Queen Elizabeth's birthday and Royal Mail's anniversary

Queen Elizabeth is celebrating her 90th birthday! And Royal Mail is joining the celebration by issuing a series of special stamps featuring the royal family and highlights from the Queen's long reign. This is also the 500th anniversary of Royal Mail. As part of the Royal Mail celebration, Queen Elizabeth's local postal depot was renamed in her honour.

The Queen's special stamp series is creating excitement all over the world. Above, one of the special series showing the queen at key moments in her nine decades. Media outlets everywhere are featuring the stamp which shows handsome Prince George with his father, grandfather and great-grandmother.

#HappyBirthdayYourMajesty appeared all over social media as hundreds of thousands of people joined in the celebration. Adding to the festive atmosphere, global coverage (online and in traditional media) showed the Queen lighting the beacons and cutting the cake, amongst many memorable scenes from a momentous day.

Keeping an eye on key performance indicators (KPIs)

'Our KPIs measure how we are doing across the Group in terms of both operational and financial performance in the context of the key elements of our strategy'. - Tesco 2012 Annual Report

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are specific measures that a company like Tesco uses to determine whether its marketing strategy is moving the organisation toward its short- and long-term goals. In the case of Tesco, KPIs include certain measures of profitability, growth in store sales, market share and customer satisfaction.

Royal Mail Group analyses results based on KPIs in four areas: people, performance, financial and customers. 'People' KPIs such as safety and customer focus relate to what Royal Mail's employees do on the job. 'Performance' KPIs such as revenue show how the organisation is progressing toward overall performance objectives. 'Financial' KPIs such as profit and costs measure financial outcomes that are vital to Royal Mail's long-term viability. 'Customer' KPIs, including satisfaction and complaints, bring the customer's perspective into an assessment of whether Royal Mail is successful.

BT monitors KPIs according to specific areas of focus, including: customers (such as customer satisfaction and average revenue per customer household), employees (employee engagement index), suppliers (ethical trading), improving society (investments in social responsibility), environment (reducing carbon footprint) and integrity (ethics/anti-corruption).

The choice of KPIs depends on the organisation's mission, goals, strategic choices and implementation. Because no organisation has unlimited resources, KPIs keep management focused on making a difference in vital areas--and help management pinpoint possibilities for improvement when actual KPI measurements don't match expectations.

A run on Royal Mail stamps before price rises

Many people are buying Royal Mail stamps in bulk before the price of first-class postage rises by 30% on 30 April. The price increase is needed to maintain the current level of service (deliveries are made from Monday to Saturday). To save money, some European countries have slowed the delivery of mail and reduced the number of days that deliveries are made, but the UK has decided to maintain its current delivery levels for now.

Demand for postage is so high this month that Royal Mail has put a limit on the number of stamps each shop can buy before the price increase goes into effect, saying:

'We are more than happy for retailers to receive the normal commercial return they obtain on stamps and no more than that'.

'These limits are in place for all retailers so we can balance customer demand with the need to protect Royal Mail’s revenues'.

Once shops reach their order limit, Royal Mail will not restock them until after the price increase. Some charge that Royal Mail is profiteering or engaging in restriction of trade, and consumers and businesses are generally unhappy about the steep increase (not surprising--the 2005 price increase, which was much smaller, wasn't greeted with positive reaction either).

However, with the rise of digital communication, Royal Mail and other postal services have seen their volumes drop year after year. Royal Mail points out that it is now delivering fewer pieces of mail to more addresses than ever before. It asked for price increases to attempt to reach a break-even point and maintain service.