Post Danmark Prepares for Future
Post Danmark (Denmark), national postal service, is providing e-services, although Internet-related revenues still account for under 1% of its revenue; Gatetrade.net, business-to-business joint venture, is launched on 3/12/01
From ONLINE REPORTER, March 26th, 2001
ORIGINAL TITLE: OR 240-23 Post Danmark Prepares for Future. FULLTEXT: Post Danmark, the national postal service of Denmark, is making strides in
providing e-services to both businesses and consumers though some of the
services have brought little cheer to the post. Internet-related revenues still admittedly account for an insignificant
portion – less than 1% – of Post Danmark's revenues. However, that doesn't
seem to dishearten the top brass. "We are preparing for the future," says
Borger Borgersen, the post's new CIO. Borgersen was recently brought in from Danske Bank with a mandate to explore
e-business opportunities and manage the IT infrastructure of the postal
organization. Borgersen is excited about the post's B2B marketplace Gatetrade.net, which
went live on March 12. Gatetrade is a joint venture of Post Danmark, Danske
Bank, Maersk Data and TDC, each of which owns 25% in the venture. Gatetrade
handles trades from catalogs, buyer auctions, seller auctions and tenders for
registered buyers and sellers. Unlike most B2B marketplaces, which start with
a handicap of thin trading volumes, Gatetrade is expected to derive
significant business volumes from the four shareholders. "I'm convinced that
it'll be a success," gushes Borgersen. If excitement marks the prospects over Gatetrade, a sense of unease hovers
around the status of the WebLogistics venture, of which Post Danmark owns 49%
and DFDS Dan Transport the rest. WebLogistics was set up two years back to
provide logistics, distribution and warehousing services for dot-coms. "It's
not going that well," admits Post Danmark's e-business manager Michael Voel
Jensen. Hardly surprising considering the general disarray in the dot-com
market. WebLogistics currently has only one customer – auction house QXL –
using its services. "That's not enough," acknowledges Jensen. Apparently, a
second customer went bankrupt recently. While conceding that the "market is a
bit down for the moment," the post is pinning its hopes for WebLogistics on
the second wave of dot-coms – the established brick-and-mortar companies that
are beginning to invest in the Internet. The post has also embarked on a pilot with Danish newspaper group Berlingske
to provide same-day delivery service for an online shopping mall called ByShop
in the city of Aarhus. If that experiment works out well, Post Danmark plans
to extend the service to other cities in Denmark. The Danes also apparently considered launching some kind of e- postage product
but then dropped the idea, fearing that the market was not ready for it. Wise
move, if one considers the fate of the Internet postage concerns in the US.
The post is, of course, selling regular postage stamps on the net to
consumers. It's also allowing users to print shipping labels off its web site
and offering the usual track and trace services. The post is in the process of getting out of the certification authority
business and partnering with other Danish companies to offer digital
certificates to consumers. If WebLogistics and CA are disappointments, the post's online venture
BILLETnet for selling tickets to operas, concerts, ballets and sports events
has apparently proven to be a success with sales of 18k-20k tickets per day. But the disappointments do not seem to have dampened the post's enthusiasm for
new e-projects. The post declined to elaborate on future e-service projects in
the pipeline, but it acknowledged that it's mulling a secure electronic
statement delivery service and an e-payments project with the Universal Postal
Union. "We have to be patient. We are patient. We see it more as an investment
for the future," says Borgersen. Page N/A Copyright 2001 G2 Intelligence, Inc. (c) 2001 Resp. DB Svcs. All rts. reserv.
$$ONLINE REPORTER, 26th March 2001
