In a significant step towards its expansion plans, the Saudi Postal Corporation recently invested in a Xerox iGen4 digital printing machine. The deal aims to develop its infrastructure and provide the best solutions and services to the postal sector.
Saudi Postal Corporation is a government institution in Saudi Arabia, which operates on a commercial basis and provides diversified solutions for different customer segments right from individuals to corporations. It plays a major role in promoting the concept of e-government and e-commerce and in establishing an advanced infrastructure that meets the requirements of dealing with e-services.
To know more about their operations and their new investment, ME Printer talked with Engineer Majed Mohamed Binanzzan, director general of postal operations at Saudi post. He said that the investment reflects the organization’s enterprise strategy and its initiative to provide a wide range of solutions to strengthen the communication mechanism between various sectors and its customers. He added, “The deal is in line with the Saudi Post’s plan of expansion, which seeks to establish a number of modern printing and packaging centres throughout the kingdom and equipping it with the latest printing, packaging and distribution systems. This will provide smart and flexible solutions for companies and commercial sectors and will facilitate communication mechanism between them.”
Eng. Binanzzan said that Saudi Post has 3 printing and packaging centres located in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam. He said that these centres are equipped with the latest printing and packaging devices that ensure security and confidentiality of customer data. He pointed out that the Xerox digital machine has been installed in Riyadh and works in tandem with a packaging line to guarantee smooth delivery of publications. Engineer Binanzzan said that Saudi post is looking for further expansion and aims to increase the printing centres to 13 in the coming year.
Explaining the operation mode of centres, he said, “The printing and packaging centres operate under a ‘hybrid mail solution’ scheme, which was adopted recently. Here, the customer data and contact address of the customers are classified under different heads and are send to the nearest printing and packaging centre to save cost of printing, time and for easy distribution. This system relieves the burden of printing and then distributing it to various parties and guarantees to communicate with respective customers in an orderly and accurate fashion.”
He adds, “In addition, we also use Smart Connect system, which makes use of our strong database and allows different companies to choose their customer base as per the classified categories. It also allows them to know if the recipient is receiving their advertising material and ensures the success of their advertising campaign. Many companies have already started to offer advertising campaigns through this system. We expect that there will be a quantum leap in advertising through implementing this mode of communication.”
Explaining their reason for choosing digital printing technology, Eng. Binanzzan said, “Digital printing solutions, especially for the field of advertising, are suited to the requirements of our job. For example direct mail requires techniques of digital printing that are efficient both in speed and implementation. Digital machines are also easy to handle, which makes operations faster.”
He added, “When we started searching in the market and compared different solutions, we found that Xerox has 2 unique features. First is its powerful mechanism that provides high print quality and its capability to offer a wide range of publications. Second is the maintenance service provided by Xerox, which we avail round the clock and the guarantee that they would implement the project with different clients seamlessly and without any hindrance.”
Talking about his experience of printing tickets for a football match held between Saudi Arabia and Argentina last month, he said, “The tickets were printed on the Xerox iGen4 machine. Tickets were sold online and were printed and delivered via mail centres. It was a huge task because we had to deliver to an estimated 40,000 people in a limited time. We used the integrated system of Xerox for the implementation of this plan and were able to print tickets at high quality and speed and deliver them to Saudi post offices in an accurate fashion at record time.”
