Strategic objectives
Our strategy is to deliver distinctive customer and consumer experiences to become the leading e-commerce and postal service provider in, to and from the Benelux. We have identified four strategic objectives, which are described below and in detail in the infographics later in this chapter, which we steer on to help us realise this strategy. These objectives help us translate our strategy into practical steps and action plans through which we evaluate our progress.
Customer value: Accelerate our customers' success and consumers can count on us
Realising our ambition means focusing on the desired customer and consumer experience in everything we do. We aim to strengthen our competitive position in e-commerce by accelerating our customers' success and ensuring consumers can count on us by focusing on high delivery quality and simple and smart digital journeys, for example by using Digital Next to accelerate our digital transformation and support the initiatives that enhance the customer experience. We offer customer value through propositions that meet their specific needs within the e-commerce journey. In the communication market, we realise value by keeping physical communication a relevant communication option for our customers. We develop reliable, affordable and accessible services tailored to our customers' needs, taking into account the digitisation of communication as a whole. Physical communication receives noticeably more attention than equivalent forms of digital communication, which in turn offers substantial value for our customers.
Social value: Our people take pride in their work and PostNL makes a positive impact on society
Our societal impact comes from our role as a major employer and our corporate citizenship. Our people create our success, and we want them to take pride in their work while feeling engaged and motivated to work with or for us, whether they are employed by PostNL directly or work for delivery partners, while PostNL makes a positive impact on society. Our Orange compass, which influences our culture and behaviour and helps us steer our organisation in the way we want to do business, helps create the right work environment for people to carry out their duties effectively.
We believe that by offering strong employee benefits, providing excellent people support, and promoting health and well-being, we are able to attract and retain the right people. We also believe that to be a leader in our sector, and continue to fulfil our social role and responsibilities, we need to continue to grow the number of people we employ. This is why we are working to add thousands of parcel deliverers to our own payroll over the next few years. We also continue to focus on regulatory compliance and operating in accordance with all social laws. At the same time, diversity and inclusion are integral elements of PostNL and we work hard to ensure equality across the company and connection within society.
The PostNL Special Moments Fund, which we further developed in 2023, aims to contribute to greater connection, contact, and consideration for one another across society by initiating new social activities and continuing existing ones and is tapping into PostNL's unique delivery network, where our mail and parcel deliverers visit every street every day.
Environmental value: Reduce our environmental impact
We want to reduce our environmental impact, and strategically this involves primarily focusing on climate change mitigation by significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions from our own operations and our outsourced activities, while our ambition is to deliver all letters and parcels emission-free in the last mile in the Benelux by 2030. This is why we are working to drive a sustainable future and significantly reduce our environmental impact and contribute to our reputation as a sustainable company. At the end of 2023, for example, we submitted updated ambitious emission reduction targets to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which include significant emission reduction levels across our value chain to a residual level in line with the 1.5C scenario by 2040. To achieve this, we are investing across the business to create a more efficient network, offer green products and services, and make our buildings as sustainable as possible.
Financial value: Generate sustainable growth and cash flow
Organic growth is our main focus for short- and long-term value creation for our customers, our people, society and investors. To achieve this, we are executing our strategy with a strong focus on capital allocation. In our rapidly changing environment, it is crucial that we invest in our business and digital transformation such as network capacity, digital solutions, our labour model to recruit thousands of parcel deliverers onto our own payroll and electrification of our vehicles. These investments define the pace at which our strategy can be executed. During the year we announced that from 2024 we will be engaging in a sports partnership with Team DSM-Firmenich PostNL, a professional cycling team at UCI WorldTeam level. This is a key investment in PostNL’s brand and ambitions. Our dividend develops in line with business performance and our dividend policy. We follow a disciplined approach on mergers and acquisitions based on strategic fit and return criteria. We apply a structured approach towards the allocation of financial capital based on the following four steps, in order of priority:
- Investments in our business
- Accelerate digital transformation
- Dividend
- Mergers and acquisitions
How we performed on our strategic objectives in 2023 can be found in the 'Customer value', 'Social value', 'Environmental value' and 'Financial value' chapters later in the report.
Our Strategy
