After Canada Post Corporation introduced its version of the USPS National Change of Address service, it became apparent that the system was …
- too expensive to be allowed to remain in operation …
- A development team of 40-60 people worked for more than half a year to implement the system’s first release of the six releases that product architects designed and documented.
- The production system’s performance was measured at two transactions per second.
- not meeting its user’s needs …
- The price for the Preferred Relationship component of the system was $1.00 per notification that a Mailer’s Recipient had moved.
- Notifiation was provided via a printed list that frequently had entries that were between two and six weeks after the effective date of the move.
- Data entry error rates, especially in Names, were considerably in excess of the 15% error rates usually observed for “unverified” data.
Consequently, George Clairmont, President, Canada Post, announced that the system was being withdrawn from service.