About me
My name is Lisa Bowes. I am so pleased to be blogging again after a short hiatus, as I settled in here at intelisent. I am excited about the company, the services we offer, and I look forward to working closely with the great team that I am now a part of.
I wanted to use this post to give you all a bit of information on my background.
I have over 20 years of experience in the printing and mailing industries. Much of my experience out in manufacturing was hands-on. I got my start as a material handler at RR Donnelley in Old Saybrook, CT. At RRD, I progressed through every bindery job level, up to journeyman Magazine Line Bindery Operator. I also spent some time in Customer Service. From RRD, I moved on to a start-up bindery operation at Northeast Graphics as Mailing Manager. At Northeast we went from 8 million pieces of mail annually, to nearly 200 million pieces annually after 5 years. I continued at Northeast after the company was purchased by World Color Press, and then by Quebecor.
I subsequently spend several years working for a mailing software and services company, Window Book. My path at Window Book helped me to establish many of my postal contacts and involvement in the Mailer’s Technical Advisory Committee, as well as the Mail.dat and PostalOne! User Groups. These resources help me to actively participate in the workings of the Postal Service, and to represent on behalf of our mailing family.
My time out in the industry working directly with mailers and service providers gives me a tremendous advantage in communicating to readers, because I know where mailers are coming from. I can relate to the challenges mailers face on a daily basis. I can help navigate through the US Postal Service requirements.
It is one of my top priorities to listen and respond to your specific mailing challenges and requirements in order to help you to meet and surpass your business needs, both now and in the future.
Best wishes,
Lisa Bowes
Hi Lisa,
This is response to your article on the Move Update.
Since the Move Update is based on indivdual addresses and not entire mailing list. How can the USPS pose a 7 cent fine on the entire mailing - makes no sense.
Lloyd Mills
4 Sep 08 at 7:44 am
Lisa,
Came across your blog while surfing; a very pleasant surprise to see this sort of blog up and running with latest updates. My feedback is that it would be nice if there could be a mechanism to:
1. Share user comments/feedbacks. So a user or a mailer who is not a part of mtac or usps, who is interested in the mailing industry business processes could understand what others think.
2. Plus, to have a technical blog that would address the developers/engineers who are developing the solutions for the industry. For instance, I had to go through alot of trouble while developing solutions for TM v1.1/2.0/MDv8.*, since there was no discussion forum/group that could define the business process.
Good luck.
Kamran H. Khan
16 Feb 09 at 7:41 am
I second Kamran Khans request for a techncical blog for developers and engineers. I am looking for a place to have discusssions about open standards for mailing systems and interactions between mailing domains.
The UPU just accepted Extensible Postal Product Moldel and Language schema (eppml) that is a method to uniformly describe carrier products. It would be great to have discussions for this type of interface - how it could be improved, what could it enable, what other open standards might be useful to develop, etc.
David Asano
8 Apr 09 at 9:38 am
There has been an update to the Statement Streamlineing issue. This came out on 3/9/10
March 9, 2010
DMM Advisory
Pricing — keeping you informed about the prices and mailing standards of the United States Postal Service
Webinar Opportunity: Streamlining Hard Copy Postage Statement Processing
Beginning March 15, 2010, we will no longer complete the “USPS® Use Only” section or round-stamp hard copy postage statements submitted to an acceptance unit equipped with PostalOne! ®. This includes the block titled “Round Stamp (Required) Date Mail Released.” Although we will no longer complete the USPS section of hard copy postage statements, we will continue to accept and process them.
To help ease this transition, an exception process is in place for mailers to continue to receive round-stamped hardcopy postage statements until June 13, 2010. To request an exception, mail owners or mail agents must provide a written request to the Postmaster or, for mailings deposited at a district Business Mail Entry Unit, the manager of Business Mail Entry to request an exception. Mailers should ensure that the mail owner and mail agent (where applicable) sections are accurately completed on the hardcopy statements for accurate processing of exceptions.
To learn more about how we’re improving this business process, please join us for a webinar on March 11 or March 12. The instructions for attending are posted on RIBBS>Intelligent Mail Services>Latest News.
Details on this new process can be found at http://ribbs.usps.gov/intelligentmail_latestnews/documents/tech_guides/ReceiptHardcopyPostageStatement.pdf.
The Domestic Mail Manual (DMM®) is available on Postal Explorer (pe.usps.com). To subscribe to the DMM Advisory, send an e-mail to dmmadvisory@usps.com. Simply indicate “subscribe” in the subject line.
John Lindholm
11 Mar 10 at 11:44 am