 Hi, welcome back everyone. So I'll invite you guys in the back to come have a seat we're going to talk about diversification strategy, so Fill in and we'll get started again with our last session of the day. Okay, so welcome back We're a little bit fewer than we were this morning, but But still going strong. So we're going to wrap up our vision streams today with coming back to the Diversification really more focusing on strategy and some tangible ways to push towards those visions I'll call up our panelists. We have Hugh Sutherland co-founder and director of Geomane Dr. Anders Olson chief commercial officer of E-Box and Salakhan Coordinator of the Knowledge Center and think tank for the UPU So gentlemen if you want to join me on stage Hugh and the nature of being a Innovation disruption and diversification is going to do things a little bit differently so Hugh I think that you're going to talk to us a little bit about how postal operators can play to their strengths Get close to existing customers that attract new ones with their diversification strategies That's correct So good afternoon everybody I Hadn't realized that this was the midnight shift and Even though the drinks are on at four o'clock it looks as if quite a number of people have disappeared that general direction already But never mind. Let's go on my name is Hugh Sutherland. I'm with Geomane and I want to talk to you a bit about diversity and my first Example of diversity is I've chosen to stand up here and not just follow the crowd and and sit at the seat Because diversity means a number of things In a traditional business sense. I thought when I was when I was asked to present today Let's look at diversity. What does that mean? Why do organizations diversify? And there's no shortage of data on diversification strategies and risk Timing new markets new products new products and new markets Having to do something different You look at everybody from the Harvard business review to Business writers such as Arthur Little But I chose us to look at the report that was published by the UP you Just last month and Let me just read it to you The postal sector remains a critical element in the global ecosystem Transcending borders to connect people businesses and governments It's not only facilitates communication, but also serves as the backbone of digital trade logistics and even economic resilience, however The sector is grappling with a multitude of challenges From the lasting disruptions induced by global crises such as COVID to the transformative shifts in consumer behavior ushered in by the digital age That would be the 22 year old in Tanzania That wants to buy something from a marketplace and expects it to be delivered to his door Not to some peel box determined by somebody else 10 kilometers away The report provides an exhaustive examination of the postal sector's existing landscape challenges innovations and the potential avenues for future growth and resilience Given these dynamics the postal industry faces an unprecedented challenge in ensuring economic sustainability amid varying revenue streams heightened competition and inflationary pressures the diversification of revenue alone may not suffice rather A systemic integration of services is essential e-commerce Presents an exciting Avenue. Well, if that isn't an understatement, I don't know what is It requires the postal sector to innovate Potentially through strategic collaborations with digital platforms and enhancing logistics capabilities I think we've had a very interesting day. I think all of these points have been touched on and I would suggest that there's agreement that the change must happen and in the words of the song the times they are a changing So in terms of diversification There's a management of that and the and risk and whilst the the opportunities within e-commerce are massive and what's driving those There's a whole new expectation. I think dr. Faddy touched upon it earlier. It's not just about change for posts It's change for logistics The whole industry are required an expectation of Newly emerging intelligent consumers that use these all the time to transact are perfectly comfortable using a digital platform to buy Pay and hopefully have delivered items that they choose to purchase It's absolutely essential that the the the market moves with those expectations so We know that assuming assuming that postal operators wish to stay relevant and Maintain or possibly enhance market share Gain the loyalty of a customer base That sounds like a good thing Then is it not essential that some clear new thinking is required. This doesn't involve any artificial intelligence This just involves basic intelligence, doesn't it? Is It not just keep it simple stupid Do you not need to know the basics about who your customers are? Is that not the fundamental thing that drives the business? KYC know your client base and what do we know about them today? Do we know their names? Do we know an address for them? What happens if they move? Do we have a postcode? What have we done to the postcode? Where do we deliver to? Have they moved all of these questions are are I believe things that are Essential first to be able to address more coherently and consistently with a high degree of confidence that we will be able to Supply a consistent service to the client base that is expecting more So this notion of diversification It's it's absolutely essential. We've got to deal with and and And address the requirement for change In the in the report I mentioned earlier, you know, we acknowledge that Traditional post has gone away probably isn't going to come back people don't buy stamps anymore We know that the parcels and logistics businesses is changing Financial services is stable, but this fourth going to catch all that's mentioned in the report generically called other services That is where there's the potential to do more And that's where the innovation can be So, you know, there's the there's the discussion around re-engineering the business Yep There's a discussion around I mentioned artificial intelligence. There's other buzzwords and blockchain this and that of that I'd contend that just having the basic information about your client and male to use that More consistently and to enable you to offer better service. It's what it's all about so it's dynamic data management and The Geo main really wouldn't we we came up with this idea four or five years ago My goodness. What about the seventy percent of the population that don't have an address? Where do we deliver to? What are the expectations of the market? changing So Geo main is essentially a digital identity and location management system. Wow So I don't need to have an address. No, you don't So if I describe where I live as the little hut somewhere down five miles down the track turn left turn right at the camel farm I don't need to do that anymore. No, you don't. What if I move? That's okay. We move with you And and how can I get it? Well, if you think about the the population that is expecting more of post and if we Acknowledge that post is a service that is desperately seeking new sources of revenue Wouldn't it be really cool if the people that wanted such a service were buying