E-commerce will play a central role in the future of Australia Post with a portfolio of onlineproducts and related services, a senior manager said. The operator has also hiked parcel and
express prices.The Australian national postal operator has seen letter mail volumes drop 10 per cent since2008 and has embarked on an ambitious new strategy in response, Richard Umbers, Executive GeneralManager for eServices, told last week’s European Postal Services conference in London.
“We believe we cannot shrink to glory. We have to find a growth strategy,” he declared. “Ourfuture is in e-commerce, communications and trusted services rather than letters, parcels andretail,” said the British-born manager, who has previously held senior management positions at FMCGretailers in the UK, New Zealand and Australia.
Under the ‘Future Ready’ strategy unveiled early last year by new CEO Ahmed Fahour, thegovernment-owned company is restructuring into four business units to focus on postal services,express distribution, retail services and e-services. The three core customer segments areconsumers, SMEs and government/enterprises.
In the e-services field, Australia Post will focus on five areas of services: e-commerce,payments, databases, financial services and communications. “E-commerce is the opportunity andparcels is a subset of e-commerce,” Umbers explained. “We want to be the preferred partner for thee-commerce industry.” Australia Post is already the largest e-commerce player in the country, heclaimed, and now wants “to play a central role in getting Australia online”.
Last year it launched a Click ‘n Send online shipping portal while the acquisition of onlinepayments company SecurePay last December will enable it to incorporate payments within its onlineofferings. “We can now build websites with embedded payment and parcel delivery services,” Umberspointed out. In general, Australia Post wants “to build a shopping mall, not hot-dog stands” in theinternet, he commented.
Separately, Australia Post yesterday increased prices for domestic parcels and express post,as well as for international letters, parcels and express products and services. The increases tookaccount of inflation and rising costs, especially for transport and labour, the company explained.
The average weighted price increase across all products and services was 4 per cent. Domesticparcels went up by 4.1 per cent and express post by 3.7 per cent. International letter prices rose2.9 per cent and international parcels were 5 per cent more expensive.
