The best approach to winning the parcel business for African postal operators

Sometimes it is good that America and other first world countries are ahead in terms of business technology application. The hardships, wins and failures experienced by such first world countries become a good lesson for followers. This has been the case in the postal industry as well. 

In this article I pick a lesson that the USPS (American postal operator) has learnt with the measuring of online shops that now contemplate establishing their own shipping centres.  Amazon being the culprit with the USPS may at the moment not be sure whether it is a threat or a customer.

Amazon has been growing a lot over the years to the point of thinking twice about completely running the delivery process from start to finish. This means that the USPS may loose out on business they are getting from this giant online retailer. It surely would serve Amazon better to take full control of their delivery, not only will it be on shipping costs but also on controlling the delivery speed of items. 

The greatest strength for Amazon is that it has the customers and has the power to decide who to engage to deliver the parcels. Similar powers would be enjoyed by the USPS if it also had its own online shopping platform on which it can control the prices of both the merchandise and that of shipping. 

Lessons to the African postal operators

The sooner African postal operators work at forming alliances with online shops or even creating their own online retail shops, the better. according to  MER magazine, in 2050 over 50% of all sales will be online and this will threaten even shopping malls to close down as home and office delivery will have taken over. 

Suggested starting point 

Postal operators would have to take a gradual growth approach to this giant business step of incorporating online shopping in their model. There has to be a way of joining hands within regional players and taking a close watch on how the market behaves so that they position themselves to be the preferred service provider. 

Conclusion

The post office can only survive if it is flexible in adoption modern business trends.

Post offices in Africa also sends EDI messages

The help, guidance and coaching by the Universal Postal Union (UPU) has helped Africa postal operators make a quick follow up on technological advancement in the postal industry. There are systems that little operators could afford, which UPU has made affordable, installed in postal operator mail routes for capturing and sending EDI messages.

The EDI message system is monitored centrally in each country or centrally in Berne Switzerland for prompt reporting. The focus is particularly on measuring end-to-end delivery standards of mails. In the postal business, the term ‘mail’ also stands for parcels and small packets. The exchange of EDI messages enable many postal operators to be able to answer questions on how much time it takes for letters to be delivered in specific delivery points. This was purely an estimate before the invent of exchanging EDI messages across operators.

So, go ahead and use the post office for your registered item and parcel, it will be tracked in most African country’s postal operators website to give you a close to accurate indication of its position at any given time, just like traditional courier companies do. 

How postal administrations make money

As a postman myself, I have had to answer a lot of questions around economically justifying the existence of the post office. Many people acknowledge that the traditional mail business has grown so insignificant it won’t sustain even the smallest postal operator out there.

My answer is simple, diversifying into other quick cash service offerings such as financial services and government services is the solution. I also make mention of the fact that even if many things are now delivered electronically and globally, there still has to be the point where the electronics change into the physical. Think of an online purchase of a item that can be packaged into a postal parcel, no matter how hard inventors try to delivery everything electronically, at least in our generation, it cannot be possible. The post office being one of the cheapest options of sending small items around, it has the leverage to cash in on parcel and other related items delivery.

Even though some people won’t believe me on this one, but I will go on and say it. The postal business has not lost all mail business to competition. There are still bulk posting customers who normally send statements and promotions to their customers through the postal services. Many postal operators still harvest a good portion of their profits from the traditional mail and parcel business.

I always wonder why SMEs don’t take the opportunity to partner with the post office. I will tell you a secrete, ‘the post office is desperate for partners that will give them some business’. To them, failure to secure partners spell no salary increase, retrenchments, and a very unstable industrial environment.

Go ahead and try the post office near you.