it through the postal service? Yeah, and wouldn't it be just like people buy domain names remember domain names or remember yellow pages the way that we used to Find companies and now it's WWW Why wouldn't you put a geographic expression on that for a company? That's their Geo main And that's their unique private secure identity That will take you straight to the door. Hmm. That's what we do. And how do we do it? We do it with and through postal organizations so This is not dramatic change in terms of infrastructure required. This is an easy to deploy Incremental value add system drives more revenue drives more opportunity Gets you more data on your customers and enables you to keep on growing the business and staying relevant And I've gone over time And I'll sit down That's how we do it simply taken get rid of the names and addresses replace it with one private code that is your name or your company name and Off you go to the races instant digital identity and location management. Thanks very much Thank you here, okay So we're gonna I'm gonna move on and ask a couple of questions to our panelists here, and then we'll get into the discussion So dr. Wilson what has been the driving factors behind the digitization of the postal sector in Denmark? Specifically and what kind of learnings about diversification. Can you share with us here from there? So, let me pull up some slides. It's the clicker over there So let me start by explaining what the epochs is now if I wanted to To use all of the fancy lingo. I would probably say something like a two-sided encrypted platform With a closed loop ecosystem Etc. Etc. If I wanted to actually have anyone understand what I was saying I would say that it's a digital postbox and The way it works is that I have to approve which centers can send something to me and the centers have to know who I am So they need to know when a unique identifier to send something to me. So this means I don't have spam I don't have fishing attempts, etc. Etc. I can trust what's there. What is there is only? Important information that I want It's stuff that I can sign electronically. I can pay electronically, etc so with that just a little bit of background on on E-box and who we are and I'll get into the story about Denmark and why maybe started there So we're owned partly pie post more the designated operator in Denmark and Sweden and pan European service provider called and it's next see And we've been doing this for a bit over 20 years We've got 21 or 23 million users globally more than 30,000 institutions use us to send whether that's public or private Documents etc to their users So last year that meant roughly half a billion Documents went through our platform and we've got something like five and a half billion on on fire, right? So we do this in a couple of different ways We have a branded platform in in the Nordics where we are E-box as a brand and we have all of the senders on one side all of the users on one side We sell the product and services to the senders and we Manage the users and then we do a white label solution that we can deploy So if you as a post-operator would want to do this we can deliver this as a service We can have you up and running fairly quickly and you can build this into part of your your business model So on the user side, this is a great way to have sort of a lifelong digital vault bolt or the important information I want it's safe from cybercrime, etc. I can sign things it's super convenient to pay For senders, of course Not only do they have less cost because we are quite a lot cheaper than physical mail But the fact that you send data out and get data back instead of sending something out to a physical Document and getting a physical document that you need to then plug into your internal systems This makes your internal processes much more efficient, right? And so there's regulatory compliance. We actually see people have much much higher opening rates I think they're above 86% in in our system whereas if you take an email, that's clearly a lot lower Plenty of the ESG impacts at a societal level and of course importantly for the postal operators what we see is that this becomes an interesting way to Change the declining curve of revenue on mail and actually start bringing this in as a revenue source So it's a way to keep your position in society and actually start making some money of the digitization So as I said, let's look at the Danish case. There's some elements there that that I'm important to to learn from I think Of course, this all started because there was a good case in place. So we had Of course cost drivers from the public and private sector pushing to Reduce costs, but we also have citizens with a high digital readiness. We had infrastructure in place. So internet access Electronic IDs, etc. And of course users early on in Denmark Expected that we would digitize something like this I think this might have been uniquely Danish back in 2000 and something but probably in most societies these things are starting to be in place So it's starting to be much easier to do this. We then had a mandated We had a law change So it was mandatory to get your government mail as digital unless you opt it out Of course that meant that the curve on physical mail declined quicker than maybe it otherwise would But what was key I think for post nor was to be In the driving seat once that decline started so What I'm showing you here is basically what happened to the physical mail volume in Denmark and what's happened to the digital mail volume in Denmark So basically, I think it tells its own story But the important part of the story is this is a very steep decline Of course, that's driven by the 2014 Changed in law. So you had to send it to silly as a government institution Now that might not happen in all countries And and so the point is it will probably have some decline in all countries So if we look at it at a European level, this is not a Danish phenomenon Volume is declining and I think the question is then can you either soften that curve or can you make sure that you make money off it? By building new revenue streams We think we've got something that can help postal companies do that We think what's important to understand when you want to do these types of diversifications Is that you keep doing what you're great at So the obvious Clear to take the role of the operator of these digital Postbox platforms. We think of course the postal operators. We do see Governments wanting to do it. We do see some telcos wanting to try and take that position But as a postal operator that position you have in the ecosystem the trust you have on both sides of the platform The insights you have about the users as well as the senders of mail is quite unique So the ability to service them to sell to them No one is better positioned than than you guys to do that on the other hand Not a lot of postal operators are tech companies So it's often a bit of a leap to think we can develop this whole platform ourselves I think we all know the pains of a failed IT project and the cost of that So I think the point from from our side is it's probably better to partner to get those coming back capabilities I think we've heard that