European Postal Services

Report prepared by Sudhir Kamble

Date: 13th September 2013

Contents
Overview
Current

State of EU Postal

services
Cost

reduction approaches for

postal operators
Issues

faced by SMBs

Technology-based

SMBs

offerings for

Overview

Postal services are a significant industry in the

European Union (EU) economy

EU postal services are estimated to handle 135 billion

items per year, reflecting a turnover of about 90
billion or about 1% of Gross Domestic Product

About 2/3rd of this turnover is generated by mail

services. The reminder is generated by parcels and
express services which are already in the competitive
area.

The postal services sector is also an important

employer with around 1.6 million people employed
directly by operators in 2006

In the year 2013, postal services in EU was

deregulated after 15 years of process. Now any

Current State of EU Postal

services
Provides amalgamation of various services such as
communications, financial services, mail, government
services, retail, expediting and logistics
Decline in physical mail volume
Postal Services organizations are currently reactive to
their customers needs
Postal Services resisting to modernization
Decline in services but prices have
increased
Deterioration in working conditions

Cost reduction approaches for

postal operators
Workforce
realignment

Reduce employee or shift to lower-cost

employees
Increase part-time flexible workers to
reduce employee costs

Operations

Automate/ Consolidate sorting and mail

delivery
Optimize routes/ delivery network
Restructure business unites
Encourage sustainability

Customer
touch points

Reduce delivery days

Redesign post offices/ Point of sale (POS)

Point-of-Sale
formats

Shift ownership such as franchise model

Change formats/ Retail points like mobile
post offices

Issues faced by SMBs

Marketing

and advertisement: SMBs lack

finances and technology to market and advertise their

products to a larger customer base.
Cash

flow management: SMBs often couldnt

invest their money as its gets tied up in non-payment

of bills.
Lack

of advance technology: Many SMBs

cannot delivery faster services and products as they

cannot anticipate delivery period, prolonged billing
process and growing customer demands.
Lack

of business logistics knowledge:

SMBs will be expert in their core business but often

Issues faced by SMBs

(Contd..)
Customer

reach:

SMBs often have small

customer base as it needs greater effort and money

to reach bigger customer base
Customer

experience: A bad customer

experience can lead to huge business loss as these

customers share their experience with several
potential customers
Business

scalability: SMBs couldnt scale their

businesses due to challenges such as staff levels,

infrastructure scaling, inventory management, and
technology shortfalls.

Technology-based offerings for

SMBs

E-Commerce
Digit
al
Mail
Reverse
hybrid
mail

Document
Managemen
t
Mobile
applicatio
ns

Webbased
tracking

Onlin
e
Tools
Bill
payment
systems

Sources
The

following are the sources

used:
European Commission
PostEurop
Accenture
Capgemini
United Parcel Service