Our brands are trusted household names, but we are continuously looking to develop and improve our products and services in this changing environment. Discover more about them by selecting from the list below.
Royal Mail is our letters and packages business, covering the whole of the UK for our one-price-goes-anywhere universal service. Our strategy in Royal Mail Letters is:
Each working day we collect items directly from our 115,000 post boxes and around 12,000 Post Office® branches. These items pass through our network of more than 60 mail centres, 8 regional distribution centres and around 1,400 delivery offices. Then our fleet of around 30,000 red vehicles help us to deliver them to their final destination.
We use postcodes to identify where an item is going, helping us to sort mail efficiently and deliver it faster. We make deliveries six days a week by around lunchtime, although many customers receive their mail much earlier than this, and we aim to complete rural deliveries by around 3pm.
Mail data tools
We also provide business customers with a range of mail-related data tools to improve their marketing performance and increase the effectiveness of mail as a communication medium. Through more efficient database maintenance and well-targeted customer contact management, we can help customers achieve better response rates and a higher return on their investment.
Online shopping
Home shopping is providing a new opportunity for us, with online retailing estimated to reach 30% of retail sales by 2012. Over Christmas 2009 we delivered a record breaking 155 million items ordered online – 15 million more than the same period in 2008. Books, videos and DVDs remain the favourite low-ticket items, but bigger-ticket items are becoming more popular, such as clothing, which is expected to account for 10% of total online sales by 2012.
We work with retailers to ensure they are well placed to capitalise on this new retailing channel and can deliver their goods to their customers.We also give retailers the option of having a customer’s items delivered to their local Post Office branch for collection, if that’s more convenient.
Post Office Ltd is a separate company within and part of the Royal Mail Group that runs around 12,000 Post Office branches across the country. We are the largest retail and financial services chain in the UK - bigger than all of the UK’s banks and building societies put together.
Post Office Ltd has been launching a new product or service on average every three months and its new revenues are helping sustain the branch network.
Over the last five years, Post Office Ltd has expanded its range of financial services, signing up more than two million customers. We now have about 700,000 car and home insurance policies, we have installed over 2,000 free to use ATMs. We are the UK’s leading supplier of foreign currency with a 25% market share and we issue around one million travel insurance policies every year. In addition, the Post Office offers credit cards, savings, mortgages and access to cash to over 60% of debit card holders in the UK.
Post Office® Branch network
It is widely recognised that the network of around 12,000 branches is a vital part of the fabric of the country, cherished by the communities nationwide that rely on Post Office products and services.
The Post Office branch network is structured in line with the Government’s access criteria that nationally 99% of the UK population should be within 3 miles and 90% within 1 mile of their nearest Post Office.
The Post Office, together with the independent subpostmasters, is proud to run this hugely valued network.
A key challenge for the network is the decline in Government business going through the Post Office network. Thirteen years ago, the majority of business transacted across our counters was on behalf of Government departments.
With the switch to payment of pensions and benefits directly to bank accounts now complete, the network has already lost the £400 million a year income it earned from this work. The Post Office Card Account has replaced some of this revenue and we have also developed new revenue streams from our expansion into the financial services market. Although in decline, Government services remain a key part of our business and last year Post Office Ltd signed a five year contract with the DVLA to provide a new identity verification service that will allow drivers renew their photocard driving licences using new, world-class technology. But there remains a revenue shortfall.
The Post Office and its partners offer over 170 products and services, including:
The Post Office is also the biggest cash handler in the country with more than £90 billion passing through its hands each year.
Parcelforce Worldwide is our express parcels business. We deliver around 150,000 parcels a day to our customers.
In the last few years Parcelforce Worldwide has successfully turned around its business and is now a key player in the competitive, unregulated, express parcels market. It has dramatically cut its losses from operations and continues to improve the quality of service provided for customers, particularly for its time-critical products.
The challenge it now faces is to build on these improvements and to operate at sustained levels of profitability.
GLS is our European parcels business and Parcelforce Worldwide is its UK partner. Based at GLS head office in the Netherlands, it has14,500 employees.
GLS handles over 1 million parcels a day, through its network of 667 depots, 29 central transhipment points, 16,000 delivery vehicles and 1,700 long distance trucks. Its core operation is business-to-business parcels deliveries and it has 220,000 customers in 34 states across Europe.