earlier in the day as well that that's probably the way to go We very much support that And so just wanted to wrap up and say what are some of the key learnings that that we see from the Danish market in terms of How do you try and and diversify and what's an effective way to do it? So First off, I think it's clear that regulatory change is going to happen We'll now have a disbandment of the USO and Denmark So again, maybe a bit on the forefront of regulation, but it most likely will come in different shades in different countries It probably is mainly about do you want to be in the driving seat a in pushing the regulation where you want it But also in terms of controlling the decline and the pace of that decline and what you get as a replacement Again focusing what you do great is always a good idea. And especially if you want to do effective partnerships Figure out. How do you integrate something that works with your business model? So what we do is if you think about it not that different from sending a physical letter It's now just in a digital format. So it complements the business model perfectly, right? You do need a mind shift change in the organization in your individuals But it's still something you can do without huge disruptions to the business model I think that importantly and this probably goes for most diversification ventures, right? If you're not willing to cannibalize on what you already do, then you probably won't succeed at real scale I think there needs to be an acceptance that a lot of new things and new diversification ventures do entail some degree of cannibalization At least from the perspective where we sit And doing it too slow means that others will probably take pole position in the market you're in And then getting back on track can be quite difficult And similar to that the platform dynamics of what we do We see in Denmark where we've now had competitor enter a couple of years ago I think they have 4% of the market or something like that It is super hard to enter once there's an established platform So if you are ready to go all the way and become that platform You secure yourself a very strong position Instead of going slow and maybe be entering a very fragmented market where it's hard to build any kind of win Or where you just build pockets of wins And then becoming that ecosystem really connector is hard if you have such a fragmented market So we think the point is to go ahead of time and make sure you shape what's happening in your market Thank you That's it Thank you Salo, so we've heard some concrete examples of new products and services of an approach to diversification With digital post offices, digital identities and digital locations Can you talk to us more from a global perspective And where does the UPU see new postal revenues emerging And what are some strategies that posts can do to diversify Thank you for that question, Amanda Let me just set the scene a bit about how and where we see things from the UPU As an intergovernmental institution with 192 member countries It's very interesting for us to see the diversification in products and services that takes place in specific markets And what we know for a fact is that there isn't a single strategy for new markets If you look at the past two reports we've produced, the State of the USA report this year and the one last year We do what is known as a postal development level classification That's essentially a proxy for the maturity of a post to provide services And we rank countries according to 10 PDLOs as we call them Ideally we would like to see a bell curve Or we would like to see a right skewed curve where everyone's on the high end of the scale Everyone's mature, they can do a number of things Unfortunately we see a left skewed curve Which means that most of the bulk of our member countries are at a lower postal development scale Meaning that they are, and with all my apologies, struggling to provide core services That is what the graph tells us for all intents and purposes Now for us to talk about diversification strategies We cannot come in and say X or Y Simply because diversification strategies has to come from the market based on the nuances of the regulations The demand and the conditions in specific countries and territories But what we do see is the global big picture And this graph, these two graphs will tell you two different pictures First of all, the growth in real operating revenue While it fell in the 2010 to 2015 period has largely recovered And we expect it to be not really declining significantly but stagnant This tells us the size of the pie globally Whether the pie is growing or the pie is decreasing While it was an issue, I think postal operators are clawing back at the market That's what we are seeing from a net operating revenue growth perspective Second one is really about growth And it's about taking a specific dollar value and seeing that Even if there are fluctuations overarching, the market is growing And this one actually breaks down the revenue into four segments as we see them Letters, parcels, financial services, and as you had pointed out Other postal services into which we lump everything else Now letter post, no surprise to anybody, is rapidly declining And our forecast for the next couple of years is that it would keep on declining So in terms of revenue diversification If you consider that letter post was the bulk of the work that was happening in the post This is ringing alarm bells everywhere And at the UP we are ringing as loud an alarm bell as we can around this Parcel post is picking up and it will The forecast is it will grow in the next couple of years But realistically, it's not providing the substitution that you need In terms of offsetting the loss from letter post So you then need to look at financial services and other postal services And financial services fluctuates but it's going to remain steady And the only nuance that I would put in here is that financial services are heavily regulation dependent So in certain markets it's growing very high Certain markets are declining because of regular requirements Certain markets are completely dark because they cannot do anything with financial services So this is a bit tricky this one And for other products, flatly renting out space, doing other things It's largely declining Which is not necessarily a bad thing Because for us we see it as a post going back to its core strengths That means they've stopped experimenting with other things And they think that core postal logistics, however you want to do it Might be the future for them So that's an interesting nuance that we're looking at And over the course of the next couple of years we will be seeing how this tracks out And whether this holds Or whether we will see a spike in other postal services And we see that okay, maybe not People are going to be experimenting with other things and doing other services than core postal logistics Now, throughout the entire day I kept hearing what is the UPU doing And that was quite interesting for us And the question remains, how do you diversify your revenue So I'm going to offer out three key factors to look at And it's a bit of a time-gated process Diversification, and I'm