New Post Office Board strives to drive the enterprise to profitability
The Board of Directors and executive management of the South African Post Office (SAPO) said on Thursday they were working hard to revive the public image of the state-owned enterprise, improve its credibility locally and globally and help drive profitability.
“After our appointment, in October 2019, we found an organisation which has been losing money for the past decade; a qualified audit report that was not being adequately addressed; governance lapses; wasteful expenditure; a post office with no executive committee and right management to address the strategy; operational and financial risks and inefficiencies and low staff morale,” Colleen Makhubele, SAPO new Chairperson said at a media briefing to introduce new board members.
“Our job is to strategically position SAPO and use its distribution network, warehouses and retail infrastructure as a service platform to be leveraged for profitability, innovation, service delivery and of course to enhance its Universal Service Obligations,” she said.
To drive the Post Office to profitability, Makhubele said the enterprise would leverage its infrastructure network, distribution and logistics platform for profitability, revenue generating collaborations; innovations and service delivery.
She said SAPO would engage in strategic public private partnerships to build a technology centred provider of postal services; e-commerce and financial services; position itself as a payment platform and distribution platform of choice for government and also leverage the big data and build analytic capabilities to enable targeted government service delivery programmes for various government arms.
“Our platforms access the entire South Africa and rest of Africa and we understand our customer base and their buying and delivery patterns.
“Every month, more than 11-million South Africans receive grant payments on time. Since the Post Office took over payment of South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) grants, there was no month that beneficiaries were not paid. We wish to assure all South Africans that this social obligation will never change,” she said.
“We are driving management aggressively towards a pronounced strategy of a Post Office that is relevant in the digital economy and one that is central to the provision of Fourth Industrial Revolution products and services. To be a Post Office that is trusted and reliable to deliver on time and deliver the parcels unviolated.
Other cost-saving and revenue generating innovations include:
- A unique track and trace system in which customers can follow the processing of their items all the way and processing is sped up significantly. This saves costs and our employees can be used much more productively;
- Automating the notification SMS that customers get when their parcel is ready for collection;
- Introducing an online customs declaration system before the end of March 2020. The sender will fill in the contents and value of the parcel online when it is dispatched. SARS gets a notification in advance and this will greatly speed up the assessment for possible import tax of all incoming parcels ;and
- Staff reskilling and optimisation to improve productivity is another exciting project.
The Board has instructed management to review all major and strategic contracts, currently running in the Post Office to make sure that every one of them continues to offer value for money and services or goods procured through the contract remain essential. If not, the contract pricing or conditions would be reviewed.
“The Post Office plans to reposition itself to become an integrated service solutions provider. We have a vast distribution network, warehouses in strategic places and a huge retail infrastructure,” said Makhubele.
