Tag: Royal Mail

Better standards and harmonized laws will promote e-commerce

Posted by | Jun 2, 2008 | |

In a meeting held on 22 May, government experts and representatives of non-governmental organizations and international organizations joined members of the Action Line on e-business, established following the World Summit on the Information Society in 2005, to find solutions to help e-commerce prosper in developing countries.

The UPU, the International Trade Centre (ITC), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Labour Organization lead the Action Line on e-business.

High-level executives from UNCTAD and ITC, as well as the UPU Deputy Director General, Guozhong HUANG, highlighted the opportunities offered by the rapid progress in the use of new technologies around the world. The UPU led the session about challenges, opportunities and concrete solutions for SMEs wanting to start e-commerce activities. A presentation of the Alibaba.com e-marketplace, for business to business (B2B) e-commerce, showed how this platform has helped several small businesses expand their online activities. China Post also described its e-commerce activities and strategic partnership with Alibaba.com in the areas of logistics and online payments. They also highlighted the new opportunities provided by “m-commerce” (or commerce through a mobile phone) as a starting point for e-commerce activities, particularly because mobile technologies facilitate access to information and its distribution.

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Royal Mail seeks Postcomm extension

Posted by | Jun 2, 2008 | |

Royal Mail has asked Postcomm to extend the suspension of the bulk compensation scheme for another year amid fears of further industrial action in the future.

The request comes on the back of poor performance figures released last week by Royal Mail. The postal services giant failed to achieve nine of the 12 minimum service targets in its licence, but claims the poor service levels were due to industrial action last summer.

Royal Mail only achieved an 85 per cent service level on first class mail against a target of 93 per cent. Last year, it achieved 94 per cent service levels for first class mail.

Postcomm is now consulting its stakeholders on whether to extend the suspension of compensation.

Speaking about the missed performance targets, Postwatch chair Millie Banerjee says: “What the figures do not reveal is what effect the strikes have had on the posting habits of social and business customers. Many of these customers had to find other ways to communicate. This will have reduced postal volumes, which will in turn damage Royal Mail’s financial stability for years to come.”

Average mailing volumes have been severely affected as a result of last year’s strikes, with daily volumes down from 84 million items to about 80 million.

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Royal Mail under more pressure (UK)

Posted by | May 31, 2008 | |

Even though the Royal Mail has been under extreme pressure for a number of years it seems that the expected end to post office closures may be delayed. A report from an influential committee of MPs will this week confirm that the management of Royal Mail were not able to give a guarantee that the number of post offices in the network would stay above 11,500.
The company recent announced the planned closure of a further 2,500 post offices taking the limit down to the government declared minimum of 11,500. The committee of MPs are seriously thinking of reporting the company to the regulator Postcomm to try to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
However, while the number of active post offices is set to fall significantly over the next couple of years, there are some in the business who blame the government and the competition authorities. They were the people that opened up the UK postal market at a time when Royal Mail was not in shape to compete.
There have also been major problems with the company’s pension scheme and a number of strikes over the last few years which have further deteriorated any confidence left in the operation. Quite where the closures will stop is unsure, but Royal Mail is not yet a competitive operation.

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Postwatch: 2007/08: Customer expectations were not met

Posted by | May 30, 2008 | |

Royal Mail released its performance figures for 2007/08. As expected these show a substantial decline against the previous year’s record breaking performance and that the company failed to achieve 9 of the 12 minimum service targets in its licence. Royal Mail’s performance was severely affected by official and unofficial industrial action.
Millie Banerjee, Chair of Postwatch, commenting on Royal Mail’s performance said: “Royal Mail’s recovery was severely blown off course by last summer’s strikes. Figures released today confirm that customers received poor levels of service. Furthermore, the fourth quarter results show that Royal Mail’s recovery from the industrial action was in some respects disappointingly slow.

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Greater commercial freedom for Post Office Ltd

Posted by | May 30, 2008 | |

Postcomm’s Post Office Network Annual Report this year will, among other things, look at whether more can be done to give Post Office Ltd greater commercial freedom to secure new business. We believe that the right products and services to bring in customers are vital to ensure the long term future of the network after the current closure programme.

At present, Post Office Ltd has an exclusive trading arrangement with Royal Mail that restricts to Royal Mail the authority to negotiate with other operators or companies who may want to use the post office network as a collection or delivery point. Subpostmasters, in turn, have a contract with Post Office Ltd that allows them to provide postal services only for Royal Mail and Parcelforce.

In Postcomm’s view, the post office network and customers could benefit from a much more open approach than has been shown up to now in welcoming and attracting the business of other mail operators. Post Office Ltd might also benefit from greater freedom to align itself more closely with a wide range of other businesses such as local government and other community services.

The results of our work will be published as part of the Post Office Network Annual Report in October 2008.

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