 Llywodraeth, Llywodraeth a Llywodraeth, rydyn ni'n gweithio i'r post-expo o Parcel yn Amstadam. Rwy'n gweithio i'w Tony Robinson, ac rwy'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio post-expo, ond rydyn ni ddim yn gyffin ar gyllid 1997 ac nesaf beth gofyn lwylo ar post-expo, boeddwn i'r wneud ei chored i gynhwyntau tricolau, arall o'n dwi'n gweithio'n gweithio. Rwy'n gweithio'n gweithio'n neud gynhwynt yn 1997 i ni'n rwyf yn gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio ar post-expo, felly oedd y ddweud o hynny'n ymwneud y gweithio'r cyfnodd yn y cyfnodd, sydd yn ymddiol yn cyfnodd, ac mae'n gweithio'r cyfnodd yn y cyfnodd. A dyna, rwyf wedi bod ni'n gweithio'r gweithio'r cysylltau wedi'u gweithio'r cyfnodd. Mae'r gweithio'n gweithio'r cyfnodd yn y rydyn ni'n gweithio'r cyfnodd. ac rwy'n gweithio yn ei wneud yn ei wneud yn ysgolwch y ffordd, a wnaeth yn 1997, y byddwch yn gwneud ar gyfer y dyfodol yn ystod. Nid yw'r cyflawni'r cyflawni ar y dyfodol yn ei wneud, ac mae'n gweithio y byddwch yn cyflawni, ac mae'n gweithio'n gwneud yn ei wneud. In 1977 we were still dealing with that unbelievable thing, the ADSL dial-up and I know most of you will remember that funny tune that we used to listen to before anything appeared on our computer screens and finally we were on something that was a bit like the internet. The other thing that was going on about 1997 was an interesting startup sort of thing which was a company called Amazon Books and they'd gone into the what in my opinion was a rather bizarre world of selling books online. Now I have to admit that I didn't give it much of a chance. I thought well why would people want to do this you know you can go down to your local bookshop buy almost any book that you want and take it home. I've since written a story which is titled Bezos 10 Robinson Nill and that's really the way it went because obviously what happened next was quite extraordinary and of course it's completely transformed the entire postal industry. So what is this show all about? Parsland Post Expo a very important industry event and the reason it's very important is because it's where innovation and new technologies are shown invariably for the first time and it's that innovation that drives the opportunity and the many changes that have taken place in your industry which has gone through a complete and absolute revolution and couldn't have been turned upside down more than it has been really quite extraordinary. So what are we going to see next? Well crystal ball gazing is a great game as we all know. Obviously the world of artificial intelligence is going to create completely transformed methods of decision making even decision making that may be in its control not even in our control and I think we're going to have some discussions going on during the course of the next two days where we're going to look at the implications of artificial intelligence it's certainly going to be the next revolution and how do we as humans actually control the decision making that could very dangerously be left entirely to computers. So that'll be a fascinating area of discussion that we're going to get into along with many others to do with sustainability and the other problems that we see around the world. Now I'm just going to say one other thing really at this point in time and that is what are you what are we and what this industry is all about is a friendly camaraderie and cooperation. What this event is about is discussion and swapping ideas learning about new things seeing new technologies most important of all this is a friendly event where we would like to invite all of you to get involved we're probably do some questions sessions we're going to have some round tables but we'd like to ask you because you're all experts in your own right to offer up your thoughts and opinions. So while we're here with a lot of speakers a lot of expert people you too are the experts and do get involved and make these discussions that we're going to be having nicely interactive because it'll be much more fun and we want it to be fun friendly happy and enjoyable and informative. Now we'll have a very important person here who is going to say some words on behalf of the UPU and that's Maran Oswald. I don't think Maran needs really much of an introduction from me because as director deputy director general of the universal poster union he's extremely well known to all of you very grateful that Maran you are here with us today. The other person I'd like to just say thank you to is Amanda Martinez. Amanda has very kindly agreed to moderate the session sessions going on for all of today it's quite a big job to do and she's volunteered thank you Amanda and just a little bit about Amanda her background is that she's an independent advisor to the postal industry based in Cologne in Germany and Amanda was formerly with the United States Postal Service USPS in Washington DC. What she's done over the years is she's worked with a lot of startups and as you know we have a lot of startup and postal innovation activity going on here during Palsam Post Expo and Amanda Martinez is very much part of that whole thriving young and up and coming community. So ladies and gentlemen that's it from me I would just say first of all thank you very much for those of you I know many of you have travelled big distances to be with us we are expecting around 240 250 UPU member participants to join us and of course inevitably on the opening morning not everybody has got here yet so we look forward to welcoming those people and seeing the numbers grow as the day goes on so that is it from me and Maran over to you please. Thank you Tony for this very kind introduction actually I remember my first post expo was 97 was it in Hamburg right yeah 97 and 97 Tony was actually famous for wearing turtleneck uh pullovers so last year was 10 for Tony and this year is 11 if I may continue with this story thank you Tony. Dear colleagues partners and friends good morning it is a true pleasure to stand here for a second time to welcome you all at the UPU world leaders forum this year's team across borders and beyond limits blueprints for lasting innovation speaks to several unique aspects of our postal network the first aspect it's universality through the national postal services of the UPU network of 192 member countries we have built bridges that we have connected the entire world for nearly a century and a half today we continue to foster expand and reinforce those bridges and to build bonds with partners with the UPU family and beyond this was underscored most recently during our fourth extraordinary congress welcome dear colleagues from Saudi Arabia which approved a roadmap for strengthening engagement with members of the wider postal sector many of whom are in this room today a warm welcome also to you the second aspect underlined by our team is our drive to continue transforming our business since 1874 the UPU has provided a forum for the postal sector to gather so as to address challenges seize opportunities and shape its own future together we have persisted despite the advent of competing networks and technologies from telegraphs and telephones to the internet and beyond however past achievements do not always guarantee future success we cannot afford to rest on our laurels we must anticipate the needs and technologies that will determine the context of our business in five or ten years from now it is at global forums such as the UPU world leaders forum that we can come together to do exactly that today