Technology:

Technology is making a big impact on the Australian postal system. As the world becomes more and more automated the Australian postal system is not being left behind. They are investing heavily in keeping themselves ahead in this technologically-minded world. They are doing this both through further automation of the letter sorting and delivery processes as well as through the services they provide to their customers.

The mail sorting at the moment is being done by an OCR (optical character reader), which is a machine that scans the characters in the address of a letter.  If it reads it correctly the machine sends the letter to the address. If it can't read it, perhaps because the address is not clear enough, it is left for a human to read. The advantage of these machines is obvious - with the speed computers have reached, the machines would be capable of processing the letters much faster. In fact, a human can only sort 1,000 letters per hour where as the machine can sort 36,000 per hour.

Australia Post has also introduced a new bar-coding system. The machines that read the barcodes scan the letters and if they have a readable barcode on them, the machine sends them straight to the area for collection by personnel to de delivered. This is the fastest method so far for sorting letters, as there is no human interaction until the letters get delivered.

The second way that technology is influencing Australia Post is through the Internet and customer services. Australia Post has introduced services such as FaxPost, Postbillpay and giroPost along with others, which rely on technology to function.

FaxPost is a service that allows everyone access to a fax service. Australia Post receives the fax and then you can either collect it or have it delivered to you. It is like a public access fax system.

giroPost is a service that provides access to banking facilities to the public. You are able to transfer money and perform a range of other financial transactions. More banks are deciding to become part of this banking network and the service is continuing to grow.

One of Australia Post's most successful services is Postbillpay. This allows customers to pay many of their bills at their local post office. This service does not require the person to go to the bank in person either, they can pay by phone or over the internet as well. There are over 360 organizations that now provide their customers the option of paying their bills through Australia Post. The main reason for the success of this service is that you can now pay almost all of your bills at once with a single phone call (or from a single web site) without having to run around all day when you are on your lunch break. The internet service also provides a 24-hour bill payment service to people. With the system you can pay bills such as phone bills, tax bills, credit card bills, utilities (such as electricity and water rates) and insurance bills.