Укрпошта
Gintautas Mažeika
1.1 Current situation in the industry Services of Ukrposhta are diversified. You can find postal services, express delivery services, subscription and delivery of periodicals, financial services, retail services and more.
Due to the electronic means of communication mail volumes are drastically decreasing year by year.
Infrastructure of a traditional postal operator is usually built with the purpose to deliver letters and now more and more parcels have to be delivered. Old infrastructure can not serve the changing needs of today’s customer, post is losing competitiveness against younger, smaller private companies that can be much faster and much more flexible in terms of client service. Ukrposhta has the largest retail network in the country – network of postal offices.
VS
Delivery of mail is very labour intensive. With the dropping mail volumes it is hard to find the resources to cover the man power expenses that are around 65 % of total expenses of a traditional postal operator.
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1.2 Current situation in the industry Ukrposhta has to maintain the large network of postal offices all around the country – that is also a very large part of the costs for a postal operator, which, if not managed properly, might become an unbearable burden for the company.
Ukrposhta is reaching every single household every single day – number of live contacts with customers is very large.
Almost all traditional postal operators experience difficulties with the image of the company. It is recognized as outdated, slow, not client oriented. Even if a postal operator is improving the level of services, still it takes time to change the image.
Ukrposhta has its logistics infrastructure organized in the way that it reaches all the cities all over the country in 24 hours.
VS
Negative image in the market has a reflection on the image of a traditional postal operator for the employees, especially – new employees, the resources that the company would like to have. It is hard for a traditional postal operator to recruit good people in the market.
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1.3 Current situation in the industry
Wage level is usually below the market level at a traditional postal operator. It is hard to keep staff motivated.
A traditional postal operator usually has loyal personnel.
A traditional postal operator usually has difficulty to compete. The natural advantage is that the operator is covering the whole country, but at the same time it is a burden as the most of the flow is delivered in the largest cities. Due to density of population, competition is always present in the places with the high flow.
VS
Expression “no, it is not possible� is usually used too often in all of the levels of management of a traditional postal operator.
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2.1 Solutions Mail volumes will never be that large as it used to be 10 years ago. Focus on the services oriented to the needs of e-commerce. Build up a strong parcel delivery infrastructure , supplemented by modern financial services.
Make the most of the postal network. Postal office should generate income.
Put as much services into the postal office as possible (retail, financial, services provided by state and municipalities, etc.).
Focus on development of financial services. Largest problem in terms of profitability is delivery of periodicals. If counting without the service of delivery of periodicals, Ukrposhta would have been able to generate more than 108 million UAH of profit in the year 2014 and that would provide a profitability of 3,2% for the company. Delivery of periodicals generated 93 million UAH of loss.
Introduce new financial services. Dependability of revenues on pension delivery is too high and draws a very high risk on the company. The overall tendency in the market is that more and more people are starting to receive their pensions on their bank accounts or payment cards, it means that in future physical delivery of cash will be less needed. In terms of risk management new payment solutions for delivery of pensions should be introduced (e.g. payment card of Ukrposhta, etc.).
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2.2 Solutions Solve the profitability question for the delivery of periodicals. Largest problem in terms of profitability is delivery of periodicals. The problem of profitability of delivery of periodicals is known well in the postal industry. In the countries like Lithuania, Latvia and some others this question is solved by introducing different ways of funding of the expenses of the delivery of periodicals (especially in the rural areas). The best practices should be implemented at Ukrposhta as well.
Centralize the management structure.
Most likely the centralization of management of the company is needed. Deeper analysis should be performed, but practice of other postal operators in the Eastern Europe shows that usually there is a lot of space for improvement of efficiency when management is centralized. Structure with 27 branches should be reconsidered.
Change the attitude of personnel from self-centric to client-centric. Take good care of customers. Customer is the one who is paying the salary. Listen to the customers and develop the services in alignment to the needs of the customers. Customer first!
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2.3 Solutions
Let your people earn more by doing things well – introduce a motivation system, based on targets reached. Build up a creative environment for the personnel, reword for new perspective ideas that will make a change
introduce a client service standard
in the company, build up an image of the service
provider that cares about the customers.
Become noticeable and respected in an international arena, participate actively in international postal organizations and events and be proactive.
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3. Competitive advantage Over 10 years experience in management of large international and state-owned companies taking a CEO positions; comprehensive experience in change management and turnaround projects, and management experience in business restructuring and reengineering of business processes; knowledge of prospects and development trends of the industry; deep knowledge of business economics and operational experience in strategic planning, budgeting, manufacturing process, project management, knowledge of the principles of corporate governance; experience in high-level negotiations with customers, suppliers, financial institutions, partners, government agencies, etc.;
ability to build a good team in short time.
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