and tomorrow you will hear from leaders in the postal sector our postal visionaries on four key topics they will share how they envisage the future of our business in four key areas namely e-commerce and logistics diversification sustainability and trust and security we will also hear from drivers of strategy in these areas as to how we as an industry can design our roadmap towards continued evolution and success i would express my thanks to you Tony your company for extending the invitation to hold this forum over the course of two entire days we will use this time to the full on this note i wish you all a fruitful discussion thank you very much and if i may use this opportunity you are more than welcome to visit the most beautiful stand it's the UPU stand thank you good morning everyone thank you and thanks to the UPU for letting me be a part of this we're going to have some really interesting discussions today uh Tony thank you for mentioning me as part of the young community uh getting close to 40 um i really appreciate that and um a great note about change because the two topics that we'll be discussing today um are diversification and logistics and cross border e-commerce uh so with that i'll call our four panelists up um as Tony mentioned we really want everyone's participation it's going to be a discussion style so i'll be asking questions to our experts here and um feel free to ask questions as well there'll be two people on each uh there'll be one person on each side um from the event that we'll have mic so if you have a question please raise your hand and we'll include you in the the discussion as well um if you don't have a question and you just want to talk about something relevant that you're doing at your post or agency please speak up as well so um panelists if you if you would like to come up and we'll get started and uh Marge mentioned the the UPU booth i would like to add to that but uh from 10 30 to 12 30 um there'll be coffee and croissants there um those are being provided by ADS so ADS is the first African business that's part of the UPU CC and they'll be there at the booth as well so have a chat with them hi um i'll sit here if you guys want to to fill in i'll i'll be at the end yes all right um so we have with us uh this morning and we'll just go through one by one i have his Excellency Annef Albadami from Saudi Post and um talk to us a little bit about the evolving postal logistics uh landscape in Saudi Arabia and in the GCC and your strategies and vision for prioritizing um how to create value for cross-border e-commerce in that environment sure so first i'd like to thank you for this warm welcome and appreciate my colleagues and peers and look forward to meaningful and fruitful discussions over the next few days um the challenge i made to myself and then the team is i get a little excited and i kind of get carried away so my job today is to minimize how enthusiastic i am about this topic and try to stay within the time so um that said i know i have some slides prepared and i don't know if we're presenting them or not but uh very simply i was next slide please i was um honoured to be uh appointed as the president of uh Saudi Post at the beginning of 2019 i had a very very straightforward mission take something that has been notoriously inefficient uh limited productivity but very important for the country and transform it into a economically sustainable and viable service provider that can also impact the economy of the country and this is part of a bigger story that our country is going through which is um around the transformation of Saudi Arabia which was uh it's kind of encapsulated with the launch of the vision 2030 strategy in 2016 or so so the job i had was to make sure i was relevant in that context so how can we be economically sustainable and viable on our own but also how do we impact the country and how do we make sure we take advantage of our uh geographical location between the three continents how we can be a logistics hub for the region and how can we really be meaningful for that if we can go to the next slide sorry and in that context and i try to make it very very simple to just visualize where we started from was on the left hand side which is a postal operator traditional focusing on being a communications platform so we pick up mail deliver mail a business that was very slowly becoming irrelevant especially in a country like ours where digitization was at the forefront of our agenda as a key enabler for any of the transformation that we're doing so it was highly prioritized and had a lot of investment and focus for us so i came in finding myself not only being in a very small and shrinking business but being in a very irrelevant one and a very inefficient one and we looked at this challenge and started recruiting a team and building a very challenging story around what can we do how can we be relevant what are we going to do and we quickly realized that thinking as a postal operator a traditional postal operator is not going to allow us to become that sustainable and successful entity so we need to think about what is it that we can do and there was a few principles and that we've adopted one is a shift from being a communications platform to being a logistics platform and this ties into the discussion we just had around we're going to have in the next in the next session around becoming an e-commerce player and how do we participate in that and how do we look at the thank you how do we look at the other parts of the industry where we can create value where can we serve where can we participate how can we engage with our customers and create value for them and capture some of that value leveraging the capabilities assets strengths that we have as a postal operator both physically but also digitally the other principle was going from doing things manually to introducing automation and digitization to really amplify and create efficiency and create impact for customers I think Tony mentioned earlier that the this congress shifted from being a post to a post on parcel so this is very simply the same mindset we approached we went from being Saudi post to Saudi post and logistics and that's a very very important principle we wanted to anchor in and make it front and center and in what we did we are no longer just a postal operator looking to be a communications channel provider but rather a logistics arm a facilitator to move things around and help move things around irrespective then we had to look at the landscape so at that time in 2019 we're a regulator as well so how can we be a regulator and a service provider for the industry at the same time so first job I did was really carving out that regulator bit and moving it to the other parts of the government that can do a better job and focusing really on efforts investments on becoming a better service provider and the transformation we needed to do to become relevant and in fact for us well so it's a very very exciting journey we're still in the in the I'd say halfway point of that and then in last five years we've accomplished a lot we've introduced new services improved how we serve our customers we've been able to double our revenue almost reduce a third or 30 percent of our costs improved our quality and experience and really made another principle that was very important for us front and center for us in becoming data driven so our decisions are not based on our reactions or our instincts only but rather based on data that we captured and also used that data sometimes