JEDDAH, 17 December 2007 — With many of government agencies being privatized, there is tremendous scope for the private sector to run them with new investments in technology in order to maintain a sustained growth, according to an international expert in postal, transportation and government organizations.
“Investments in technology could strengthen strategic planning, supply chain optimization, customer channel redesign and integration, new product development and reform, said Cathy Rogerson, leader of IBM’s Global Postal Practice, and a public sector executive with 20 years experience improving the value and efficiency of postal, transportation and government organizations.
Rogerson recently chaired a session at the PSTECH 2007 conference, the Kingdom’s first global postal and informative technology conference in Jeddah that focused on next generation technology.
She has led IBM’s global postal consulting practice, a $500 million per year industry for IBM. Prior to that, she led IBM’s consulting business development for the US Postal Service, an organization with annual revenues of $70 billion. Her group created new financial, e-commerce, retail and package delivery services and managed all Internet channel activities.
The conference, the first-of-its-kind in the Kingdom, is deemed as a preparation step for the expected future role for the Kingdom in the postal services, especially after joining the WTO.
She said that during her interaction with Saudi officials and the private sector, she found that Saudi Post Corporation (SPC) demonstrated a solid entrepreneurial enterprise.
“It is witnessing a process of transformation toward electronic applications and automation of postal operations in order to upgrade service quality and its expedition, and also enable each customer to follow up and track his consignment through SPC e-site and even to know the exact date of its arrival,” Rogerson said.
Today, SPC is actively involved in developing postal technology, investing in network projects to connect all postal centers across the Kingdom. It is also expanding and enhancing automatic mail sorting and e-reading of messages
She emphasized the need for technology to support growth through diversification. “Growth no longer comes from mail. It comes from diversification into new businesses, which only works if there are synergies,” she said, adding that technology must enable these synergies. “And new technology can be introduced through new investments,” she noted.
Extensive synergies can be developed between retail banking and post offices, she said, citing examples of differentmodels in Europe. “The action is in the mail market. Express and packages continue to grow but slowly. Liberalization of the mail market opens tremendous opportunities,” she said and wondered why only a few players are in this field.
She said that technology could secure the products, not only to track them but also ensure that they had not been opened and reach the consignee in tact.
“It is an attractive market and needs an aggressive regulator. But it suffers from underinvestment,” she said, and emphasized that promoting a technology based infrastructure for posts through regular investments was the need of the hour.