going to nuance this in brief faces with two thoughts Diversification is not a here and now and I'm done and over with the process It's a long-term thing, right? So you need to really look at the short, medium and long-term When you're talking about diversifying products and services, that's one And two, just don't jump into it You need to have a strategic view as to what you want to do And doing this today and doing that tomorrow is probably very harmful So if we do look at the three main elements that we are going to be looking at In terms of diversifying products and services First one absolutely is getting your fundamentals right Get your core postal logistics right Get your service levels right, get your delivery times right Get your reliability high, get your reach high All the core metrics that defines the quality of service we're post And in that level, enhanced customer experience, as we said Improvement of quality of services and demand responsive, like Anders is saying There's clearly a demand for this kind of services in Denmark But it might not be the same in some other territory, some other country So just because it's superbly successful in Denmark Doesn't mean you just take the same model and try to replicate it I don't know, in Bangladesh where I come from, it would not work It simply won't work So understand your market, understand your demand And focus on where the demand is, where the market is going And if you can create the demand, like with the change in regulations With regulatory innovations, with changes in the market structure, do it But if you don't see that these things are going to happen Then do not invest in a market diversification project That will not bear fruits for you And in that sense, the UPU does a fantastic amount of work In improving the quality of service and the basic quality of service Of all our postal operators day in, day out That's what we support with core postal logistics improvement That's what the UPU does We have entire divisions where people are working every day The second one is the peer learning And we talked about this a lot in the morning in the vision setting thing We want to learn from best practices We want to see what the pitfalls are We want to see where they went wrong and avoid doing that We want to learn from the UPU what is going on in the market What's upcoming We want to learn and see and gather the knowledge that's already out there And that's what we're doing day in, day out Through our research, through our advocacy Through peer-based knowledge platforms that we have We have multiple discussions, webinars We have our structured sessions Where we expose all of our membership And everyone is welcome to this On learnings both from the private sector As well as from operators So we do bring in private sector experiences And we showcase that to our membership And say these are learnings that you can look at and think about And we also do technical assistance So we have significant amount of technical assistance that we provide Both, I mean I come from the part of the UPU Where we provide technical assistance significantly on financial inclusion And there's similar work happening on strengthening core postal logistics And operations So we do provide a significant amount of technical assistance The knowledge sharing part is heavily in demand But we suffer a bit from it Given that there is a lack of support behind it But it's something that we're trying to overcome And we're trying to really gear that up to move forward And the last one is using the postal advantage What we know from our research Is that the Post is a trusted institution In almost all the countries around the world So use the Post's brand Leverage it Do what you do best Develop your services Grow and provide additional services that your clients really want But you need to get your basics right You need to be that trusted provider in the communities The man or woman who goes to the remote rural village Where there's no ATM, there's no bank, there's no person There's only a post person who goes there And leverage the trust and that experience in expanding into other services That's actually required by this company Don't feed it to them, see what they want provided to them And then, you know, in terms of what we are seeing The greatest amount of growth in services Is probably citizen centric services To the identity, GDP payments, pension services All of these things that is required by the government And interestingly inside our house We're talking about taking a whole of a government approach Towards postal solutions Meaning you don't just do letters You don't just do e-commerce You are the engine that provides solutions to everything That is bothering your government If a government wants a solution that needs to be developed And provided to your city during COVID The post provided, you know, apart from vaccine delivery Which is quite specific cold chain PPE equipment, medical supplies Everything, even blood transfers from one place to another So you have a challenge? A post has a network? A post has a solution? Can they do it? So that's really where we are We think the diversification strategy needs to focus on Great, thank you I would just follow up with that With the citizen services What is your team working on To help facilitate that for post For best practices You mentioned that there's all these webinars And tools available But if you could talk a little bit more About best practices and services In terms of best practices, dissemination Our role at a global level Is capturing what is happening in the markets Distilling them into specific knowledge That can be used by our membership And disseminating them So in that sense, we have a postal Social services guide Which has come out And it's on the UP website We keep updating it We keep refreshing it And really captures a body of knowledge Around what the post is providing In terms of postal social services We are doing similar things With financial services Where we're trying to capture Our lessons learned Of providing technical assistance In nearly 30 countries around the world And some of them really setting The postal financial services Strategy for the country What have we learned from that What can we take What can we distill into it What can we bring to our membership And these we disseminate Both via webinars And discussion with the membership We make presentations In front of our councils So that our entire council And membership is aware of it And we have the research reports Which is open, publicly available It's a global public road Anybody can come to our website Come and download it I mean the state of the postal security report That we just published right now Talks heavily about hyper-collaboration In the postal sector So it's moving beyond traditional partners Into areas where you might not think They would be your traditional postal partners But they would bring tremendous Values into the system This hyper-collaboration concept Along with AI Is something we've broached In the latest report And that is again open to our membership We're going to talk about it In our upcoming council meeting We are going to go into a heavy advocacy campaign For