WME 2010: Potential to flourish

The second day of conference at the World Mail & Express Europe 2010 event provided some fascinating insights from several industry leaders in Copenhagen.
The morning session on June 17 concentrated on ‘transforming the delivery experience’. Delegates heard how effective delivery is key, whether for items of communications or parcels. The plenary looked at the strategic importance of addressing in the delivery mix, before hearing about technologies to improve the delivery experience. The conference later heard multiple perspectives from the virtual world, as the speakers examined innovation across the board.

Charles Prescott, principal and editor of The Prescott Report kicked-off proceeding by discussing undeliverables.

Prescott said, whilst talking about ‘undeliverable as addressed’, that the cost of an undelivered letter in the US is $3. Away from letters, he claimed that 5% of all magazines are returned, as insufficient address data continues to cost the industry huge sums of money. He also said that $150m a year is lost on cross-border services.

“Globalisation of the market has made it worse,” Prescott announced. “Out of 213 countries, only 63 have a Delivery Point Database,” before informing delegates that “3.3bn people out of a worldly population of 6.8bn pretty much don’t have an address, leaving them almost uncontactable from a business point of view.”

For more information on this topic, Prescott urged delegates to visit: www.globaladdress.org, homepage of the GADA, Global Address Data Association.

“The vision of the consultative committee is to have every address, every delivery point, and every change of address on record – across the world at anytime. To me, that’s paradise,” Prescott quipped.

The value add of a trans-national operator was addressed by John Acton, executive vice president, Geopost Group, and managing director, DPD. Acton said the CEP market will “explode” when mobile commerce truly takes off.

Acton provided some interesting facts to the conference, stating that, in terms of European e-shoppers: 92% were happy with their experience; 50-60% thought price was key; 89% of Belgian shoppers buy from their direct neighbouring countries; 40-60% have returned goods (76% in Germany); and that there’s a 5% average return rate in Europe.

In terms of seeking improvement throughout the sector, Acton said: “We need to understand where the pain is coming from, and fixing it by finding flexible solutions.” Acton later detailed DPD’s new delivery solution, Predict, which gives customers a one hour ETA window for deliveries.

.post is one of the key facets in the pursuit of innovation in the industry. Ahmed Kada, director at Morocco Post, discussed the significance of the UPU’s initiative. He said the Union’s goal is to integrate postal operators, and that the service will bring “unique” new opportunities to the sector. He compared the importance of .post to that of the iPhone in the mobile market. It will provide e-services, e-government and e-commerce. Kada’s presentation followed-up from his fascinating article in the latest issue of the industry’s leading quarterly publication, Mail & Express Review.

Muhammed Benten, president and CEO, Saudi Post, talked about re-inventing the future, and the developments in Saudi Arabia, as the Post expands it retail offerings. He said: “The Post of today and tomorrow is very different to what it was, due to technology. The Post is now an essential component of e-government, e-commerce, and security of nations. The postal operator must play the role of orchestrater to satisfy the demands of customers and businesses.”

Benten than campaigned to Posts to embrace the future: “Why are we scared that technology will put us down? It can help!” The president and CEO then illustrated how Saudi Post has “embraced” technology by launching its Virtual Mall, an e-commerce haven for the Saudi population. “The Virtual Mall extends the USO to the shopping experience.”

Reflections and analysis from the World Mail & Express Europe Conference 2010 – courtesy of the Post&Parcel team, industry experts and keynote speakers – will be published on this website next week.The event, which run from June 15-17, was organised by Triangle Management Services.