By B N Som,Secretary,Department of Posts

Writing was probably the first attempt made by man to commu-nicate by using another medium. Post as the conveyor of the written word was the first institution available to man to communicate over long distances. It had a near monopoly as a medium of communication till the late 19th century. It was the primary medium available to a majority of the world population upto the end of the Second World War. The Post, however, is facing today an unprecedented challenge from the revolution that is taking place in communication and information technologies. Today it is merely a part of the local communications market. Alternative means of communication pose a serious threat to the existence of the Post. This is happening due to the competitive costs, reliability and efficiency of the alternate modes of communication. Thanks to instant connectivity through the internet, the vast global market is instantly accessible to the common man.

However, it would be foolhardy to toll the death knell for the post office. History shows us that no medium has ever destroyed another. The radio did not destroy the written press, television did not destroy radio, and the Internet will not destroy the postal system, nor the telephone, nor existing media if changes and adjustments are made. The only question is how and when the Post must change.

The management of change in any organisation is not easy at the best of times and is more difficult in an old institution like the post office which during the course of hundreds of years has become a part of the social and cultural matrix. For one there are not many who would like to be a part of the process of change. Whenever fundamental changes are brought about in the way the people perform their work as a result of induction of technology, a corresponding effort must be made to upgrade the skills of the employees. In organisations like the Post with a very large work-force it requires a herculean effort on the part of the management. At the managerial level the emphasis has to be on developing people who can conceive and implement change. What matters to the new postal manager should be results rather than the rigid application of rules. They have to exhibit a greater sense of responsibility as well as foresight gained through better knowledge of the multiple factors affecting the postal market. Ultimately the man at the point of interface with the counter has to be focused on providing satisfaction than on providing a transaction. If you are embarking on change you have to do it quickly. When an organisation is in the process of change you must keep winning and be successful. A leader in any change process has to understand that people will generally follow you while you continue to succeed. Once you stop succeeding they will abandon you because that is life
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It must be admitted that today competition affects every class of mail in the postal sector, either directly or indirectly. The telephone has done much to undercut the monopoly of the postal service and today the communications revolution threatens to replace several paper-based transactions. To successfully cope with this situation as well as with the changing needs of the customers the postal organisations the world over are already trying to tackle the fundamental obstacles of an internal lack of market orientation (pricing new products, planning, marketing and the constraints that prohibit innovation and/or market access). In developing countries, in particular, the postal sector has a much larger role to play in initiating and educating the public in the use of new communication technologies. For large segments of the population lack of access to the equipment in question puts the onus on the postal service to provide the communication system through its own initiative.

What is the core competence of a postal organisation? It is in delivering messages, goods and payments. The postal service has unique access to the household sector through its network of post offices and letter carriers (postman). The postal service, therefore, need to pursue opportunities to exploit its delivery service in combination with existing electronic communi- cations. It should have the choice of pooling its talents with choice of other organisations that possess complementary expertise and resources. It must also take the opportunity to substantially expand the range of services offered at the postal outlets. In other words the postal sector needs to develop systematic processes for generating, developing, evaluating and introducing new products. These products should capitalise on the postal sector's competencies in the following nationwide networks :

•  The collection network
•  The retail network
•  The transportation fleet
•  The delivery system (national and international)
•  The labour pool

To bring in the needed expertise in electronic inputs to the products, the Post should form strategic alliances with other entities.In other words it must diversify into transport, distribution and communications related businesses. So how do we see the Post twenty years hence.It will be the key personal communications contact with the household.This role would be based on four key drivers:

• The biggest part of the future mail stream will be business to household mail, driven by the  growing need of individual businesses to be in direct contact with the consumer.
• Home will be the place where increasing number of commercial decisions will be made and fulfilled.Post could be the organization which will provide the physical and personal link  between businesses and the home.
• Post would be able to accommodate and facilitate targeted and interacting     communications.
• Single point where the common man would be able to pay any kind of bill and get an  instantreceipt .The need to make payments across the counter would remain for most   of   the   peoples of the world for a long time.

The post office will offer products and services which can exist on the hard drive of a computer on behalf of many businesses that find it costly to have a retail presence in every town.It will be mixed into high performance electronic infrastructure by developing the distribution side of its businesses. Post of the future will be warehousing, picking and packing the goods, dispatching and delivering them.It will track them as they go and provide customers with the relevant information as they go. The Post in a majority of cases will be owning the process not the product-a process that can be applied to the home as well as the businesses market.

The future post office would be successful logistics player who would make reliable and timely personal deliveries to every houses , every institution and every business . The consumers would receive targeted timely communications from institutions as well as a host of her personal services. The post office would operate in a global communication market delivering door to door. Its strength would be in its ability to reach each residence from local storage and distribution facilities and to connect these local distribution sites into wider world of business communication and the distributed supply chain. The size and scale of the local distribution and the interact information gathered its customers would give the future post office an overwhelming economic advantage in both adding value to its services and setting competitive prices.It would be the only distributor that could provide one-delivery model delivering to homes everything from mail to clothing to food.It would be the only distributor that could reach back into any corner of the supply chain and deliver in the neighbourhood at all hours.The post office with its partnership with other Posts would be the only player which will be able to make reliable timely international deliveries. The major delivery post offices would become full service , distribution centers playing the role of mail centers, information hubs/print shops , local ware houses and community communication centers.
The Post office would continue to handle large volumes of mail. It would, however , be the other services that would account for the rapid growth in revenues in the post office of the future.All the important offices would have a major print shop that would print individual notes and letters.Merchants would gather real time data about on line purchases or enquiries which in turn would be immediately converted into individualized responses which the post office would print and deliver on the next run of the postman through the neighbourhood.

Important post offices would have sizeable ware-houses which would receive parcels targeted to a neighbourhood which would enable it to gather and distribute a wide variety of goods including parcels, food, books, movies, etc.The post office neighbourhood ware-housing facility would appeal to catalogu andWeb companies because it would help them to keep down their costs pertaining to logistics.

The community communication centers at the post office wold allow people to buy coffee, sit at a table to drink and chat with friends, buy newspapers and magazines, use phones and faxes and access the internet.Many of these communications centers would remain open 24 hours a day seven days’ a week.
The postman as well as the delivery functions would undergo a sea change given the demand of e-commerce.The postman would be a driver and a carrier who would pass every house on his route at least twice a day once in the morning for the regular mail delivery and later in the evening with parcels and other items that may require to be delivered.In the evening the postman/carrier would not only deliver but also pick up, take orders, giving out samples, conduct transactions and provide information and advice to help households to make decisions.The pick up service would increase remote sale of clothes and other non-branded items.It would also create new markets.Local libraries would be able to deliver and pick up books and the number of people using the facility and having the membership of the libraries would increase manifold.In short the post office would have an effective global logistics and distribution system in partnership with other postal layers.Packages would arrive at the Central original warehouses which in turn would be distributed to the local ware houses.The post office would be at a great advantage as it would have the ability to run the logistic and delivery system hand in hand.The companies whose goods are being booked and delivered by the post office would ensure that inventories for them and distributors are kept extremely low.Traditional mail would still be the largest portion of the post office revenues but it would be simultaneously making substantial amounts from newer activities.The second deliveries would contain on an average at least one package / parcel, individually targeted notes and letters and usually a library book or a movie for a large body of customers.

Thus there is a world of opportunities for the post office.It is for the postal administrators / managers to implement actions and ideas rapidly, become more innovative and more personal.Postal Managers / administrators should not see the future as an obstacle for it they do so they are walking in the wrong direction.