Massimo Sarmi, CEO, Poste Italiane
What does winning the award mean to Poste Italiane?
We were positively surprised to receive the Service Provider of the Year Award, because we didn’t expect it at all, and when you don’t expect good news you appreciate it more than usual! It is good encouragement for the future and for our employees, and it also recognises the hard work we put into our everyday activities.
Why do you think Poste Italiane won?
Because we are extremely innovative. In today’s postal industry, innovation is the key to success. Innovation is part of our everyday activity – we try to be innovative in every procedure, not just by developing new products and solutions, but also in the way we think and act. For us it is a mentality. Every day we look at how we can provide the highest level of efficiency, and how can we improve each functionality within the business
Can you tell us more about your agreement with the Albanian national postal service?
We are very happy to have signed this cooperation agreement with Albania because it provides confirmation of how much admiration there is internationally for the results obtained by Poste Italiane in the field of technological innovation, and underlines the company’s skill in creating and implementing a business and quality control system that is a model even for postal operators abroad.
[The agreement between the two postal operators will include the implementation of joint projects aimed at improving postal and financial services and developing their respective technological platforms. The benchmark will be the logistics infrastructure of Poste Italiane, whose high-tech control rooms for the monitoring of the quality of postal and financial services created in the central headquarters in Rome are an example for the rest of Europe. The collaboration between Poste Italiane and Posta Shqiptare will be developed by sharing technical information and extending throughout Albania the most advanced solutions that can be implemented in the postal sector.]
Poste Italiane has experienced seven consecutive years in profit. How has the organisation achieved this?
We have compensated the decline in postal services with new services. We have been able to integrate new logistics services with our basic delivery services, and as a result provide our customers with that something extra. For example, we have provided approximately 9,000 of our postmen with a special handset, which allows them to organise their activities and improve efficiency, and to provide real-time information on when mail is delivered. This kind of information is useful for the sender, especially when the content of the mail is important.
We are now looking to extend this service further by offering payment solutions to our customers. Currently our customers have to prepay for goods, but we realise that if they buy something, such as a crystal glass, online, then they would prefer to pay when the product has been delivered. We are now going to offer this function, which will hopefully improve customer satisfaction. In the future, other services can also be added to our logistics services, such as paying for utilities bills when a parcel is being delivered.
What does the future hold for Poste Italiane?
The future looks positive despite the economic situation and declining mail volumes. We are in a stable position, and as mentioned before, we are tempering the reduction by making new improvements. I think that our final results for 2009 will be more or less comparable to 2008, which is great. We are still maintaining growth even in these difficult times.
An innovative business model is vital for a postal operator to succeed in the future. In our case, by having this different business model, which aims to integrate new capabilities in our existing offering, has allowed us to grow.
