 In 2012, Universal Postal Union's 192-member countries adopted the DOA Postal Strategy, a four-year roadmap for the global postal sector. What progress has been achieved so far? Posts are interconnected like never before, but more data must be exchanged with customs and transporters to improve quality of service. Today, much international mail fails to be delivered within five days, and on average it takes six to ten days for a typical customer to receive goods ordered from an e-tailer abroad, only by better integrating postal, customs and transportation systems worldwide, and synchronizing processes can end to end quality of service improve. Reaching foreign markets is difficult for small and medium-sized enterprises, yet leading economists say governments have much to gain in reducing trade barriers. In Latin America, many small businesses that would have never exported their goods otherwise use the post to reach new markets through easy export initiatives launched by their governments. Based on these experiences, the Universal Postal Union is now helping other countries improve the access of small businesses to foreign markets with its own easy export program. The postal network must be a critical partner in bringing trade barriers down. Posts are operating in a double-digit growth industry, and their parcel volumes have exploded over the last decade. The Universal Postal Union's new e-commerce program provides global solutions to meet customers' evolving needs, such as a new parcel service for e-commerce items, a cross-border return service for goods bought online, and an electronic customs declaration system to speed up items' clearance. Innovation isn't just about the latest technology. It's also about reading the market accurately and creating the services customers will need tomorrow. Never before have so many people been part of a formal financial system thanks to postal services. Globally, posts offer financial products to more than one billion people. But there's still an incredible potential to extend financial inclusion to 2.7 billion unbanked people in the world, as well as provide accessible and affordable money transfer services to migrant workers through postal services, including the Universal Postal Union's rebranded electronic postal payment service. Post offices form the largest physical network on the planet. You often find them in rural and isolated areas where financial institutions don't exist. That's a powerful network for fighting exclusion and empowering citizens everywhere. Steady progress is being made on achieving the goals of the DOA postal strategy. But as postal services undergo a radical transformation, only a sustained effort will ensure that the global postal sector continues to deliver integrated, innovative and inclusive solutions for development.