all of our membership Make sure they understand our messages Wonderful, thank you Hugh, talking about government services And citizen services The first thing I thought about Was this digital identity Is this something that you're working with Post And their governments in tandem with To create something that's streamlined That you get through the postal service But a digital ID that you can also use For government services Yes, absolutely I think it's fair to say that Every government is looking for a better And more consistent and easy way To interact with their populace And having a national identity Is kind of fundamental And some of these national identities In the UK it could be a national insurance number The UK is very resistant To national ID But having lived in Singapore and in Hong Kong For a number of years It's a matter of course These are systems that are used For everything For trade, for opening a bank account Validation, everything And so we believe that Be able to have an easy to adopt Digital identity system Linked to location That brings another whole new dimension to it And it's valid not just for postal operators But for anybody that cares about location It's ride hailing It's food delivery It's logistics of any type And let's just assume That is also an authenticated digital ID It's an identity that can't be copied It can't be stolen And so suddenly you're on the basis Of taking a leap From having an old paper based system Or no system Into one that can be easily adopted To other, perhaps existing systems Which use a nature of digits Or numbers that are purely used within the borders But to make that identity international Combine it with geomain Or to make a geomain useful To other government agencies In country and internationally Combine it with other existing systems So it's pretty dynamic And we think from the level of interest That we're getting From many different departments In different countries That we have identified something That is really special And what kind of infrastructure What do these kind of partners Have to do on their back end To implement something like this Well that's the beauty of it Because it's not reinventing the wheel I think it's fair to say that Every government agency Judging from the numbers I've seen today Firstly let's look at digital adoption And the numbers I've seen today Generally 70 plus percent of populations Have got access to something That's pretty good So the assumption is That there's a digital backbone I think that's fair And if there's not There's an acceptance That there's a direct correlation Between having a digital backbone And sustainability and economic growth So that's the baseline The second is You want to be able to ensure That this thing that sounds quite exciting Is easily available And if it's purchased through Postal organizations Let's assume they just have an internet connection And an ability to capture basic details About that individual That's pretty much it And my co-founder Who came up with all of this brilliance Is sitting in the audience And he'll come and slap me in the side of the head If I've said anything inaccurate But when we have been working With government agencies And we do the study We go through a process Of identifying current environment And to be Environment Then we've yet to find Any environment that poses Great difficulty to us Any environment that we believe Requires a significant investment So it's easy to install Easy to get active Easy to get results Anders, so I'm curious About this market for A digital post box In Denmark Can you tell us a little bit about The kind of customers that you're working with That are interested in using this solution For their base over email And why they choose it And what those customers look like Or what kind of customers they are Yeah, so as I mentioned before The whole public sector went digital So of course the public sector Is a big center base But we see banks Insurance companies, utilities Any kind of center You could imagine right down to Even the local craftsman Who wants to send his invoice In a place where he can document Well, you got the invoice at this point in time It was easy for you to pay it and you didn't So now here's a late fee So the use cases are quite a lot And the segments can be Anything you could imagine from utilities To healthcare, etc The key I think is to think of this As not just digitizing And killing off physical mail And the senders typically don't want that either So I always hear the notion That all senders just want cheap Cheap stamps right and that's what's Killing everything but essentially They want a job done So they want their customers To open a piece of communication Respond, maybe provide Senses of information in the other direction Sign something, pay something, read and Understand something and what's the best To get that done, that might be Still physical mail in some instances For some receivers who might be too old To have digitized And in some instances it'll be Something like a digital mail solution It could also be an email is sufficient It could be text messages And I think for the postal operators To think of themselves as multi-channel Rather than just physical mail Is really the key here And it could be a digital postbox It could probably be many things That works really well Because it offers senders The opening rates that they're looking for It provides them with the evidence That this was received At this point in time It was open for this long So you probably read and understood it It's been signed, it's been paid Whatever sender Has in terms of preferences For the digital signing provider A digital payment provider They can use that So we can really Focus on the senders And say, what is it you have That you want solved, what's your problem And let's figure out the right way to do it When you mentioned Healthcare companies Or healthcare providers Using something like this It makes me think of some products That posts have experimented with With having a place Where someone can hold all their medical records And you explained it as a Two-way system So someone is sending me my medical records Maybe, or maybe I send something back But is there any Are there any ideas about expanding this To where it can kind of be a repository For that kind of critical information That multiple people can plug into With of course secure access And granted permissions and these things So I think at its core This is what it is, right It's a lifelong digital vault Of all of the important information Including my home, my kids My finances My health I can store it here You can have folder structure You can have different universes Where you store different things If I want to take out a new car loan Then my bank Could ask me for access to My five latest pay slips My tax report from the year before Whatever they would need To assess that loan application Right, I wouldn't have to go to 10 different systems And download it and scan my latest Pay slip and send it through I grant them access, you can access these documents You can do that for the next two days And then close that off again So again that makes the bank's internal Credit assessment processes way more efficient