CANBERRA: The Australia Post board will hold a two-day meeting next week as it considers a new strategic plan for its transition from a network-centric model to one driven by the customer.
Speaking at a trans-Tasman Business Circle lunch in Melbourne, Australia Post chairman John Stanhope said the latest plan would enable the business to address the “ever-changing behaviour” of its customers. “I’m delighted to say it is the best customer-centric plan I’ve seen from Post for a long, long time,” he said. “The thing I like is there’s been a lot of research done about what our customers are actually telling us, and probably for the first time it’s really a customer-driven strategy.”
Australia Post has been forced to evolve rapidly in recent years as its core letters business flounders and its parcels business experiences a period of strong growth. Its monopoly letters business took 200 years to reach peak volumes in 2008, before falling 50 per cent in the following eight years. In the meantime the parcels operation has benefited from the rapid rise in online retail, with the division delivering more than half of group revenue last year. The extent of the structural decline in letter posting saw Australia Post turn in a $222 million loss in the most recent financial year despite its parcels sales boost.
“While the internet has been devastating for us in the regulated letters part of our business, it has also enabled the rise of online shopping, which has been a blessing for our parcels business,” Mr Stanhope said. “Our core markets and our whole business model today are completely unrecognisable from 10 years ago.”
