20-07-2017
Dear readers,
This is the YourIPC newsletter before the summer break and it has also been exactly one year since I started working for IPC, so it’s a good occasion for me to reflect on the events over the past year.
A lot is going in the postal sector: e-commerce continues to rise with record volumes seen year after year. Only recently, Amazon held its third annual Prime Day, which was another record-breaking event for e-commerce – you can read more about it in our article.
In this context, IPC has been working diligently to address member needs and provide solutions to respond to e-commerce developments and the challenges posed for the posts.
I had high expectations when coming to IPC one year ago and over the past year I have enjoyed working in this truly international environment. While IPC is a small company, the team is very committed and well positioned to have a big impact on its members and their customers.
Over the past year, we’ve spent a lot of time and efforts on developing a new strategy to better serve the needs of our members and the sector, which has changed a lot over the years and will continue to evolve in the near future.
Strategy review starts with where we are and it is clear that IPC has been a very active organisation. We need to continue and finish current projects but we also increasingly need to take into account the new opportunities offered by e-commerce. This means further enhancing our existing services while also developing innovative services to enable a stronger position for our members in a competitive postal environment. We will build on these services to firmly position IPC as the natural partner for the posts to position them better on the global market.
We have identified three main areas to focus on over the coming years:
- Support members in declining mail business
- To enhance the e-commerce product portfolio among members
- Handle flows from Asia to members
In all these areas, we will continue and expand our support through market understanding, data, performance management and technical solutions.
With this in mind, we signed a cooperation agreement with the UPU, which is a start to strengthen the relations between our organisations and between our members. We will also commit to providing more complementary services, to the benefit of our members.
A lot of work remains to be done, with the main tasks for the coming months and years being the successful roll-out of INTERCONNECT to cover e-commerce flow between our members and a new solution to cover the e-commerce flows from Asia – China in particular – to IPC’s members. These are exciting challenges and I am confident that through close collaboration with our members and stakeholders, we will succeed.
In the meantime, I wish you a pleasant summer!