Print/Mail Consultants, a consulting firm serving the document industry, has released the IMB READINESS QUIZ – a free, interactive tool that provides mailers an instant analysis of their progress towards implementing intelligent mail for their organizations.

"We wanted to provide something to help mailers understand the level of complexity and the scope of projects necessary to convert to intelligent mail barcodes", explained company President Mike Porter, "There seem to be a lot of mailers who believe that IMB is only a replacement for Postnet barcodes, and is therefore just a mail center decision. That's simply not true in most cases."

Mailers can take the IMB READINESS QUIZ by visiting the home page for www.printmailconsultants.com and following the links.

Organizations provide some basic information and answer multiple-choice questions. The online quiz can be completed in just a few minutes. Print/Mail Consultants doesn't capture any individual responses or quiz results – only non-identifiable statistical data. Since the quiz was released two weeks ago, the collected statistics show that the majority of quiz-takers are not very far along in their IMB evaluation or implementation process.

"Hundreds of mailers have taken the quiz already", said Porter, "Hopefully, the instant analysis they received has prompted more of them to take an objective look at the work they've done so far and encourages them to evaluate the thoroughness of the research that influenced their IMB decisions. Companies really need to venture beyond the mail center to determine the value that IMB can provide to various departments within their companies. Many mail center managers have yet to take this critical step."

Mail center managers are encouraged to share the evaluation report generated by the IMB READINESS QUIZ with their superiors in order to justify additional work or secure resources that may be necessary to complete intelligent mail projects in time to meet USPS implementation deadlines.