PROFILE – RICHARD ROCHE, Head of RM multi-channel retail strategy

As the man responsible for Royal Mail's multi-channel retail strategy, Richard Roche is keen to help etailers deliver on the promise of Internet shopping, he tells Clare Goff

There are no postmen at Royal Mail's media centre in Covent Garden. Indeed, the office looks more like a creative hotshop, with its glass walls and open-plan layout. "We deliberately wanted to give the appearance of an agency," says Richard Roche, head of multi-channel retail.

While others deliver the letters, Roche – with 20 years of financial services marketing behind him – concentrates on the delivery process itself. His expertise is in helping businesses use the medium of mail as a marketing or logistics tool.

Managing the delivery of messages and goods is as important as the messages and goods themselves, and part of Roche's job is to ensure Royal Mail plays its part in the growth of online retail.

"You have to get those goods to the consumer in a timely fashion," he says. "If you don't, you increase your returns rate, weaken the customer experience and weaken the impact of your brand on the consumer. The role that carriers play in this space is to fulfil the retailer's promise."

It's estimated that #3.5m will be spent online this Christmas, a 40% increase on last year, taking total online sales for the year to almost #15bn. Royal Mail estimates around 90m goods will be ordered online in the run-up to Christmas, and 60% of those will be delivered by Royal Mail.

Roche says that etail is now becoming a serious force in the marketplace. Having witnessed the pure-plays being joined by major bricks-and-mortar companies that now see online as a key channel to market, he says the sector needs to operate with the same professionalism as the offline retail world. "Online shopping is accounting for about 6% of the total retail market and is becoming a very real entity in its own right."

A huge systems and processes operation is in place to ensure Royal Mail can cope with the extra demand, and the company has produced a Christmas Retail Readiness Guide to help online operators ensure they're prepared for the extra rush.

"Christmas preparation is no longer just about stocking the shop floor," says Roche. "It's also about stocking the back office to cope with the rise in home shopping."

But his experience suggests to him that many retailers, both in traditional retail and online, aren't setting up the back-end operations needed to ensure a slick online shopping experience.

"If you think about a traditional retail outlet, it will have warehouse solutions, stock management solutions, staffing and so on," he says. "All of these elements have to be in place and, if anything, have to be more slick as there's distance involved. But there are many whose online experience is falling down because they aren't managing these items and haven't learned the lessons."

He advises retailers to increase their stock levels by 25% in the run- up to Christmas, to ensure that staffing levels are high enough and that the ordering systems can cope with the extra demand.

Roche's background is in financial services marketing, and after a diploma in marketing and a stint running his own business buying and selling telecoms equipment ("It did okay but wasn't making loads of money"), he joined HFC as marketing services manager. After working at Abbey National, he went to Alliance and Leicester and helped set up its personal loan subsidiary from scratch ("That was a great time").

Excited by the expansion of the Internet, Roche joined Royal Mail in 2000 to help develop its media centre, combining his broader marketing experience and direct marketing expertise. Initially he headed data development, and is excited by the shift in attitude to the use of data. "It's used much more intelligently," he says.

Royal Mail has recently launched a delivery notification service to allow customers to pick up their parcels at their local post office, and has a home shopping helpline in place for retailers to get advice on how to maximise their potential during the Christmas period. It estimates that the UK's retail sector wastes up to #200m a year on the return of goods and attributes this to inefficient supply chain practices.

Roche is keen for online retailers to think through their online customer experience, in particular as consumers themselves get used to higher levels of service. "You need the technical people, but also customer service people, who need to go through and use it," he says. "And retailers need to understand their customers, look at what other Web sites they're looking at. When consumers are used to the levels of service that Amazon gives, they won't settle for less."

Roche goes so far as to say that growth of online retail will be hindered if businesses don't catch up with the speed of its development and raise their standards quickly.

"Growth will flatten from around 30% a year to around 15%," he says. "One of the issues is that the retail marketplace isn't moving swiftly enough to actually tackle the opportunities."

Wearing his additional hat as head of media markets at Royal Mail, Roche is particularly keen to get all the various marketing channels working together. He says there's still a lack of integration in the marketplace, with online often not given a central role in the business, and he's keen to see more of a united front as media fragment. He has noted with interest a rise in direct mail as a result of the growth in online, and he says that while most other forms of media are about push, online will emerge as a pull medium.

"Direct mail and posters, for example, will be about pushing the Internet presence. Online is more about completing the offer. The two complement each other very well," he says.

His new role allows him to keep an integrated watching brief over the media markets across which Royal Mail operates. Online is of particular interest, and he's keen to ensure the company plays its part in new media's development. Next year he expects online to take 10% of the retail market, and Royal Mail will be on hand to ensure the process of its growth is smooth.

CV

Name Richard Roche

Title Head of multi-channel retail and media markets, Royal Mail

Age 46

Education 1976-79: Business Studies BA, Wolverhampton University; 1979- 80: Diploma in marketing, Wolverhampton University

Career 1980-82: Ran own business, KRM Enterprise; 1982-87: Marketing services manager, HFC; 1987-88: Brand manager, Abbey National; 1988-95: Director and head of marketing, Alliance and Leicester; 1995-98: Marketing director, Prime Health, a subsidiary of Standard Life; 1998- 2000: VP of marketing, Citibank Diners Club; 2000-04: Director of data development and information services, Royal Mail