Network nuggets

Today Triangle Management Services held a conference in London entiled "World Postal Retail Networks". Amazingly it seems that this event was the first world conference dedicated specially to postal retail networks and there were representatives from 25 countries, including New Zealand, South Africa, Israel, Egypt and Chile.

The Chief Executive of Postwatch Howard Webber chaired the afternoon session and Postwatch Council member Roger Darlington and Network Team member Andy Burrows were also there.

For us, there was special interest in the presentation by Alan Cook, Managing Director of Post Office Ltd. Much of the material was familiar but there were a few new nuggets such as:

• Last financial year, POL had £168M less business from the Government than the previous year.
• POL ran 18 different scenarios for the Government before it decided on the plan for 2,500 post office closures.
• The Horizon computer system takes £100M a year to run which is excessive.
• The current range of POL products - some 170 - is "ridiculous" and needs to be reduced.
• By 2011, some 20% of POL transactions are expected to be conducted by telephone or the Internet.

Alan Cook outlined a strategy focusing on four main product lines: mails and retail, financial services, government services, and telecommunications. The HomePhone proposition is to be relaunched and a new broadband service is to be launched with the expection that, by 2011, 14% of revenues will come from telecoms.

From his staff, he is looking for "an open, customer-focused, commercial, performance-driven culture".