A Dynamic Enterprise
This article is an extract from the Autumn Edition of MER Magazine published in August 2019. You can read the full article as well as other articles from MER for free by becoming a member of Post & Parcel today.
Misko Kancko, Director of Global Strategy at Canada Post, explains how the company has invested in new fleet to tackle Canada’s treacherous winters and how it is transforming to keep pace with its customer’s needs.
The devices in our hip pockets now do in milliseconds what couriers on foot, riders on horseback and mailbags on steam trains or ships took days to do. Today, transactions, Information and insights are near-instantaneous.
But for postal operators, speed is far from the only impact of today’s technology. Digital is also expanding shoppers’ horizons and raising consumers’ expectations. It is a powerful force driving the Globalisation of All Things – including retail. Without leaving home, anyone with disposable income can now shop for anything from anywhere. The world is their store – and posts are their shippers.
Decades ago, posts were rather sedately moving envelopes from A to B. Today they are dynamic enterprises also moving parcels and packages amid a whirlwind of technological, strategic and structural change. The postal world is in the midst of a revolution of sorts – no less than in the 1970s, when global couriers FedEx, DHL and UPS rose to prominence with the delivery of tracked packages. In one form or another, most posts’ strategic conversations are about competing to seize the opportunities in e-commerce while managing lettermail’s decline.
Canada Post is no different.
In this changing world, Canadians’ tastes, shopping behaviours and expectations for a superior customer experience are evolving rapidly. Canada Post has changed to keep pace with their changing needs – and done so well. Since adopting e-commerce as the anchor of its growth strategy in 2011, it has become the country’s No. 1 parcel delivery company.
The growth in online shopping is still galloping along at double-digit annual growth rates; volumes are forecasted to double within a few years. The challenges of such growth are already acute in the peak-volume weeks leading up to Christmas. Canadians are also becoming increasingly savvy online shoppers. For both these overarching reasons, Canada Post must invest to manage growth and to continue to meet consumers’ expectations.
It is not waiting to act. In response to large volume increases in small packets, Canada Post recently installed new packet sortation equipment in Vancouver and Toronto – two of our three major induction points for domestic and international services. These machines offer a greater depth of sort and higher processing capacity; it’s like creating more room in our buildings while helping to achieve delivery that meets service standards. Expanding capacity at these sites has been a game-changer. Montreal – the third major induction point – will be next to get a new packet sorter.
Looking ahead, Canada Post plans to invest $2.3 billion CAD over the next 10 years on its infrastructure. A major focus of this expenditure is to expand parcel sortation capacity with targeted investments in our largest hubs and markets, as well as some secondary hubs and markets. As a result, capacity and service performance will improve throughout the entire network.
This article is an extract from the Autumn Edition of MER Magazine published in August 2019. You can read the full article as well as other articles from MER for free by becoming a member of Post & Parcel today.
