Business Advice: Earth Class Mail
In the contemporary world, the development of the Internet and digital technologies have driven many businesses to change their approaches, switch to different kinds of operations, data storage, and communication with the clients. The new preferred way of operating and managing businesses is based on digital systems and specialized software allowing the transformation of what used to be tangible resources and data documented on paper into electronic records. The major benefits of this transformation are speedy communication, easy and fast access to data, safe storage that does not take much physical space, and more sensitive monitoring of the operations. Attempting to pursue these benefits, many businesses begin to reinvent the old ways, thus rebuilding the entire structures of the existing markets. One of such businesses was Earth Class Mail presented in the video.
The CEO of the Earth Class Mail, Ron Wiener has a vision of a new form of mail service that would be based online. The function of the proposed business would be to scan the regular mail and transform the information into electronic records that could be sent to the recipients online thus increasing the convenience of mail and eliminating the set of operations involving actual people delivering mail daily. It looks like according to the idea of the CEO, the business is going to be massively successful and eventually start bringing huge income turning into a billion-dollar corporation and attracting many clients.
However, the CEO does not seem to be taking into consideration the fact that he is offering a service delivering electronic mail – something that has already been used for over a decade. As most people today have email accounts, one could conclude that the decision to send regular mail could be dictated by sentiment attached to this classic means of communication. In that way, by transforming regular mail into electronic letters, the company would take away the major point of difference for which regular mail is used today.
Besides, in the video, Wiener speaks about storage space as large as six hundred thousand cubic feet with metal racking that would cost approximately 1.5 million dollars to construct. This space is planned mainly for keeping the regular mail. Storage space of this size filled with a lot of mail would require much maintenance. Practically, the operations and costs that Wiener planned to eliminate removing the physical delivery of mail would be spent on the maintenance and support of the space, storing and keeping mail, sorting through it, and scanning.
Moreover, since the company would be involved in opening mail and scanning the information to send it to the clients, privacy concerns must be one of the primary issues that should bother the CEO. Breach of privacy could destroy the company’s reputation and costly lawsuits. In that way, another expenditure aspect for this business must be the creation of a powerful digital security system protecting the stored information.
All in all, the recommendations of this business are the following:
- Installation of a very strong digital security system
- Thinking through the storage and maintenance of the regular mail (is it going to be kept or destroyed after scanning?)
- Recalculating the likely customer base (excluding the people who use emails and the individuals who send regular mail for the sentiment) and adjusting income expectations – it is likely that the real profit of the service will be much lower than imagine by the CEO