South Africa
In July 1999, Transend won the largest postal management contract ever tendered internationally – a three-year Strategic Management Contract to take line management control of key parts of the South Africa Post Office (SAPO) in order to restore profitability, business growth and customer confidence.

Background

The goal was to see SAPO developed as an efficient, world-class postal organisation independent of government subsidy. The contract also involved 31 special projects. The objective was to provide a commercial face to the post office as well as support social obligations.

Strategic approach

Transend provided key executives to work alongside SAPO senior management to restructure the business and implement a commercial development strategy prepared by Transend.

Transend's contract with SAPO contained the following six key aims:

  • Break even by March 2001 in those areas where Transend had control
  • Four million new postal addresses by end 2002
  • A rebalancing of the Post network to ensure better coverage
  • Improvement in service performance
  • International training
  • Revenue from new technology.

Business results

When Transend commenced the project in October 1999, the post office was not performing at optimum levels. At the end of the first year of its involvement the following had been achieved:

  • Post Link, the New Zealand Post computerised point of sale system had been successfully piloted. A rollout to 4,000 terminals in 2,400 post offices began in early 2001.
  • Changes to mail processing procedures raised the efficiency of mail delivery by a massive 15 percentage points, from 75 percent to 90.1 percent
  • 350 new Post Office outlets were opened and 215 outlets relocated to previously disadvantaged areas
  • Over 1 million new postal addresses in both rural and urban areas had been established for homes that previously had no access to the postal service.

In April 2001, Transend began working with SAPO to refocus the SMP objectives. These reflected SAPO' s revised business objectives of moving from social objectives to commercial ones. These new objectives were due to be ratified in late May 2001.

A comprehensive review of the first year of the SMP showed that Transend successfully delivered on agreed projects and met all key objectives except one, which was affected by human resource issues. Of the total 31 projects, 10 had been completed, 19 were on track and 2 were deferred at the request of the South African Post office. After Transend successfully completed 18 months of that contract, we mutually agreed to conclude the contract as a result of changing business objectives.

Transend continues to work with SAPO providing consulting support around the installation of the Post Link system.

See Media Release.