as services themselves so how we serve our customers the customer experience data points our employee productivity all of that is captured analyzed synthesized and reintroduced in terms of important elements of our services and how we we measure our success and progression so let's see if this works there we go so when we looked at the market we're also very late entrant into the logistics market we had a lot of low tier operators coming in and what I mean by that are entities that really focused on the last mile asset light which do produce good services however they also in our minds tend to dilute some of the service on some of the value that's being created by the traditional operators and creating new sets of challenges that we have to overcome we also find a very weird situation where our customers are becoming competitors and suppliers so when we look at the amazons of the world's or noon in our part of the world they are our customers on one side but they're also our competitors because they have their own fleets and their own capabilities that are competing with us into it there was also a push to kind of fragment the the different parts of the value chain so you've had suppliers provide our customers who are maybe in far east and china or whatnot trying to deliver to their customers in Saudi but looking at multiple service providers to deliver on different parts of the of the value chain which also introduces challenges in where we have investments and where we have value to capture and that's being disrupted so those are new challenges that we weren't designed for and we're trying to now address and adapt to. The very strong push to make the services we provide especially in the last mile commoditized and driving the prices down so this is the market we're coming into and we're adapting to and we're trying to deal with an address and our approach to doing that is really focused on becoming a customer-centric organization and really focus on what our customers want and our customers here are also a complicated kind of a description because our customers are the e-commerce providers but also their customers the end users we are also serving them as well so we need to take that very carefully and understand what value our customers e-commerce merchants in this example value and what is important for them as we serve their customers on their behalf and ensure we are fulfilling that obligation really creating stickiness and a good understanding of what we do there and and there's tons of examples that we've gone through over the last a few years that I think have benefited us and one of the things we really need to be good at all of us as as postal operators is telling our customers what we do well and and how we do it well so the information we capture while we deliver parcels on that behalf the experiences we deliver and most of the time positive ones need to be relayed and need to be relayed to justify and sometimes convince our customers of the value of dealing with the service the postal service providers so customer centricity is a very important philosophy and approach and that's anchored in our strategy being a understanding the market maturity and being not afraid to disrupt ourselves and challenge ourselves as all of these technologies and tools and capabilities are made available we should be using them we should be looking at how do we introduce them into our own operations introduce them into our own capabilities and offerings rather than being afraid from or distant from being innovative and and really taking the lead and disrupting ourselves I think is a very important part of the strategy that we've we've also had to and looking at our partner's network so don't try to do everything on your own look at working with others merchants suppliers service providers technology providers I think all of those are important partners to keep with you in the same mission and and join forces to create incremental value that will be shared amongst amongst and a very important part of again the the strategy and and and the principles we've got this is really care about the people the people the employees the team you have they need to be front and centre in this process they need to believe in the mission you're doing they need to believe in the value they are capable of creating otherwise it'll not be achievable and attainable so making that also front and centre to enable and unlock all of the potential we have I think is very very important and and again last point is be always front and centre with your clients about the value you can create for them and commit to and actually deliver all right out of time so try to be under 10 minutes of apologizing thank you thank you and while doubling the revenue we'll definitely have to dive into that a little bit more in the discussion also with us today we have marsha price marsha is the postmaster general at Belize post so tell us marsha a little bit about how in this logistics and cross-border e-commerce space you're really tying in entrepreneurs in Belize to the rest of the Caribbean well basically hey good morning and welcome marsha price from Belize postal service um basically our aim at Belize post is to provide that culture of excellence right and that be it with our team members and with our customers providing that best end-to-end experience for our customers not only am I the postmaster general but I lecture entrepreneurship at the university in Belize right so it goes hand in hand in what I do and from an entrepreneurial standpoint it's since COVID-19 there have been so many entrepreneurs so many entrepreneurial ventures coming about recently so it's how the posts can aid those customers so at least having the comfort of receiving their goes into the confines of their homes right what can we do as the post and also how we can advance e-commerce currently since we are government's own we don't have that budget as we would like to have so at least assist entrepreneurs most so I think that is something that is really lacking to help those entrepreneurs remember at the end of the day we need these entrepreneurs in order to provide e-commerce so that is something that's very very vital for for us so how do we bridge that gap so let me go into the presentation okay so simply e-commerce crossword e-commerce is international e-commerce so in order to aid that we need that platform right we need websites we need software technology so currently the post is developing a website revamping its website to have a better website in order to aid e-commerce and with that we have asked the upu for assistance especially when it comes to the dot post to see to use their platform to see exactly how they can assist Belize postal service for this service we have also assisted with our logistics management how we move our services and recently from I have joined the post since 2021 so we have not provided the same day delivery so recently we have started with that same day delivery within some of our areas so that is a huge achievement for Belize posts so we don't have the technology is yet so certain things we are doing manually so it can be achieved it you have to do more work with it but definitely it's something that I want to push for the post so we are working with managing our logistics as best as we can technology we don't have a front end system but we are working with different partners to see how what front end system is best for Belize posts we know that one size does not fit all so sometimes you see the different companies