The South African Post Office (SAPO) is implementing a three-phase plan, estimated to cost more than R500 million, over five years, to upgrade its network and introduce value-added services.
The first phase of the plan is a R140 million infrastructure improvement initiative. “We expect to complete the first phase of the network by September this year,” says SAPO CIO Louise van der Bank. “At this point, we are focusing on upgrading the different branches, as well as our core network.”
Van der Bank adds that the network upgrade should be well on its way by 2010, with the full infrastructure upgrade completed in 2011.
She says the first phase of the plan will focus on creating a stable business environment and improving the post office's IT performance. The second phase will see SAPO improve its business operations. The final phase will result in the post office providing value-added services, such VOIP to rural areas, over its network.
“As we complete each phase, we hope to get more accurate investment numbers but for now the entire process is estimated at R500 million. By 2011, we will leverage the capacity of our upgraded network for value-added services,” says Van der Bank.
Government services
Van der Bank could not give specific details as to how many people would benefit from the upgrade, but says the target consumer is the population of SA, especially inhabitants of rural areas. The post office has public Internet terminals within its branches, which allow rural citizens access to government services. The plan is to upgrade these to Internet caf'es.
“People have access to government services such as government job applications, which they normally would not have access to,” she explains.
SAPO is consolidating its ePostal offering into a single portal, which will become a one-stop shop for online postal services to government, large enterprises, SMEs and consumers. The post office hopes to leverage the 121 000 registered users to boost the popularity of the portal.
ePostal is a combination of various products and services, such as hybrid mail, where the post office digitises physical mail for clients and sends it to the nearest pay point to the receiver. It also provides electronic billing via e-mail, fax or SMS.
“This year, we have a huge focus on enhancing our hybrid mail system, which will be upgraded along with our main infrastructure,” says Van der Bank. “We expect our network upgrade and associated ePostal services to feature quite prominently as sources of revenue at our financial results announcement later this year.”
Future of mail
Last year, SAPO's ePostal service contributed between R20 million and R30 million to its total pre-tax profit of R565 million. The online offering has seen a 60% growth in revenue per annum for the past three to four years.
The post office says its online offering was part of its ePostal strategy for 2008, which seeks to follow new global trends. SAPO CEO Motshoanetsi Lefoka pointed out, during SAPO's results presentation recently, that volumes of physical mail are declining globally, with intelligent mail becoming the new trend.
Van der Bank says the post office is looking at future technologies which are an amalgamation of present practices and electronic solutions. She adds, from a business point of view, the focus will be on bringing in e-support to services such as traditional mail, which would be enhanced by online services such as hybrid mail.
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