They aren't at risk Of receiving an email and then putting it Somewhere in a folder and it's not allowed To sit there so now they're breaching GDPR regulations, they just have the access They need for the time they need And it's verified It is the actual pay slip It is the actual tax report So we think More and more from having Just done digitization Of physical post Moving into Self service so I can Share information, I can fill in forms I can do all of these payments and signings And all of these different things And then sort of the next level Is way more data driven Understanding what is it What do your critical processes look like And how does all of the information We now have on all of these different citizens Help you become more efficient and operate better And how do we help you tailor What do you want to send to your senders So I think the next frontier Is probably something like AI So if I'm a company I want to Communicate to 100 customers Or a million customers We can help you eventually Once we get there understand That the customer is a customer And they need the header to be this They need the text to be structured Like this and they need to receive it On Tuesday morning because that's when This person is having his morning coffee And he's willing to send Put a signature on it right And then send us that unified Document with the core information And you can then tailor that to Those different segments and send it out there And get those response rates and that Engagement you want With having to apply for residency In a couple of different countries And all of the official documents I Needed and I can relate to the This problem that you're solving there So before I Dive into more questions I just want to Make a scan. Yeah, Kate Thank you, Kate Muth from iMEG A question so I know with the Moving to digital and You know especially with the EBOC That's my understanding that you're inviting A relationship with a trusted partner But I wonder if and this is for All of the panelists if there's comes a Point where the digital Communication reaches What some in the world Call junk mail right where you now I've got this relationship But in addition to getting my bank statement Now they're sending me a bunch of Marketing communications And we see this in the U.S. In particular when you give to a charity Or nonprofit you Ten minutes later they're asking for more money And so you know you have to create An entire separate email just for Or you order something online and you're just bombarded With emails So I'm wondering if there is going To be this point where the digital Communication is dealing with What the postal world dealt with for Many years which is that advertising mail Is maybe unwelcome. The value Proposition is different in The postal system because there's A higher price to send that piece So I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that. Thank you. I'm happy to start and I'll make sure to leave some time for the other guys But I think from my perspective That's why email is not a very Efficient tool to communicate important Information because you get so much clutter In your Gmail account that I don't know what to trust I hardly bother scrolling Through the 50 new messages or emails I get every day because there's so much garbage I don't want. So in a closed loop In an ecosystem I only get the stuff That I've requested from the senders That I want to send to me so I know That what's in there is something important That I need to read and that I need to Relate to So of course that's up to the Individual operator In the case of e-box we've said There's no marketing going on here So you don't send the latest Newsletter with offers on candy Or whatever, you send the important Information and the senders understand Because they also understand that if they start Sending through advertisements It will devaluate the value of the channel That you're using, users will opt out Of getting stuff from them because just as You can say these guys can send to me You can also say this guy can't send to me anymore So he's now back to physical mail Which is super expensive compared to this In an inefficient channel So you regulate that and you avoid Those kinds of situations Yes, I think As a further Extension of an authenticated Validated private secure System Then you want to Ensure that you're Let's just get rid of email actually I think the time for email is past And I think the time for passwords And having to constantly remember them With the little stickers around Your screen or whichever way We should be over this And surely the way that we've got to Now is that we're just putting On top of authentication Validation solutions So let's look at it a different way And that's what we're doing In the geomain world And Looking at having the validated Identity Keeping that in a closed loop And ensuring that The old ways which have Turned out to be a nightmare Emails and passwords, let's do it differently And that's what we're happy To engage with people and talk About where we see things going It's a little trickier for us To comment on this This is a rights issue You have the right to send mail You have the right to receive mail You have the right to opt out So for us I can't see a regulation saying You can't send a newsletter by post By de facto extension That doesn't apply to Digital items What we would say is Within the Rights of a citizen You must have the right to opt out You have the right to privacy You have the right To not be bombarded when you do not Want to be You have the right to keep your own Information confidential Those must be respected And under no circumstances At least in my own opinion Should someone step in and say You have the right to send this These are still businesses That are trying to do business A charity with all my apologies To the charity is simply trying to get money Arguably for a good cause It might be a bother to me It might work for somebody else But the charity must have thought this through Before sending it out For us it's about saying You can do it, that's fine Just make sure the person can opt out And not do this Just say let's get rid of email I didn't mean that And it's very tricky for us to say What can go through our channels It's about making sure that you respect The rights of both sides Of both parties involved It's affecting a better way Of communication that doesn't Give you a full inbox That's really what we're talking about And so echoing that To me if someone Came up with a brilliant idea Of having part of our platform Be an advertisement Area so saying So I'm into electronics If I up in Say I want advertisements For electronics and a coupon Or whatever that might be That's fine that can sit over here Over here is still my secure trusted Mail that I receive I don't mix those two I have a separate part of the universe Which is reserved for those more Advertisements or commercial things I'd be fine with that What I don't want is next to My insurance policy Is an advertisement for A new iPad or whatever So I want to make sure that it's clear Where's what and that the individual Has the right to choose yes I want it Or no I don't want it We see this a bit in Gmail That you have a