providing a front end system but we have to find one that will adjust the Belize postal service when it comes to data analytics and artificial intelligence it's important because recently we have been piloting with a local company within Belize to do use AI for our customer support and we had done some pilot testing and it was rather interesting because in Belize we have we speak broken English English is our main language but sometimes how the customers would ask questions the artificial intelligence actually can't understand what they they have programmed it into a way that the system can understand anything that they are talking to actually human being so AI is very very important it's very interesting for us um collaboration collaboration is important we have to collaborate partners with different stakeholders of the posts so that is something that is important for the development of e-commerce right so at being leaders in logistics we have so many competition that exists in Belize and every day you see different um couriers popping up in Belize so there is a market for that exists in Belize for um when it comes to couriers so do it but the posts we have that expansive network we are located in all districts within Belize city we employ over 130 employees and we provide that first and last my delivery for our customers not only do we deliver posts but remember it's also developing economic growth for our country right and as mentioned we have to develop our infrastructure um our buildings um systems you require human resources because remember we need people to conduct marketing that marketing aspect right we need sales so at least assist what corporations and MSMEs would require we need financial resources that is very very very vital to any post um recently we have collaborated with a small business in Belize city to provide boxes for us to deliver that flat rate box um digitalisation that is crucial and people want to track their items to see exactly where their items are so that is something that we see vital within e-commerce and logistics providing that end-to-end digital platform is crucial and that is something that is a part of our strategy within Belize posts right um we have to provide better rates for our customers and that is with the flat rate boxes we need to work closely with our customs department because that is very very important because people with e-commerce remember people don't want to be taxed these high custom duties but the economy requires taxes for growth right and expansion so it's how we bridge that gap with customs department um customer support people want answers to where their packages are so that is vital especially for that culture of excellence that we want to implore at Belize posts right compare awareness we don't have the necessary finance so what we do we go old school in the sense that we visit customers right we go business to business and we speak I go with my team right and we see exactly what the customers want and then people want faster but they want it cheaper right so they want cheaper services right MSMEs they want better rates hence the flat rate boxes is what we want to introduce for them currently we have that weight weight pricing so based on the weight then that is how your price for goods but giving that giving them that flat rate box that will help them very well right customer support as I mentioned compare awareness and the biggest hurdle that we have within the Caribbean is finance right especially in Belize so financing can help with everything once you have finance you can assist your posts in many ways right supply supply chain can be strengthened if you come together as posts and buy things in bulk right so that can assist as well cross border as I mentioned before is very crucial when it comes to MSMEs those are the one that requires the e-commerce how do we get them currently in Belize most of our items we buy clothing and so forth that comes into the country but what goes out of Belize right what do people want from within the Caribbean we have so many that to offer but people people are not aware of it so how do we educate how do we collaborate right in order to provide better service right and that is with providing more entrepreneurial activities to know customers better what they want and how we can build e-commerce thank you thanks Marsha it really sounds like you're you're working hand in hand with entrepreneurs there and seeing it more as a partnership and yes not just a customer relationship yeah we also have with us today Taj Rumorman with executive committee of post in L and spring global delivery solutions can you tell us a little bit about the upu side of things and how the upu can help with operators and helping them keep up with this ever changing e-commerce environment yeah Amanda thank you very much so let me first say on behalf of the Dutch people welcome in netherland so welcome to holland so we really appreciate that you are here and obviously there are some of you that i don't know so i will quickly introduce myself my name is tijs roman i'm responsible for international within post in L that's the post of the Netherlands and also in the executive board of post in L next to that i'm CEO of spring and i will guide you a bit on what we think and what i think that our collective dream should be but before i do that so what do we do in post in L in the international department we have two brands so out of the Netherlands out of Belgium we have the post in L brand and out of the rest of the countries in the world we use the spring brand well we have several locations as you can see on the slide we're present in three continents so out of canada we also serve customers in the us they're also present here thanks very much and out of hong kong we serve for example chinese customers large platforms etc next to that we have a lot of companies in europe where we built a european network so that's basically what i do the whole day so a bit more about spring because i noticed that in kind of well uh meetings like this upu meetings a lot of people know post in L but a few only know what spring is and spring is also post in L but our brand outside of the Benelux so it is founded as a joint venture between Singapore post role mill post in L in the early days when mill was really large and uh remill was very large and we all collectively well saw a bright future in mill but then suddenly we had to change the company into a e-commerce service providing company that is really hard and i can tell because i've been in the industry for about 14 years and i've seen the change within post in L within spring so what is really important for spring obviously local hero benelux so we would like to have all the volume in the Netherlands and in Belgium so if you still have volume over there for the Netherlands it's really tidy and Belgium is even more tiny well then give me a call but next to that local heroes in every country are really important to us so the business model of spring is really to go to those customers like you do go to those customers and look into what their needs are very locally but also help them with expand in cross border and in order to do that we are not going to build our own network there are a lot of companies that have their own network there are a lot of companies that want to build a large worldwide network in their own hands we don't want to do that we want to partner together with a lot of you here in the audience and we think that's a more winning strategy because