Tag: Royal Mail

Royal Mail raises stamp prices (UK)

Posted by | Apr 7, 2008 | |

The price of posting standard first and second class letters has risen.

A first class stamp for smaller items weighing up to 100g now costs 36p, up 2p. The cost of a second class stamp has gone up from 24p to 27p.

Consumer watchdog Postwatch criticised the increases, announced in December, after Royal Mail’s deliveries were hit by last year’s industrial action.

Despite the rises, Royal Mail estimates it will still lose 6p on every stamped letter and parcel it delivers.

Last year, Royal Mail lost GBP 178m on stamped mail.

It has also come under pressure from competitors in the more lucrative business mail market.

Some large companies have switched their business to firms they consider to be either cheaper or more efficient than Royal Mail.

But consumer group Postwatch said Royal Mail should “make greater strides to improve efficiency rather than making its customers pick up the bill for management failure”.

The cost of sending bigger letters has also risen. A large first class letter has gone up from 48p to 52p and a large second class letter up from 40p to 42p.

The cost of sending items by Special Delivery has increased, too. The fastest service has gone up by 95p to GBP 10.30 for items up to 100g.

The “Next Day” Special Delivery service has risen 30p to GBP 4.60.

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UK small businesses seek alternative mail service

Posted by | Apr 4, 2008 | |

UK SMEs are looking for an alternative to the postal service as concerns mount over the increased number of local post office closures forcing firms to use expensive courier companies.

A survey by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) revealed that 82 per cent of SMEs believe the closure of their local post office would have a significant impact on their business.

Simon Briault, an FSB representative, said: “Small businesses have limited options for an alternative postal service. The private services that are available have cherry picked the government and larger businesses because they do not make enough money from SMEs.”

The FSB recently called upon politicians to take every possible step to retain the network of post offices and launched a national campaign and petition called Keep Trade Local.

“A large number of SMEs rely on Royal Mail and their local post office, with 94 per cent of them using the service exclusively. Couriers are an alternative service and can be useful, but in rural areas businesses will really suffer,” added Briault.

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Postcomm welcomes reappointment of Commissioner Wanda Goldwag (UK)

Posted by | Apr 3, 2008 | |

Nigel Stapleton, Chairman of Postcomm today welcomed the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform John Hutton’s reappointment of Wanda Goldwag as Postcomm commissioner. Ms Goldwag has been reappointed for a further three years.

Ms Goldwag has more than 25 years’ experience in direct marketing, and started her career at Yves Rocher, the multi-national cosmetics company. Since then, she has held senior posts at Fidelity Investment Management, direct marketing agencies WWAV and Smith Bundy, Thorn EMI, Thomas Cook, and the British Airways-owned Air Miles loyalty scheme, where she was executive director.

Postcomm’s work is steered by its seven commissioners, who, between them, have many years’ experience of business, competition, consumer issues, regional matters, mail operations, trade union work, regulation and policy-making, as well as working with government.

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Royal Mail migrates entire procurement system online to e-sourcing (UK)

Posted by | Apr 3, 2008 | |

Royal Mail migrates entire procurement system online to e-sourcing making the process completely paperless

“The Royal Mail (RM) procurement team source around GBP 2.1 billion a year in goods and services. In an effort to cut costs, increase efficiency and deliver a higher level of service to British citizens, Royal Mail embarked on a three year transformation programme in July 2006, unify all procurement processes and stakeholders on the SAP E-Sourcing platform.

Previously sourcing was managed via paper files which was hugely inefficient and did not allow strategic visibility of vendors and contracts. With the new SAP E-sourcing platform, Royal Mail has eliminated all manual steps involved in the Source to Contract Process, increased visibility and compliance, enabled vendors to self-register via ‘Vendor Expression of Interest’ and saved the company GBP 300m.”

“SAP E-Sourcing in Royal Mail was rolled out in a phased manner starting in January 2007 with a month on month roll-out process to integrate all the elements of the procurement chain. When Release 1 Contract Management went live there was a cleansing and migration of approx 900+ contracts from the original procurement management system (PMS) to E-Sourcing. An innovative motivation tactic was deployed where different sourcing teams within RM like clothing, utilities, automation etc. competed against each other to be the fastest to cleanse and transfer their data.

Release 2 in June enabled ITT and eAuction functionality. This was a significant move to integrate all stakeholders under a common process leading to a high level of visibility and accountability. In addition to this, Release 2.1 allowed the vendors interested in participating in asourcing events to register electronically and this greatly improved the management & selection process for large scale deals.

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Prime minister says appeal to Royal Mail, not us

Posted by | Apr 2, 2008 | |

The Prime Minister has sought to shift responsibility for the threat of closure facing post offices.

Gordon Brown insists the decisions about which branches to close are being made by the Post Office, not the Government. He said that if people had a strong case over the planned closure of their local branch they could appeal, with cases going to Royal Mail chairman Allan Leighton if necessary.

Devon will find out in late May which post offices will be closed as part of a government overhaul of the network.

More than one in six branches in the area could go, among the 2,500 to be shut across the country.

Mr Brown said four million fewer people a week were using post offices than two years ago, and the network was losing GBP 3.5m a week.

“To keep 11,500 post offices going, the changes are being made now,” he said. “These decisions are not being made by us – the Government – but by the Post Office.

“They have come to us, and got more money from us, to enable them to carry out a programme that will cost us GBP 1.7bn over the next few years.

“Thousands of post offices remain in existence as a result of the help that we are giving.”

During a parliamentary debate over the closures many Labour MPs and Ministers were accused of hypocrisy for opposing closure of individual branches but backing the overall programme.

Mr Brown said complaints against specific closures should be aimed at Post Office bosses, not government Ministers.

He said: “It’s the Post Office that’s prepared to reconsider the individual closure decisions under the appeal network, and the appeal can go finally to Allan Leighton.”

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