promotions tab But that's not working very well It's still there and it's still It causes an extra stress in your Day-to-day life to have to see it Deal with it even if it's not In line with your other emails So I think it will be tricky Navigating that Part of things but you're not doing That yet right with any advertising No we're not it's something We've thought about we get often We can ask this both From postal companies that are interested In adopting our solution but also send us That of course are interested in potentially promoting Our solutions and we've so far it's been A hard no but I do I am open to exploring the idea That if we can separate the two very clearly Then that might be an avenue to go I don't see the case yet Where we would do it but If again If that's what the end user wants Then I think that's what we should Listen to just as we should listen to What the sender wants and when we get To the point where both sides are saying We actually would like to communicate Then okay here's a safe space where You can do that it will be what you want To communicate and then Let you guys do that Hugh and Anders you're both Providing Products and services that are still Very close to the postal business They're new products and services But they're close to the core And Salah maybe you can join In on this one as well What kind of what's the best Balance that organizations can take When it comes to diversifying their revenue Streams and staying close to the core Or doing something completely different Does it have to be one or the other Because I think if you're Staying close to the core it's really Hard to think outside of that And Should they be separate should they be together Should they be considering both Let me know what you think about that Well I think The core for us The core for any operator would be Having accurate Current data about your client base And We talked to so many Countries so many geographies Where it's The best they have For a client is a PO box Or the best they have is some Descriptor that's a Generic village somewhere or other And That may have been good enough But I don't think it is good enough Now and that it's Essential because the markets change Completely anybody sub 25 As I mentioned I pulled out my phone They want the stuff delivered To their door and so Surely the first step is To be able to give them the opportunity Of sharing where they are In a clear, concise Manor that is meaningful to them That is not some Hybrid group of words that Randomly push together that change every Two meters right that doesn't make any Sense but being able to have an Identity that is yours that is Secure private that you can share Via QR code you can Describe and buy with addition Of audio or text or photographs So there's no lack of clarity Is that surely not the basis For any operator Do they not want to have that data Once they've got it And if a business wants to do the same Is there not the opportunity To let that business have A geographic locator the same way That they use a domain name today To identify their brand But have that with a geographic spin And for the operator to get new Revenue streams for having The company come to them to register That name I mean To me that's the basics Get the data They don't currently have Get greater loyalty From this customer base Who trusts you They've been doing business with the post office For 50 years they want to do more business They want to make sure it's relevant business That caters for their requirements today So the first thing is Get closer to them Understand their requirements Provide encourage them To provide you with the data And to the benefit of all And maybe through the market places Offer a discount for them getting providing this data Get rid of the return rates Increase the accuracy Of deliveries And use it as the basis of Inclusion in society And being able to share selectively That data with other government Agencies So keep it simple Stupid it's not artificial intelligence It's real intelligence Know your clients I think we have a question But did you guys have anything to follow Up on that on keeping From a diversification point of view I think it's not Either or it's end It's not core business or diversify It's if you do not Have your core business and your strength Built up and you continually Build up what are you diversifying Into I mean the post Isn't going to turn into a clinic It will still be a core logistic provider So building on that you diversify Into your areas of strength Where you have a physical network In areas where nobody else has strength And you diversify into it And there's a certain linearity to it Meaning if you don't Do your core business of post logistics Properly No one's going to take your diversified services I'm sorry It's end and a linear pathway Which doesn't mean You just sit around and you say Do it one day when everything's Fine and the rain has stopped But it's again going back to Things that we're talking about that You need to start thinking about these strategies early on And these are long term pathways And while you're thinking of these long term pathways And what's existing out in the market And what you can do You need to continually improve your core Set of business to ensure that your customer footprint Is expanded People coming back to you as you were saying The people trust you And you are a trusted provider Who can then branch out into other things And then people will come financial services If they don't trust you, why would they give you money? But that trust comes from Doing what you are supposed to do Fantastic and above board I would say that the issue of trust Is very interesting because in the postal world We talk about this a lot The trust of the Postal Service is an institution But if I think of My friends kids That are teenagers And they really don't have an opinion About the Postal Service So how do you carry this Okay, you want to talk about it? We actually have a publication on this How to build trust In the Postal ecosystem It was actually around the financial services area It is true that we are Maybe the younger generation Are not really aware of the Post When I started my first bank account Was with the Post Our parents was the same thing Postal bonds was a big thing for us Where you put your savings in So there was a lot of Maybe it was because Of a lack of fragmentation and choices in the market Markets have evolved People's needs have evolved Demands have evolved, tastes have evolved All of that has evolved But then that comes back to the point As to whether you are being Market appropriate and demand sensitive Because markets will always change The younger generation Just to bring you a point If you are in Switzerland The only place where you have a right To an account is SwissPost As a foreigner If I walk into a branch Of Credit Suisse or UBS They won't give me an account That's part of the stuff that's enshrined Into the system In the Postal Financial Services We started talking about A universal financial obligation Like the USO Where you say Everyone ought to have a right To a postal bank account Might not be super fancy But somebody is a young person And needs a basic debit card And an