customers are not the same in each country what we see in Europe that's even different per country it's even different but then it's totally different than what you see what our customers want in the US or even Canada and that's totally different with our large platform customers want in China so that is the basis of spring we want to collaborate with the networks there are and that brings me to my dream for the UPU and my dream for the UPU is perhaps a bit strange and large but I think if you really want to make something out of the UPU we should all direct our efforts into two things one is becoming one network and not only physical because that's the thing that we have done number of years already but the thing is becoming digital and to combine that digital with the physical flow and then make sure that our customers give their customers what they need and especially the local heroes in a lot of countries are very well equipped for that and the thing is we can't be collectively the most cheap network I don't believe in that we also can't be the most fast network in the world I don't believe in that either but what we can do together and that's my dream and also my plea for the UPU is we can be the most reliable network of the world by investing in digital by investing in that we know where our parcels are by investing in interoperability by investing in making sure there are standards that we comply with that we can help each other with and to help each other with living this dream so the coming three days I hope that you will all remember that if the UPU if our cross-border international networks want to sustain for another 30 years we really have to look into how we work together and how we can help each other so that's my dream and my plea Amanda thank you very much great thank you I'm going to put you on the spot about that dream in a few minutes okay we also have with us this morning Ivana for Fishtar who's a member of the executive management management post Slovenia Ivana can you share with us your strategic vision for cross border e-commerce with post Slovenia especially considering your unique position geographically hello to everybody it's really privileged to be here on this stage and to be able to share with you the story of Slovenian post maybe in the beginning a little bit more information about Slovenia I'm not sure if you have ever been there it's a small country in central east Europe it's 2.1 habitants so we are small but we are really advanced in the internet usage as a population so we are in the I would say 92% of Slovenian population regularly access to to internet which offer us a great foundation for a big transformation where we are in the middle right now in Slovenian post and on the other side 70% of Slovenian of Slovenian population regularly shop online but there is one specific more than 80% almost 90% of all e-commerce purchasing is made on domestic online shops of course that means there is a lot of space for cross border e-commerce cooperation and that is where our focus in our new strategic cycle will be so Slovenian post is like every other postal operator is based on providing universal postal service and some other traditional services to to to to to the public's and one of the the slide okay and one of the crucial challenges that we have how to change this mindset so to to make this mind shift from the business operation model where all infrastructure and all activities are around the product around the shipment and focused on the shipper sender to the mindset and the business operational model where will be totally customer centric and focus on our customers postal operators traditionally had a large contact with the customers so there is almost none customer in every country they did not have any contact with the postal operators with our postmen with our people but we never in the past we didn't build our customer base we didn't we wasn't focused on the customer but we always focused on the sender on our business partners that means governance that means companies who send business documentation or invoice to to to to the customers and this is really the crucial the crucial thing and everything else are just tools how to make this shift but this is also the most the most complicated things that we should do because if you can see the slide this is one part of our new strategy so because we would like to be the part of this the biggest postal transformation in the history some of our I would say some of other industries already did this in the in the in the past we we know on example some really traditional industries like banks or insurance companies they started with this transformation to be much more customer focused 10 years ago 15 years ago and now we are we are also following but right right right now we're in the middle of this transformation so but what is most interesting thing when I listen colleagues and when I was reading a lot of reports and data from many of your companies to get some insight what's happening in the postal postal sector is that if I would move off I would erase the yellow colour where there is a Slovenian post brand I'm sure that we could take this slide and to put almost in every of your country country strategy so that means we all know what we have to do so theoretically there is nothing new in this but but the magic is somewhere else we as a postal sector we like to communicate in some technical phrases we like to we like to use jargons there are many jargons here in in this slide technically based it's more about the the tools that we will use how to become customer centric but even if we would have all money on the world and to buy today on this all so fair the best technology the best AI tools to use all those things that we have it doesn't mean that we will be successful because there is some soft site on the other part of our business which is connected with customer experience with the customer zone where we in the past were not the best but that means we have a lot of space for improvement and it's not so bad that decreasing of universal postal services a little bit push us in these directions so that means that more than 84 percent of postal operators things that in the five next five years the biggest focus should be in collaboration with the cross-border e-commerce because there is the the the the hold magic and i like to make some comparison with the best practices in some other industries and maybe just to ask an example who is the pepsi person and who is the coke person please coke person get rice okay pepsi okay a little bit more for coke but it's normal why because if we compare coke and pepsi it's one of the most customer-centric brands very very successful both in their strategies but they are completely different but why i'm wanted to say this to you because the taste is not unique experience it's not true that if you i give you something to drink that everybody will say yes this is the best soda or this is the best drink so it's the same in our business right now so that's the reason why we have to cooperate and here the way where the magic is and the magic is the combination of traditional coke like postal operators with sense of playful open full innovative pepsi model will give us the the the successful the the successful equation so that means per is for digital we believe in blended digital in digital world not just the digital he is engagement engagement of the customer and engagement of employees the second p is brand preference how many of you measure brand preference