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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Major makeover for Oman Post

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By Vinod Nair — MUSCAT: Feb. 6 - Oman Post is undergoing transformation; a foregone necessity as worldwide there has been a drop of nearly 50 per cent over the past 10 years in the volume of letters handled by traditional postal companies.


According to the top company official, extreme changes are essential as the survival of the postal entity in its current shape is in question now. The technology-driven liberal market is competitive with nearly 15 players, including Oman Post, in the fray. Speaking exclusively to the Observer, Abdulmalik Abdulkarim al Balushi, CEO, Oman Post, said: “The transformation process should start this year. New products will hit the market from the third quarter and we are giving final touches to our strategy.”


He added, “People do want to know about the strategy, but it is also important to know where we plan to go from here.”


Al Balushi said, “A strategy is being finalised for the next five years. We have looked at our strengths; we want to serve people and for this we need investment in human resources as well as technology.”


The CEO said the postal services are IT dependent and the company will invest appropriately to provide a quality service to its customers.


He said that there are challenges with regards to boosting the overall competencies level at the organisation. “Our skills and competencies have to evolve for what we aim to achieve.”


Al Balushi said the company will venture into a number of new areas, including the financial services. “We are looking at financial services where we want to complement the banks.


Providing remittances would be the first step and for this we have the Central Bank of Oman (CBO) approval.”


Al Balushi said that the company wants to excel in innovative payment tools and methods, which today still revolves around credit or debit card transactions. “Remittances are only the start and we are studying other areas and markets in financial services.”


On the much talked about e-commerce project, he said its success will largely depend on Internet penetration, logistics, alternative payment methods availability and postal efficiency.


Oman Post’s efficiency has to improve and apart from the current 82 branches, plans are to have more touch points to be either managed or owned by the third parties. “For this we are working on the framework and the operating model.”


E-commerce should be enhanced and Oman Post to play a major role as well as other private sector entities “We need not do things alone, there can be partnership with private parties, including revenue sharing or capacity sharing agreements.


“There is enough scope to work as a facilitator with the private sector in areas of delivery, fulfilment, and technology.”


There are plans to have 11 distribution centres across the Sultanate to cater to the orders from their areas.


“We need to improve the last mile delivery for e-commerce. For this we need a system to know where exactly the customer is and reach him or her.”


He admitted that the Post’s potential is greater than what it is today.


Post Boxes: He said the fares for post boxes were untouched for years and they were doubled all of sudden last year. “We should have done it gradually and in the future we need to do that way to accommodate for inflation.”


Currently over 30 million letters and 600,000 of parcels are handled but lack of automation it is a big challenge.


Fresh plans to introduce more innovative products and services are in place and facilities to cooperate entities for pick-up and delivery of mail are being rolled out in 2017.


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