account to keep her is our savings Then why not? Post can provide that Just adding I think part of retaining that trust And that position in the ecosystem Is of course about solving the problems That they might have And if you are 17, 18 years old Then I'm not sure A physical letter feels like This is also a problem Maybe it's more a bother than it's actually Something you want So understanding what you can do for them To make sure you remain relevant And deliver some kind of value for them That will then build that trust I think is where you want to look Generation that's gone up with the Post Being the ones that deliver the information You really required They were the ones that delivered parcels and whatnot Now There's such an array of different offerings And physical in all kinds of ways That this generation Will be exposed to all of it And if you don't show why should they trust you Because you understand them And you deliver what they need Then I don't think it's a given That they will trust you, right? Just to add to Andrew's comment I think it does have a very important point here I think if you break it down From a consumer service point of view Trust is about meeting And demand in a reliable manner So it's about identifying that need Again, it comes back to the services What is the need of this customer group Have we identified what the needs are Have we distinguished them As a distinct customer base That has distinctive needs And can we offer that Whatever the service is It's not a letter, it can be something else It can be Online shopping and reverse logistics Are we meeting that Consistently in a reliable manner And that's what Will's trust Demand Focused? Reliable Great, thank you I think we have a question Thank you very much My name is Walter Trezek I'm the chairman of the consultative committee Of the UPU My question is very direct The UPU created More or less 20 Sorry, two decades ago An environment of very trusted Digital communication dot post The UPU created Standards For secured communication A standard A SEAL standard For electronic Certified postal marks They created a standard for Postal registered email A highly secured way To send email Postal registered email Was that too early What happened to that Why didn't it take off Or it took off But only in one European country Denmark What went wrong Thank you That's geared to me, I'm the wrong person to ask this This is so technical, Walter You have to talk to a lot of you sitting Two rows in front of you UPU's mandate Is to set Standards And interoperable mechanisms To promote Cross-border exchange Of items Whether it's letters or parcels If these systems were created They were born out of a demand from our member states These are rarely Or never done in a vacuum with the UPU Now, whether these services Had taken off or whether there was a Shortcoming in the system that needs to be developed Whether there's an advocacy or an awareness Of Policymakers and operators that need to be done Certainly something that can be looked at But I can assure you that If these were created two decades ago At that point of time There was significant sufficient demand For such products and services And standards That necessitated the UPU to Actually create these Now, nothing prevents us From going back and doing a diagnostic of it And we do that all the time We do diagnostic of systems to keep them Reliable efficient and updated with Modern times And if you do think that there is A Space for such improvement I invite you to take it up to the relevant council Of the POC Where these standards and systems are Discussed and updated And I'm sure they will gladly Take it up and discuss it Speak to the specific standards And what was said 20 years ago I'm still Too young to remember all of that But certainly as you say It took off in Denmark, right? So why did it take off there and not in other countries And I think I tried to touch a little bit on it Which was to say I think in many ways Danish society Has been highly digitized for a long time So I think we had An electronic ID in place We had unique identifiers We had the infrastructure To really enable this digital post system And I think that At that point in time probably wasn't As readily available in all countries As it was in the Nordics In particular And that's probably why it took off earlier there I think now we're at a stage where That is readily available So internet penetration super high In most countries right More and more places they do have a digital ID You see EIDAS The EU initiative to deliver Digital IDs, digital wallets That you can credentialize yourself with So there's legislation now Pushing the technology towards Building the foundation needed for this So was it too early 20 years ago Apparently for some countries For some it wasn't But I think we're getting to the point now Where it's about time for everyone Yes Even though I'm very old I don't remember what the hell Walter Was doing 20 years ago Or what the systems were 20 years ago From our perspective I mean it's an opportunity To address the requirements Of the digitally literate Sub 25 year old In part right Who wants to be able to share his location Selectively With his friends, with his family Be able to get things delivered Be able to send things to places In an easy format And use it In some Basis that his familiarity Will that be like what's that But a location centric Messaging system That's interesting Or a one stop shop Here I am for all of his other applications Will that be right-hailing Whether it be food delivery Without having to go oh god Where am I again Just one stop That's what we see and I would suggest That perhaps the technology is around Both that that was provided Maybe they were ahead of their time But now we've got more power In our phones than they had When they flew to the moon It's all available And there's a demand for it And I think that Now is the opportunity To build loyalty With new communities And to be able to For operators To consider offering such a solution Out to marketplaces That have maybe viewed Posts as a bit On the nose, a bit old fashioned A bit old fuddy-duddy What does post do for me? Hey guys You've got a whole new audience out there That would like to have a more easy way Of communicating their location Let's go to it And get communicating with them And like Age of 16 and with the post In Switzerland You've got a captive community Go get them. Thank you. Okay, so we're at the end of our session today Did anyone else have any questions That they wanted to ask before we close out And And to appreciate our panelists here Okay, ready for drinks I suppose Thank you guys so much For the discussion I think this is such an interesting topic That we could sit here and talk about for a while So for me the time went by Really fast and thank you for that Tomorrow we're back in here Bernard will be Moderating the sessions Tomorrow we are talking about trust And security As well as sustainability More interesting topics to come tomorrow Same format talking about The visions in the morning and then diving deeper Into the strategies in the afternoon So I hope to see you back here Tomorrow and thank you everyone And thank you to the panelists