how many but it's great it's very important metric because it's connected with the loyalty s is seamless omnichael experience so we have big networks but we have to provide to the customer really seamless experience through all those channels and it's not connected just with technology and i i is intuitive user experience without jargons with bi language in the company when i was working before the project to implementation of bi language you know what is bi language is one of the most important projects in the company i was working in insurance industry before so you can imagine but i can tell you that in postal it's i i i i need three months to understand all those technical words and i'm i was the customer and i didn't have a clue what's happening around me with these words and cc from coca cola is collaborate over competition so that means as a postal operator you said it very nice we had a biggest network and we have to use it and we have to cooperate not just to compete and just to conclude conclude with hf is anybody has the clue what is hf because this is really a big differentiator from the previous postal business models anybody has a clue what is hey jeff probably think something with finance or no mr robin said it at the end of his speech is half fun yeah but it's crucial because in postal business we were regulated we were really heavy regulated everything processes has to be strictly and magic to be much more close to to cross-border e-commerce partners is to start to have fun with what we are doing and i think this is one of the crucial points thank you thank you um i'll just come start with you then um you talked about how most of the e-commerce in Slovenia is domestic over 90 um which is astounding what what is your vision for that in the next five to ten years and how you want to grow that and how big a part of of your overall strategy for the post is that yes Slovenia is in this part pretty specific but also for the few last years there is quite increase also with purchasing on european and non european online shops especially with entrance of about you the land or zo plus and some other really global cross board e-commerce but also what is important that Slovenia has a few really big and successful e-commerce platforms and there are right now one of the fastest growing e-commerce and i can proudly say that we started to work with them this year and that was really a big step for us because you know if you would like to be successful in this cooperation we have to make a lot of internal processes upgrades technical uh technical innovations appies and so on but the most important thing is to understand their strategy and how they how they serve their customers on example one of our biggest uh one of our biggest um business partner and one of the biggest uh european uh e-commerce what is the question they they ask every new employee very important question they ask them what is the most buying product in the basket what do you think and this e-commerce is for beauty so cosmetics beauty and so what do you think what is the most buying product in the basket ladies makeup cosmetics no it's delivery it's delivery they're in our business they take our business in their strategy and that's um and and why because 68 percent of the customer their customer they say if they are not satisfied with the delivery they will not come back to this store and they start to own our product our solutions and to own our customers and the future will be not competition between postal operators and with competition with with private owned delivery companies couriers and so on and so on but the the the battle the playground will be on the zone of who is the owner where is the ownership of the customer and that's what amazon is doing right now and so on so it's a lot of potential and uh e-commerce will growing for sure so that means that we have to be prepared and to step to this train your excellency a similar question you mentioned uh that you've went into a business that was shrinking you've doubled the revenues there how much of that were was in the cross-border logistics and e-commerce space and thinking forward and how you want to continue to grow that how much of that focus is on international true so um as many of you might know as Saudi Arabia in general is a inbound country when it comes to e-commerce that's changing and that's again going back to the country's strategy and vision 2030 and and making Saudi a hub so we're making it a lot more convenient for entities to come in set up business set up shop to serve the market domestically and serve from the domestic capabilities but also serving the neighboring countries and neighboring regions so when when I joined I would say we were mostly when it comes to e-commerce playing a very very minor role in serving the domestic market and I don't think we had any real products serving international markets it was probably just the normal postal offerings that we had that if the origin countries were using the postal operators would be receiving them and we looked at we needed to we had a significant revenue challenge and a very high cost structure so we had to fix both we had to fix our revenue and look at the opportunity we had and address the cost challenges that we had and investing in the right areas so we had to diversify a business within the core so in the delivery business we looked at who are customers we could potentially serve and serve better if we either created new offerings or modified our existing offerings and with e-commerce that was clearly an opportunity looking at the domestic market and the international market and we were slowly moving towards that we've set up an international unit now just to prove the strategy last week so we're getting bigger and bigger in that area because we do believe we have a significant opportunity and a significant right to play in that in that space due to the location of Saudi Arabia the capabilities not only within Saudi post a logistics group but also the kingdom and what we're doing there so there's a lots of different areas when it comes to e-commerce and I agree with my colleagues I think understanding how to be effective and disrupting and innovative in disrupting those those those arenas and it's not on when I say innovation it's not only around the technologies but the operating models and the business models you apply and the partner network you want to work with to create value together and share that value together because we truly believe in in a philosophy that having a small part of a very very big pie is much better than having a full size of a very very small pie so looking at where the volumes are being originated what experience the customers our customers would want to deliver to their customers and aligning ourselves there maybe even enriching their their perspective of what can be delivered to their customers and that that really stems down to transparency consistency and to some extent flexibility but but really the transparency part is the most important part how you share data how you share information that allows you to customize and control the experience end to end and I think ultimately that's what customers want and what to what they want to offer as a differentiation to their own customers so e-commerce and cross border for us is going to grow the opportunity is there we need to always continue to disrupt ourselves and how we think and how we approach those opportunities and challenges I think the as as we evolve as operators as we evolve in how