“Urgent action” is needed for DM sector too
Share
The avuncular Business Secretary Vince Cable uttered a rather stark warning last week: “Royal Mail is facing a combination of potentially lethal challenges - falling mail volumes, low investment, not enough efficiency and a dire pension position.”
A rather portentous tone for the nation’s favourite politician, and one prompted by a report by Richard Hooper, the former deputy chairman of broadcast regulator Ofcom, in the unimaginatively titled Hooper Report.
In said report, Hooper says “urgent action” is required to help the postal service modernise, address the mail group’s worsening financial situation and the unsustainable £10bn pension deficit.
How true.
In order to realise its commercial potential the Royal Mail needs an injection of private capital and it needs it yesterday.
The direct marketing, more specifically the direct mail sector, relies on a fit-for-purpose Royal Mail.
This matter of fact was illustrated last week when it was revealed that TNT Post and Royal Mail had been talking about how they can pool resources for the collective good of the direct mail sector.
The two are obviously rivals on one level, but as Lieneke Happel, marketing and customer services director of TNT Post, put it to me over a coffee recently, it can only grab so much custom from the Royal Mail, it needs the doughty campaigner in rude health to make sure it has an efficient delivery service for the addressed and unaddressed mail it relies on the Royal Mail to deliver.
The sector needs a nimble, cash capable Royal Mail to help drive mail innovation, data services and best manage the inevitable continuing decline in mail volumes by encouraging greater use of mail.
A private Royal Mail will accelerate the efficiency and modernisation drive already well under way and potentially lead to a more focused service for direct mail clients, business customers and the public.
And a truly competitive mail sector can only bring with it greater choice to direct marketers.
Readers' comments (2)
Anonymous | Mon, 13 Sep 2010 1:25 pm
Opening up the Royal Mail to competition in the 1980s under the last Tory administration was the death knell for the good old Post Office.
If we want a universal nation-wide postal system that serves everyone in this country and can make a profit, we should be getting rid of private mail firms and allowing the Post Office a monopoly.
This is unlikely to ever happen though, and even if the Post Office is floated, it is very likely that universal mail for one price in this country will vanish...
That's fine if you live in big cities, but think what it will be like if you live somewhere remote and have to pay the going market rate to get a parcel or letter to somewhere like rural Devon or the Scottish Highlands..?
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:25 am
I don't understand why, with all this new technology, we still have to go into branch and queue to send a package signed for or next day. Why can't we fill details in online and then drop parcels into a letters box with a flap, like in Blockbuster? Parcel couriers are already doing this, but they collect them for you. This is why Royal Mail is going down the pan.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment