28-02-2019
This year, IPC will celebrate its 30th anniversary. This anniversary marks 30 years of joint efforts by our member posts to innovate and enhance their cross-border letter and parcel performance. It also celebrates three decades of continued innovation and enthusiasm of the IPC staff.
In 1989, IPC was created with the aim to enhance cross-border delivery and optimise performance through cost efficiencies and synergies. Three decades later, our goals remain unchanged despite new realities of the postal industry and a change in the postal product mix. Global cooperation remains more important than ever.Throughout the years, IPC has known many successes. Many of our solutions are fully part of day-to-day postal operations. The Certificates of Excellence have been driving service quality at Offices of Exchange across the world, while the IPC Bag, Tray and Pallet Box pools have streamlined postal processes, to name but a few. IPC has established reporting tools allowing posts to constantly improve performance. We have also pioneered a sector-wide programme to measure and reduce CO2 emissions.
The context in which IPC was created was very different from today’s postal market. Most importantly, the internet has changed how we communicate. In 1989, the internet had just been invented, and nobody would have expected that digital communication would come to partly replace letters, nor that the e-commerce would become such an important channel of sales across the globe.
Digitalisation, with the rapid increase in e-commerce has also provided a major opportunity for posts. IPC has accompanied this transition by developing cutting-edge solutions, which enable posts to increase their competitiveness in the cross-border e-commerce market. Today, INTERCONNECT is establishing itself as the first global end-to-end postal e-commerce network.
This year is also the anniversary year for one of our flagship services: the Global Customer Service System. The GCSS is currently used by 185 posts worldwide and for the past 20 years it has played an important role in enhancing cross-border customer services for international barcoded or tracked postal products, such as UPU parcels, PRIME, EMS, KPG, EPG and INTERCONNECT.
Over the past 30 years, many posts have trusted us to be their global service provider. We look forward to continuing playing this role for many more years to come. Our 30th anniversary should not only be the occasion to celebrate our past achievements: we plan to also use this opportunity to look at the trends and the scenarios for the postal sector for the years to come. We will explore new opportunities to work together with our members and customers.
Holger Winklbauer
CEO, IPC