we organize ourselves there will be new opportunities and new threats and again you have to continuously go through that cycle of how do we want to evolve and change to capture some of that market capture that growth and deliver a consistent reliable transparent experience that creates value and your challenge really is how to capture some of that your fair share of that value if that's the right word to use and that's that's how we're approaching it yeah it's interesting to hear that because you talked about your shrinking business before but I think globally you know there's the fear the concern that posts are becoming or are starting to become the the operator of last resort when it comes to cross border because a lot of times simply the the offers aren't there and I think this can tie into to your dream Taj of one collective network and this being facilitated by the UPU how would how would that work what would be the the starting point in creating something like that so that posts can really create more value in the cross border logistics world yeah I think the beauty is we already have all the like UPU memberships etc so we know each other that's the beauty so we are building on something that we have already the capabilities are not yet there but we can we can help each other with becoming like the e-commerce expert of the world but the thing is you have to know each other you have to help each other and you have to look into what your customer needs are what we can't have is that every operator only looks domestically because what you see now happening is if domestically everything is all right it's probably not fit for international customers and what you see is that international customers will also take over a big part of your domestic piece so we have to look in together what are our standards how can we make that flexibility in the total chain how can we see where our parcels are how can we be more predictable and I think it starts with building on the foundation that we have within a lot of years history and then looking forward into what our customer needs are and then collectively say this is what we want one network which will cater for all those different needs in which we will help each other to look into what do we need what do our customers need and how do we learn from each other and I think the UPU is perfect for that however it should be going a bit faster because if we wait for the UPU then probably we will be there but within 200 years probably it will be a bit different industry than now so I totally agree with you we have to look into how can we help each other how can we make this a big network but also cater for all the customer needs that there are and what has been your experience you mentioned that spring is all over in north america and europe and also in the east and you said that you don't want to be the end-to-end provider so you're having to collaborate and establish partnerships how are you working with the postal operators there and all the countries that you're working with and what are some of these best practices of kind of addressing this fragmented value chain yeah that's a very good question and that differs a bit on if you look into Europe and the postal partners in Europe or in the rest of the world so what I see is that a lot of companies make use of the postal networks in the rest of world area because of the ease of customs which is really a benefit for the UPU and what we achieve together so I think that is a large thing that we should well be more vocal about if you look into Europe we also work with all the partners that are in your postal partners commercial partners and there we see that some of the postal companies are really catching up and really see how they have to transform their company own the the consumer because I totally agree with you that is the thing that you have to do own the consumer so that also the large parties want to work with you so that's on one side some of the very successful postal companies in Europe but on the other side we also see some postal companies that are only focusing on domestic they will probably lose because you also have to have this international cross-border angle and what we do is we have people running around in Europe talking to all those companies talking to the boards talking to their customers but also talking to a lot of different stakeholders and then we try to be as smart together as we can because our enemy or our competitor are not the post but our competitor is like the large platforms of this world that own the last mile of their will or want to own the last mile and that's what we should take into account so that's how we do stuff we help companies we help company customers grow but we also help our partners grow by feeding them back what we see in their networks and to give you a slight example so like I was with a large platform in Asia like eight years ago and they didn't even ask you have to deliver my parcel but they asked you have to live deliver the data that's it if you deliver the data and that was totally new for me that and that's why we really are fond of investing in transparency where our parcel is not to be the cheapest network but at least to be the most reliable network thank you yeah I mean a lot of it goes back to customer centricity and everyone touched on that this morning Marsha you specifically talked about visiting entrepreneurs in person so tell us a little bit I know that you said that price was a major item that price was one of their major concerns what were some of the other surprising things that you heard from them talking to them one-on-one um we have so many curves um in believes but going around and speaking with customers you know exactly what they want from you um some of them would explain why they moved away from the post office and if we would provide certain elements or certain improvements to the post then they will definitely want to be back at the post so most of their sentiments are coming back to the post but we need to improve on certain um same-day delivery um having better price and structure for them so that is what we at the post are currently working on for our customers great thank you um I'd like to open up questions to the floor I have more as well but uh I don't want to dominate the discussion so I'm just looking around to see if anyone had questions for our panelists before we talk a little bit more um there are there's someone with a mic on either side of the room so don't be shy raise your hand if if you have any questions we have one oh hi I'm part of the conservative committee and I think everybody had very valuable points in terms of challenges and opportunities price yes that's very important and Mr Rymorown I think you did a great job about saying the power of unity of network all you put together I mean if you look at the I'll try and give you two perspective it's not necessarily a question but you just gave a different view today if you look at there are four elements there are buyers which is consumers then you have product and then you have e-commerce platforms which are dominating the e-commerce and then your last mile if you look at post office they're leading the first and last the only organisation which can go to every home every citizen is post office and your last mile is a largest I think one part which is really missing is who controls the checkout and that's where the e-commerce lasadas and amazons of the world are coming but there's one big trend which is actually changing and it