UK Royal Mail Group in the middle of big changes
Royal Mail is delighted to be supporting the Young Business Entrepreneur North East Business Executive of the Year 2003 award for the third consecutive year.
It is common knowledge that successful businesses of all sizes need to change and adapt in order to remain in business.
Indeed, Royal Mail Group is now in the middle year of a radical three-year renewal plan aimed at returning our business back to profit, following record losses. We have already made excellent progress and recently announced the first improvement in trading performance for five years. Foundations have been laid for a turnaround and put the company at the start of the road to profitability and in a strong position to compete with our competitors.
It is essential that all business people are encouraged to be creative, to take calculated risks and develop flourishing businesses that contribute to the local economy. Businesses, if they are to be successful, have to remain strategic to ensure that they keep ahead of the competition.
Every successful business is a potential customer for us, which is why we are supporting this award. And why we aim to improve our service and performance levels and enhance our product choice for our customers. We are looking for entrepreneurs to display full knowledge of their market, to be constantly seeking ways to improve, to be aware of opportunities in their market place and to be thinking of new ideas to help them stay ahead of the game
As a business with 350 years experience we too need to react to our markets and ever-changing environment. Our three-year renewal plan aims to ensure that we do just that. Over the past year we have seen the restructuring of our loss-making parcels business, rationalisation of our transport network, streamlining of our post offices and a review of our postal delivery service.
The most tangible results to date can be seen in the restructuring of Parcelforce Worldwide. The business now concentrates on the express parcel market and has ended or renegotiated loss-making contracts, halved its distribution network and exited from the standard parcel market which has transferred to Royal Mail. As a result job numbers had to be reduced by around half but we managed to do this entirely by voluntary means.
The recent measures are far reaching but they are just the start, not the end. We need to ensure that we build upon the progress we made in the first year of the strategy to make the business a great place in which to work, benefit our customers, improve service and performance levels, enhance product choice, restore profitability and generate positive cash flow.
