E-mall brings products that villagers need to post office

Last year, Saudis spent SR 5 million on Saudi products purchased online at an e-mall that was established by the Saudi Post in 2010. While post service officials around the world blame technology for making their jobs obsolete, the Saudi Post has followed the Arab saying, “Shake the hand that cannot be defeated.” The post has used technology to come up with a project through which companies, stores and charitable societies’ productive families can sell their products, according to Majed bin Anzan, director of postal operations and the e-mall supervisor.
“The mailman is back, but instead of delivering your letters, he is delivering your electronics purchased online.” The demand at the Saudi Post’s e-mall consists mainly of electronic items, while cosmetics are a close second. Through the website one can shop at 70 subscribed stores showing more than 5,000 products.
Majed said that products displayed on the website would be promoted through self-service machines in villages and small towns, where some products are unavailable. "They will be able to head for the nearest post office, choose the commodity they want to purchase and pay for it the way they like, for example pay cash to the office directly, use their credit card, or the Sadad electronic payment system."
The e-mall makes it possible for the handmade products of charitable societies' productive families programs to be seen by a much wider audience.
"Commodities and prices in the e-mall are as diverse as the sellers. A company or a store can subscribe to the website and showcase their commodities, and the website takes care of promotion and home delivery," said Khaled Abu Khamseen, a blogger who specializes in technology.
"On the website you will find electronic items such as mobile phones and TVs, as well as clothes, jewelry and even handcrafted items," he said. "When I visited e-mall.com.sa I liked the first page, it’s very professional, and I appreciated being able to view the entire website in English."
The general manager of postal address in Saudi Post, Ali Bakheet, says that the Unified Numerical National Addressing System for postal addresses is using state-of-the-art Geographical Information System (GIS) technology, which clearly represents the highest quality of service provided by the Saudi Post for all its customers including organizations and individuals. Bakheet declares that the new postal address system is being used in all systems such as customer care management applications, postal operational applications, auto sorting systems and all applications in distributing solutions.
In the Seventh National GIS Symposium held recently in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province, Bakheet made a presentation during which he said the Saudi Post goes beyond the stage of building positional systems and applications, which serve many objectives.
Such steps lead from transformation to integration, thereby creating a dynamical merge between systems, ultimately coming together to raise efficiency, performance, accuracy and quality of said automated systems through generated reports. In addition, there exists a giant potential to analyze information, which is used to help decision makers in creating better services to be provided to customers in the best form possible.
These advanced stages could not have been reached by the Saudi Post without these services and the ability to pass all objectives.
Bakheet added that the first challenge — the absence of any infrastructure for digital GIS in the Kingdom — had already been met by geospatial technology. The new Postal Address developed by the Saudi Post is the ideal tool for conquering such challenges.
The Unified National Addressing System covers the entire Kingdom and each of its parcels, buildings and constructions have been marked and addressed geographically with the standardized fundamentals and methodologies of the Saudi Post.
The presentation also described solutions offered by the Saudi Post to locate and reach residential and commercial locations marked on the Saudi map, using Postal Addressing on all digital map applications such as Saudi Locator on the Internet. This represents the main official gate for all digital geographical information for all constructions and buildings all over the Kingdom.
Bakheet also noted the simplicity and user-friendliness of the Saudi Locator’s interface. He explained that the application’s design and general look were developed with regard to ease-of-use and multi-optional map search features.
He also discussed the use of addresses in its query, where one can search an address using global digital maps, e.g. Google or Navteq and TeleAtlas maps, whose services have long been widespread in vehicles and mobile phones, easily making the delivery of postal services to customers possible by different digital map applications.
Bakheet declared that the Saudi Post depended on the new Postal Address with its own applications related to customer relations management systems for delivering all postal services, specifically customer resident locations. It appears that the Saudi Post has built an extensively brilliant digital geographic database.
This database provides analytical information that will be used in countless special operations at the Saudi Post. These operations include locating educational institutions, identifying the nearest medical institutions available in the neighborhood, pinpointing specific postal zip codes and reporting the average age of customers in a defined geographical area, along with other information needed. This information can be used on many scales for building suitable infrastructure and to provide unique services.
Now, any organization could construct their own geographical database for their own customers by adding new postal addresses of constructions and buildings from their customers file. Such databases can be used for supplying location information to executives to help make accurate and scientific decisions.
There are many experiments being undertaken by several associations, such as using the Postal Address system in accurately determining the spread of dengue fever in the municipality of Makkah, thereby conquering the disease.