Alert to Biz Environment Changes

Korea Post helps exports of postal equipment, systems worth $246 mln

This year is the year for the Korea Post to finish its vision, "Love of the People, Postal Service,"a very important task, said President Hwang Jung-yeon of the Korea Post in his New Year's message.
He said he would like to congratulate every one at the Korea Post for their hard toil and sweat to turn the Korea Post operation end in the black last year, win the top place in the customer satisfaction in the public service sector, the Korea Customer Satisfaction Management Grand Award, for 8 years in a row, for excellent records. I would like to congratulate the officers and staff of KP once again for their hard work.
This year, we should complete the work that we couldn't finish last year and prepare them well this year and improve the matters that we left incomplete this year.
This year, we may postal matters to decrease 0.9 percent from last year, despite the presidential election, due to the variety of delivery services available now, totaling 4.7 billion envelopments and packages.
The postal matters is likely to go down annually, while home delivery business will grow with the growth of electronic transactions and home shopping, expanding their markets. But competition is likely to intensify with the increase in the number of delivery service firms in Dongbu and Kumho, which will limit the growth of KP's market share this year to the same level as last year. The international delivery service will also slowdown due to the weakening of the dollar and the Japanese yen and strong checks on imitation products. He also forecast that postal deposits will be sluggish due to the continuation of low-interest rates maintained by large banks including Kookmin and Shinhan banks and KP's insurance business will also be slow mainly because of stunted growth of new insurance policy buyers owing to the prolonged economic slowdown and the sharp growth of banks handling of bankassurance, accompanied by saturation of the insurance market.
But from what he learned since he came to KP, these shortcomings can be overcome if some 42,000 employees would do his or her best with passion. He said he made up this year's KP's business direction, "Love of the People, Realization of Postal Service,"knowing that KP will be able to boost its competitiveness through reform and united altogether in power and wisdom to realize best postal service. KP would have to cope with the changes in technology environment such as Ubiquitous and the integration of wireless and wire service with broadcasting. Through customer-centered service, we have to increase our sales revenue, fully alert that customer can always change if our service is down.
We have to standardize our services to raise the level of customer satisfaction and quality of service by checking customer service that we provide in postal delivery.
He said he plans to upgrade working conditions for employees, especially mailmen by automating the volume of mails to be delivered and delivery routes through the database to create a model standard for home delivery processes, all geared to have postal delivery service men to be at home to watch 9 o'clock news on a regular basis.
He said KP would also have to find new growth engines to be ready for reductions in postal delivery matters.
In the meantime, KP played a leading role in the conclusion of agreements by domestic companies to export $246 million worth of postal equipment and systems last year, including the signing of an MOU to export $170 million worth of postal systems to Indonesia. Royal Posting Co., a domestic system integration maker, will start to work on the project in the first half of this year. In the first half, SK C&C is slated to participate in the bidding for a logistics project worth $50 million and the company is favored to win the project because of the favorable view on Korean postal IT by the Kazakhstan postal authority.
KP set up "the unit for exports"in March last year to charge of various export promotion activities including the council for support of postal IT exports, the dispatch of IT export missions abroad to sign MOUs, support consultations on modernization of postal service in foreign countries and training of foreign postal service employees in the country, among others. nw

Korea Post's New Year ceremony with President Hwang Jung-yeon at the podium.(left photo) President Hwang Jung-yeon of the Korea Post