Itella, the corporate and international wing of Finland Post, said it sent 85 million eLetters in2006, mainly for invoices.
The eLetter concept has been used in Finland since the early 1990s and Itella is nowexporting it abroad.
Companies send documents such as invoices, customer bulletins or salary statements to Itellain electronic format and the postal operator then prints and places the documents in envelopes andsends them, depending on the format the recipient wants, to their destination either by post inpaper format or via Netposti, its e-transactions service.
“The eLetter service is one of the operational cornerstones of Itella’s information logisticsbusiness,” said Miikka Savolainen, the director responsible for the service at Itella.
“The service is currently being extended particularly to Sweden and Germany, where the goalis to achieve market leadership in the main market segments.”
According to a satisfaction survey commissioned by Itella Information Oy in May among 120business customers, the users of eLetters are highly satisfied with the service. It is consideredeasy to use, inexpensive and reliable.
80% of the respondents rated the eLetter as “extremely good” or “excellent” for ease of use;75% considered the eLetter to be a service that matched their needs well; and 76% were satisfiedwith the quality of the printing and mailing services.
Almost 70% of the companies and organisations surveyed use the eLetter for sending invoices.Around 50% of users send salary statements and about 25% dispatch through the eLetter service othercommunications such as customer bulletins and letters.
