State postal agencies are key components of a country's economic and social infrastructure, providing services to private individuals, companies and communities. In some countries, a decline in traditional mail volumes, combined with the rapid growth of eCommerce and therefore online purchasing, means that postal agencies must address a new reality. In others, industrial growth is resulting in increased volume pressure on postal services, and new demands on branch networks to provide expanded services including express mail, retail and financial services. There are competitive challenges too, with the growth of private courier services.
To respond to these diverse pressures, postal agencies are having to modernize their core infrastructure rapidly and radically. Cost efficiency and control are critical to the success of this, to consolidate postal agencies' position as a key enabler of economic and social development.
Employee payments
With large permanent and casual workforces, postal agencies require an efficient and auditable means of making salary payments. Varying proportions of the workforce do not have bank accounts, but the same degree of efficiency and control is required for making payments to both banked and unbanked staff. Electronic payment solutions, including prepaid cards for casual staff and overtime payments, are proving highly successful at automating payments, enhancing controls and reducing costs.
Retirement obligations
As the population ages and employee expectations increase, postal agencies need to design or refine pension schemes to meet the retirement needs of individuals whilst managing future funding obligations.
Foreign currency payments
Postal agencies need to make payments to agencies in many other countries and currencies for international mailing services. This creates the risk of fragmented cash, costs and currency risk exposures by maintaining multiple accounts in different currencies and accounts, often with different banks. Furthermore, cash received from overseas postal agencies need to be reconciled quickly and easily.
Leveraging the branch network
Postal agencies are amongst the government agencies that have the greatest direct communication with members of the public through branch networks and home delivery. This involves dealing with a large variety of payment types, including cash, which requires cost-effective and secure processing. An extensive branch network provides the opportunity postal agencies to provide a variety of services to customers in order to remain relevant and competitive in the future.
Accountability and competition
Pressure on costs and increasing competition from private sector firms means that postal agencies need to preserve margins and deliver highly competitive services, whilst also maintaining financial transparency and accountability. Efficient cash management, payment and collection solutions have a major role to play in achieving this. Similarly, postal agencies deal with large volumes of documentation. By automating document processing effectively, costs can be reduced, controls enhanced and services to the public improved.
