Strategic foundation
We have identified three strategic pillars that form the foundation for realising our strategic objectives.
Manage Parcels for sustainable growth
In the e-commerce market, PostNL aims to help its e-commerce customers grow by offering logistics and other services, providing a distinctive experience for customers and consumers. With a state-of-the-art network that offers customers high-quality service across the Benelux, we are ideally positioned to drive and capture further e-commerce growth. To safeguard sustainable growth, we actively steer on balancing volumes and value by providing a range of services, such as fulfilment solutions, alongside our e-commerce logistics. Our focus is on further enhancing customer and consumer interaction and delivering smart logistics solutions, while continuing to work towards our sustainability goals. We will do this while managing our network capacity and utilisation of infrastructure. Together, these enable us to enhance customer value while continuing to make efficiency improvements and increase capacity.
Manage Mail in the Netherlands for value
In the communication market, PostNL aims to keep the medium of physical communication relevant, by offering accessible, reliable and affordable postal services. In the Netherlands, we offer senders and receivers a range of postal services, while focusing on strengthening the value of mail and enhancing the customer experience, where this contributes to or supports the relevance of physical communication. However, over the last decade we have faced mail volume decline of around 8-10% annually, fuelled by the ongoing rise of digital communication. We are also facing growth in organic costs in both labour and other operations-related expenditures, and we see far fewer customers require and expect the 24-hour delivery window that was once the industry standard. Our current network and the costs associated with it are no longer in proportion to the current and expected 24-hour volume. For more than 10 years we have deployed a wide range of measures to improve efficiency, cut costs, and keep our mail business financially healthy. If we want to keep mail reliable, accessible and affordable for everyone in the Netherlands, we need to look at changes to the current service framework, and both the universal service obligation (USO) and the entire mail business need to evolve with this. Without these changes the USO, as of today, and over time the entire mail organisation will be structurally loss-making, which is unsustainable. More information on PostNL's position can be found in the 'Our operating context' and the 'Financial value' chapters.
Accelerate digital transformation
At PostNL, we accelerate our digital transformation to further improve the customer and consumer experience, reshape our business model, and optimise our operations. We want to be the most efficient and innovative logistics platform for e-commerce and mail in, to and from the Benelux. Seamlessly integrated with customers, consumers and partners. We achieve this in various ways, for example by using artificial intelligence (AI) across the company in a number of areas, from process automation to robotics. But one of the most important applications is in data and algorithms, which together help us deliver a distinctive customer experience and drive efficiency.
To ensure distinctive digital experiences, we continuously improve key customer journeys to fit their needs and focus on net promoter score (NPS) to measure customer satisfaction. This transformation yields financial benefits, enhancing commercial effectiveness and cost efficiency in customer, consumer, and data domains.
Our business keeps pace with a changing market, which is why we are further developing our capability to realise e-commerce-related services as an integrator, enabling us to move up the e-commerce value chain. Going forward, this will involve giving the shipping platforms in our portfolio, such as MyParcel, Shops United and CheapCargo, the space and freedom to take advantage of ongoing market developments, while continuing to provide (large) e-commerce companies across the Benelux with our growing array of end-to-end logistic services. We are witnessing a rise in the percentage of parcels being sent via shipping platforms, especially in the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) segment, as the e-commerce environment continues to develop. More on our integrator model can be found in our 'Customer value' chapter.
An IT operating model to support our future business
We are investing heavily across the organisation to strengthen our digital capabilities, enabling us to develop new capabilities and propositions that create customer value and support them in their e-commerce growth ambitions, such as enabling delivery preferences in the PostNL app or sending registered mail digitally. These investments, such as in a cloud strategy, digital technology building blocks, and implementing an agile way of working, have also helped us become more efficient. One example is by developing scan gloves that help cut costs or tracking roll containers with digital beacons (additional examples of these developments can be found in the 'Customer value' chapter.
In the coming one to two years, our IT goal is to build on these investments while remaining flexible enough to adapt to market changes. We will achieve this by focusing on the four key areas detailed below.
Digital transformation
Digital transformation is one of the pillars of our strategy. This transformation will include scaling our digital services and business models beyond our core, for example by providing consumers with distinctive experiences, services and platforms. Internally, we will target being an employer of choice for digital talent in e-commerce logistics.
Security & resilience
Cybersecurity and compliance are key issues both internally and externally, including among customers, regulators, insurers and partners. We are taking several measures to strengthen our capabilities and our capacity to ensure we remain highly resilient if and when a cyber attack occurs, including professional and dedicated IT and cybersecurity management at group level, supported by de-centralised cybersecurity coordinators on all relevant IT systems used by PostNL.
Employee journey
We are continuing to emphasise our employee journey, from hiring to retiring, to ensure we attract and retain the right talent. From working with HR on an employer branding campaign to developing internal processes for onboarding, career development, or coaching, IT will continue to play a pivotal role in this vital area going forward.
IT transformation
In recent years, we have invested heavily in our IT transformation, setting the company up for a future of digitalisation and agility through cloud-based platforms, agile ways of working, and data and insights. But given the pace of change in the industry, we know that we need to remain at the forefront of IT development and transformation to help achieve our ambition of being the favourite deliverer of customers, consumers and across society.
