Our challenges
Facing the future with a positive outlook
We see great opportunities for the business, its people and its customers if we continue to modernise, become more efficient and develop a leadership position in our intensely competitive market. We are in a good position to build on our strengths and meet the future challenges of open competition in the European market.
What makes us unique?
We reach everyone in the UK through our trusted mails, Post Office® and parcels businesses. We also employ over 155,000 people in the UK.
Every working day we collect, process and deliver around 71 million items to 28 million addresses at some of the lowest prices in Europe.
Each week we serve 20 million customers through our network of around 12,000 Post Office® branches and deliver some 400 million parcels a year through Parcelforce Worldwide and General Logistics Systems, our domestic and European parcels businesses.
With over 370 years of experience behind us, we may have the infrastructure and know-how, but we also have to change to meet the challenges ahead.
We’re going through changes
Royal Mail Group ltd is a public limited company wholly owned by the Government.
We became a plc on 26 March 2001 under the Postal Services Act 2000.
Since then we’ve undergone a huge transformation, turning losses of more than £1 million a day into a £404 million profit from operations in 2009-10.
This success has given us a base to meet the challenge of full competition in the UK mail market. We have lost some key contracts since the liberalization of the Postal Market and gained some new customers. Competition intensified during the year with over 13million fewer letters a day being handled than just five years ago as people turn increasingly to other forms of communication. We are still determined to compete successfully in the open market – but in order to do so we need a fair regulatory regime and to push on with our investment in modernisation where we have made significant progress to date.
Key challenges ahead
We now face three key challenges as we look to a tough future.
Our business is all about our people. It’s their hard work and dedication that will take our business forward through this next stage of unprecedented change. We need to continue developing and improving our relationship with our people. We want to ensure that they have the right incentives to continue delivering consistent service to customers and remain safe as the carry out their important jobs. That’s why we have a range of incentives from our ColleagueShare Plan to Colleague Offers on a range of products and services.
The past few years have been focused on modernising our business. Three quarters of the £2 billion investment plan to transform Royal Mail’s operations has now been spent including a further £500 million invested in the last 12 months in new technology and new equipment for our postmen and women, bringing the total to £1.6 billion invested in modernisation since 2006. Continuing to invest in our business will be essential to keep up the pace of modernisation.
