Tag: Mail Services

Royal Mail: Report shows impact of last year’s strike on service (UK)

Posted by | Feb 29, 2008 | |

Royal Mail has today published its quality of service report for the pre-Christmas period, showing the impact of last year’s strike action.

The industrial action resulted in a fall in First Class quality of service to around 80 pct during the three-month period from early September to the beginning of December, while Second Class was down to 91.4 pct – in contrast to the target-beating performance being delivered across almost every aspect of Royal Mail’s service before last year’s strike.

Ninian Wilson, Royal Mail’s Operations Director, said: “With the strike behind us and a wide-ranging agreement on modernisation in place, we are now focused on delivering once again consistent, high quality of service to all our customers.”

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Royal Mail: Quality of service figures released (UK)

Posted by | Feb 29, 2008 | |

Royal Mail reports that the quality of service for the pre-Christmas period, dipped down sharply through the impact of last year’s strike action.

For April to September, the average figures had been 81pct for 1st class (target 93 pct) and 96 pct for second class (target 98.5 pct).

However, the postal dispute (and based on figures from early September to the beginning of December) created a fall of around 80pct for 1st class and 91.4 pct for second class.

Royal Mail said it was “In contrast to the target-beating performance being delivered across almost every aspect of Royal Mail’s service before last year’s strike.”

Ninian Wilson, Royal Mail’s Operations Director, said: “With the strike behind us and a wide-ranging agreement on modernisation in place, we are now focused on delivering once again consistent, high quality of service to all our customers.”

Millie Banerjee, Chair of Postwatch, commenting on Royal Mail’s performance said: “Royal Mail is having a difficult year. It has let customers down and driven many of them into using alternative means of communicating. It is doubtful that those customers who moved away from mail will return.

“Even after the strike was over the company failed to meet customer expectations at Christmas. This is the busiest posting time for households and with more and more deliveries from internet shopping an opportunity to rebuild a tarnished brand was squandered.

“Unfortunately we may look back at 2007/08 as the pivotal year in the decline of the Royal Mail unless it can reinvent itself and show it cares about its customers.”

Steve Lawson, editor of Hellmail.co.uk said: “Royal Mail cannot afford to lose further business through any renewal of strike action. Whilst change may be deeply unpopular, there is simply no choice if the business is to survive and sustain jobs.”

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India Post plans global tie-ups to take on MNCs

Posted by | Feb 29, 2008 | |

India Post is all set to enter into a series of global partnerships to compete with international money services companies such as Western Union and global courier companies like FedEx. The postal department is in talks with its counterparts in the US, Switzerland, France, and Oman, among others, as it plans to tap the expertise of these countries in specialised financial services and replicate such offerings in India.

The logic: With nearly 82,000 post offices being computerised, the strong IT base will enable India Post to offer several value-added services in addition to full-fledged banking services. Partnerships with global majors will enable India Post to launch these value-added and modern ICT-based services.

Besides, with millions of expatriate workers of Indian origin in several countries sending huge remittances back home, the postal department is also going all out to tap this segment. More so, considering that India Post has the largest possible network of 70,000 branches in rural India alone.

For instance, India Post has already tied up with the postal service department of the UAE for speedy transfer of money orders between the two countries. While this facility is currently available only to a few sourthern states, it will soon be extended to all states in a phased manner.

The process to get into global partnerships was set rolling last year. In November 2007, India Post signed an MoU with Deutsche Post where both organisations agreed to create a multi-layer relationship. The MoU envisaged partnerships in the field of conveyance and distribution of mails, logistic and warehousing operations and financial services.

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The Italian perspective

Posted by | Feb 29, 2008 | |

As Royal Mail closes post offices, its counterpart in Italy is expanding and moving into profit by adopting a strategy that Royal Mail bosses might wish to consider.

The Italian postal turnaround offers an example of go-ahead enterprise in a country that, on the whole, is mired in gloomy predictions of decline, low growth, stagnation and instability. How has this unlikely miracle been achieved? Massimo Sarmi, the chief executive of Poste Italiane, is reluctant to boast, let alone to offer advice to Royal Mail – but at his office near the Trevi Fountain he offers a vision of the post office as a “one-stop shop” that not only delivers mail but is also a bank offering financial services, such as loans, bill payments, money transfers, online retail mail order, insurance, secure e-mail, pre-paid internet cards, even mobile phones.

“In the past five years there has been a revolution,” he said. “Take something like medical care. You can use the post office online network to make an appointment with your doctor, who then notifies the local pharmacist of the medical supplies you need, which are then dispatched automatically to you in the mail. All you have to do physically is turn up at the surgery to be examined.”

The key, in other words, is diversification in the internet age, using the post office’s existing – and on the whole, trusted – nationwide infrastructure. The post office has a network that other agencies cannot match, reaching into far-flung areas of the Italian peninsula. Mr Sarmi has even flown to Kosovo to open a branch post office for the multinational forces there.

Poste Italiane, which has 14,000 offices and 150,000 employees, loses hundreds of millions of euros a year on its mail services. Increasingly, however, mail is a public service subsidised by more profitable ventures. The same goes for rural post offices. Far from being cut, a hundred have been added over the past five years.

Mail accounts for less than a third of revenues. The rest, Mr Sarmi said, comes from services that did not exist when he took over six years ago, let alone a decade ago. The Italian post office now has a corporate logo in yellow and blue and a fast website in Italian and English.

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New Russian Post CEO targets modernisation as losses rise

Posted by | Feb 29, 2008 | |

The new head of Russian Post, Andrej Kazmin, has unveiled a package of measures to modernise the vast postal service and make it more competitive following increased losses last year. But privatisation is not on the agenda.

Priorities will be to offer a wide range of services, to improve the profitability and quality of mail services, to expand financial services and to modernise the IT and infrastructure, Kazmin said at a two-day high-level meeting of the Russian Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies earlier this month.

Russian Post said it increased mail volumes by 14 pct and parcel volumes by 25 pct last year. Its EMS express shipment volumes increased 42 pct in comparison with express market growth of 37 pct. The company’s 2007 revenues increased by 23 pct due to the higher volumes. However, Russian Post ended 2007 with a loss of RUB 5.8 billion (EUR 158.94 million) compared to a RUB 4 billion deficit (EUR 109.61 million) in 2006.

According to Kazmin, Russian Post’s main goals for 2008 include improving the enterprise’s economic efficiency, providing standard delivery of correspondence and freight to and from any part of the Russian Federation at available tariff rates, establishing modern infrastructure and developing financial services within the postal service system.

In terms of the growth factors and prospects for this year, IT is seen as an important factor for the development of postal services. In 2007, Russian Post extended computer technology with a 35 pct rise in the number of terminals at post offices. In addition, it opened over 3,000 Internet public access outlets increasing their total number to 23,000, the Russian Post said.

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