connects to your price if you look at the cost of a product from the manufacturing to the person who pays for it there are three or four elements the cost of manufacturing shipping and e-commerce brokers right amazon or all these guys are brokers they usually take 15 to 20 percent for an online store and 30 to 40 percent people don't buy because they're amazon or the lasada they buy because they're Nike, Sony and Chanel and Cheshire when the brands are moving towards direct to consumer with consumer you control it think about a strategy in which your brands will directly engage through you to your consumers you're already sitting 30 percent then cost of shipping doesn't even matter because you're not necessarily a private company to make billions of dollars like other large giants so just a perspective and that's what we socialize with many post offices thanks to chief moyo who's here for secretary general for Fappu we got signed up over 30 to 40 countries primarily based on the model of how post office could become a consumer data hub manage consumers and as you said interoperability and portability is very critical and how you can create a network or the manufacturers to directly reach to consumers and that's one way you'll solve many of these issues and any other questions from the floor it's hard to it's hard to see with the lights coming in thank you hi mariguritzky last mile experts we talked a lot about e-commerce but one of the things that at least in europe is developing very fast is reconness companies like vinted and there need to be new ways of serving them because of the low value of the item what is your thinking how can you serve items which cannot often efficiently be delivered to door how can the post deal with that we want to take that one on i can try but i think this is a i think that's a very good question at least from our view this is a challenge we have you have a three year old phone cover and it probably cost two three years to deliver and then the challenge there for the postal operators and and any of the service providers to to kind of step in to fulfill that gap is not easy what you're hoping is you're delivering a very cheap item with many many more expensive items so the opportunity for for us as postal operators is really try to consolidate as much as you can into the last mile into the milk runs and then make the deliveries as dense as possible with as many items so you dilute the cost a little bit but i really think the the the opportunity for us is again challenge ourselves innovate and maybe disrupt ourselves a little bit by thinking of partnering with the merchants here and bringing these items a little bit closer to the to the end consumer looking at things like converting your post office into dark stores or warehouses that are in the neighbourhoods to really again bring down the cost of the end to end delivery and kind of breaking that into chunks and making use of your already significant investments in your post offices and making that into an hour revenue generator as well for you by by providing some basic warehousing and fulfilment services these are not traditional things that postal officers of post offices do but we need to evolve and we need to change with the times and and look at what the opportunity is not not an easy process but it is something we're experimenting with at Saudi Post and Logistics and we believe there is value there and and we believe that will only continue to evolve as as you begin to understand the end consumers better at the neighbourhood level and make yourselves more available to to merchants who are interested in reaching those customers in an efficient and fast manner so that's one way to potentially try to address it maybe I would like to add on the subject regarding the transparency of delivery costs so we know in the past the customer when by the boots there is a transparent price and customer choose which service by which price will be will be in connect with the delivery but right now something else happening that e-commerce and market places they some kind of take of take out of us the control of communication of delivery costs to the customer that means that there is no transparency anymore and they go even further that means that customer in the future won't be able to choose the provider for the for the last mile that's happening right now and I would say that probably those platforms market places they will create their own they will try to create their own communities some loyalty programs some kind of best secret model if you know with the gold silver bronze membership and then with this model they will provide also free delivery or different options for the range of the the the the memberships so it doesn't mean that marketplace or e-commerce will provide low price or free price of delivery that doesn't mean that we as a postal operators will not on these concrete items will receive our price for for the last mile this this is not the same game anymore and here it will be probably a real I wouldn't say war but very interesting very interesting activities and who will own the customer and who will own the delivery the delivery process so that's the reason why we really have to become much more proactive in this because in the past we are more we were much more reactive as a postal operators we were waiting watching copying and so on but we really have to to change our perspective so a little thing about recomers so what we see and it comes down to to what you're saying if you know your consumer you also know that in a lot of countries in europe people are really worried about the environment especially younger people so you see if you see who is on vintage who is on like exchanging second hand clothing etc a lot of younger people are so as a post you have to do two things one is to make it very easy to return things so for example in postinell you can simply give it to the deliverer and they will return it to wherever the address is consumer to consumer consumer to business but you also have to look into how can you make it as sustainable as you can be because that will be in future your license to operate especially in the western of europe so as postinell we really dedicated to having zero emission in the last mile in 2030 we're planning to do a lot of more investments and together with our partners in the Netherlands together with our partners also in the european context like using HVO etc to address those consumer needs and i think that will be a tough thing and that is primarily domestically for the post to really know your consumer in the Netherlands we have a postinell app it's with around nine million users so we use it to communicate we use it to ask them questions we have communities and what you see there is that if you know your customer they're more willing to say to a large platform i want to be delivered my i want to have a delivery by postinell so i think that is something about recomers great thank you and tomorrow one of the topics is sustainability so we'll be talking more about that so definitely come back tomorrow as well we're going to revisit this topic later this afternoon in our strategy sessions and get more into tangible ways that we can push towards these visions after this session we'll be talking about diversification so we're going to have a short 10 minute break or so 10 to 15 minutes and then we'll come back and we'll start the panel on diversification so thanks to all of you for the great discussion and for your presentations this morning thank you