want to know if you are one of the clients affected by these processes? Ask a commingler to test your mailing by combining data for that mailing with a mailing they submitted around the same date as your One Stop Shop. Calculate the postage and fees you originally paid for sort and USPS delivery and compare that to the postage and fees from the commingler.
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