With the rising costs of conventional postage rising year on year, how long will the industry continue to use the postal service in favour for email?

The industry is quickly migrating to the online world and has been doing over the last couple of years. There has been a concerted effort by some companies to rid themselves of their reliance on paper and to do things electronically wherever possible. More and more companies are joining this group and more will join it in the next few months.

So how long until we ditch post altogether? The real question should actually be what can be done by email and what can’t? Things like order confirmations and delivery times can be done electronically. But things which require signatures etc will still need to be paper based. A lot of manufacturers still produce papers which need signing. For the industry to get past this companies are going to need to mass invest in items like tablet computers and overhaul their internet systems to something which integrates all paperwork electronically. That way, signatures can be made on screens and paperwork emailed back to head office to be kept on file and copies be sent to wherever necessary.

This I think is a little way off yet, probably 3-5 years, maybe a little bit longer. Of course there are those that are still a few years behind right now. The industry has boomed somewhat on Twitter, with the double glazing community growing every day. It now seems silly not to have a Facebook or Twitter account (Twitter is better!) for your company.

One of the only things I can think where post can still be useful is mass communications to previous customer databases. Customer information from years ago is highly unlikely to contain email addresses, so getting any promotional material to customers will still require paper and a postman. This may change in the future, but it might be a couple of decades until we see the end of mass mail shots.

Posting paper work, and paper in general, seems rather archaic when we rely on the internet for so much else with our daily lives.

Think about it. Email is free, instant and far more personal. Think of all the money that could be saved!