We have been preaching the benefits of Information Systems in raising productivity and competitiveness.  Two recent developments overseas have echoed our views but in a more vigorous manner.

How does the Post Office use Information Technology (IT) for better handling traditional snail mail?  Certainly the Post Area Code on every mail will help but it will not produce a quantum jump in productivity. A recent news article about Swiss Post provides a better answer.  Swiss Post scans paper letters received from the public for mailing into electronic forms and sends them through a secure electronic mail network to individual email boxes.  Sweet!  What if the recipient does not have email?  We do not know the answer but a local post office in Hong Kong for example can print the mail onto paper and deliver locally.

Another news article suggested a threatening approach.  Telstra Australia has introduced steep fees in an attempt to herd customers into making online bill payments.  They estimated that a face to face bill collection service costs them as much as 2% of the bill value and online payments will save them several hundred million dollars a year. 

New Zealand as a country has not improved on productivity for a while.  This means that whilst some companies have taken up more IT, most are doing me-too movements without reaping the benefits. Food for thought here.