Innovative Postal Franking Company Deploys BIXOLON Label Printers as Part of a Hybrid All-In-One Mailing Solution

Frama Nederland is a market leader in postal franking technology. A subsidiary of Frama AG in Switzerland which was founded in 1972, Frama produces and supplies franking machines to small to SMO customers.

Transforming its business to suit customer needs, Frama has adjusted its focus to solutions for mail and parcel processing. Offering a postal platform for small to medium size businesses to send mail of any size, from a letter, bulk mail and letterbox parcel, to parcels or registered e-mails. Diversifying to offer a contemporary franking concept, where a franking machine is one element of an all-in-one subscription.

Challenge

Frama Nederland focused on being the optimal link between the sender and receiver in SMOs to make posting easier. After seeing a decline in letter postal volumes since 2008, Frama looked for a postal system solution which could work alongside their existing franking machine business and adapt to changing market situations.

The goal was to create a hybrid easy-to-use mail and parcel handling solution where printing hardware could be rented to the customer. The solution would provide a range of services to send letters, parcels and bulk mail online and easily print shipping labels which can be added directly to the letter or parcel being shipped.

Solution

After testing a range of label printers, Frama decided upon the SLP-DX420EG 4-inch Direct Thermal desktop label printer due to its features and competitive pricing. Delivered through EET Netherlands, the printer works in conjunction with their MijnFrama web browser platform on a PC. MijnFrama supports ZPL. file command programming language which the SLP-DX420 printer has been adapted to emulate through collaboration with EET and BIXOLON. This easy-to-use solution allows customers to connect the BIXOLON printer via a USB or LAN cable to a PC for easy label printing from the MijnFrama online browser.

Results

The MijnFrama hybrid platform solution has now been successfully rolled out to 165 devices throughout the Netherlands. Providing customers with posting flexibility, not only with franking machines to frank letters, but with an optional printer which is used in combination with the MijnFrama online shipping platform. The solution not only prints shipping labels but sends automated, registered emails and digitalises the document flow for the customer.

The flexibility of the hardware has allowed Frama to rent the BIXOLON label printer to their customers. Once a customer orders a printer it is delivered with installation instructions to connect to their chosen PC. The online platform will then allow Frama to monitor if the customer is using the printer and provide additional support if required.

Frama’s hybrid solution has further assisted customers from January 2021 since PostNL removed barcode postal books from circulation. The solution has provided customers with simpler and faster mail shipping alternatives to the previous method. Frama’s shipping labels contains both addresses and barcode information, enabling the customer to create one label to stick to a parcel. This has led to more businesses turning to the MijnFrama platform and discovering their additional service options

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