It looks like a case of once bitten twice shy for the SA Post Office. That is if the barrage of initiatives announced recently by the state-owned postal utility are anything to go by.
The Post Office has just emerged from a damaging boardroom event, which subsided with the departure of Khutso Mampeule, who had been appointed CEO in 2005.
All this came at a time when the Post Office was in the middle of implementing a strategic plan meant to modernise its operations. The plan was implemented after the Post Office prematurely terminated a management contract with New Zealand-based postal services player, Transend Worldwide, in 2001.
WHAT IT MEANS
 70 new outlets have been launched
Postbank has grown significantly
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Under the stewardship of local management, the Post Office broke even in 2004 and moved into the black in 2005. With finances under control, the focus was on driving up revenue.
The task of restoring stability now rests with the new leadership introduced early this year.
Key changes include the appointment of former chief operations officer Motshoanetsi Lefoka as acting CEO. Vuyo Mahlati, who served as a board member for a year, has been appointed chair. Mahlati speaks of "winds of change" sweeping through the Post Office. "The winds of change have not been without turbulence and ours continues to be a work in progress," she says in her first chairman's annual statement.
These changes are broadly focused on three areas: corporate governance, operational efficiency and financial performance. Mahlati says the cleaning up of processes and procedures should be concluded at the end of the year.
The corporate governance cleanup commenced with the restructuring of board committees to drive and monitor the implementation of corrective measures, says Mahlati. She says the hard work and commitment shown by the executives and staff under the leadership of Lefoka are praiseworthy.
"We come out of this period stronger and ready to tackle the opportunities and face challenges of transforming and growing the company.
"The incoming leadership has had the challenge of managing a sensitive and potentially disruptive phase," says Mahlati. And, as expected, it was a phase that attracted public attention.
The decisive action of the new board - with the support of government, the leadership of the communication workers union and the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications - stabilised the organisation and made it possible for it to continue on its path of transformation, revenue growth and raising service levels, says Mahlati.
"We have learnt from these experiences and are still standing strong," says Lefoka. "The Post Office's focus is on the local community, in which customers rise to the challenges of daily life, the challenges of communicating, connecting and transacting."
"Good riddance" may be the attitude of many interested parties and a large section of the SA public to the Post Office, but it has a crucial role to play in the development of the economy.
To many, it is a dinosaur, belonging to the era of personal letter writing. But it would be foolish to think that the Post Office is giving way to advances made in the information and communication technology sector.
Though the Internet and e-mail have encroached on a large section of the Post Office's business, it is still very much part of this economy and will remain so for some time.
The Post Office may be a dinosaur by virtue of having roots that go back to 1792, but this dinosaur seems to have learnt a thing or two from Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection - adapt or die!
"As a player in the global postal industry, we have kept abreast of market dynamics in terms of competition, changes in technology and customer needs," says Mahlati.
There are great opportunities and challenges, she says.
The SA Post Office could be a classic case in Theodore Levitt's theory of disruptive technology. The American academic produced authoritative work about how the advancement of technology can disorientate established but narrow-minded businesses. His solution was dynamism.
For some time, the (global) postal sector has grappled with the need to address the challenges of the future, says the Post Office in its latest annual report.
The needs and expectations of customers are also changing fast as the digital economy asserts itself, it says.
Faced with potentially disorientating technological advancement, which has resulted in people flocking to digital forms of communication, the Post Office appears to have worked out a foundation plan for sustainable growth.
On top of its huge postal services business, the organisation has moved aggressively into the courier and freight sector. Though mired in the red, its Courier & Freight Group subsidiary continues to grow and, according to management, it will move into the black next year.
The traditional postal services business is still experiencing phenomenal growth. The figures coming out of this year's annual report are telling. The Post Office has delivered about 1,9m new postal addresses, boosting its total base countrywide to 10m.
The utility used the geographic information system to give addresses to many who have never had one before.
It launched 70 new outlets (post offices) and 46 outlets were relocated. The Post Office runs a programme that could turn these outlets into information and communication technology hubs for previously disadvantaged communities.
A large part of postal services is accounted for by commercial clients. These include business-to-business and business-to-consumer communication.
More interestingly, the Post Office has moved into the financial services sector through another division, Postbank.
Postbank registered 772 330 new accounts in the year ending March to a total of 4,6m. It has captured about 41% of the market share for Mzansi accounts - special low-cost bank accounts for low-income earners.
The Post Office is also rapidly moving to provide services for third parties. These include serving as a consumer contact or pay point for a number of players.
In this regard, it also performs a critical service in enabling people from all walks of life to participate in mainstream economic activity, including that of black economic empowerment (BEE) equity transfers. The Post Office has served as a key retail point for a number of broad-based BEE equity transfer deals.
These include the most recent National Empowerment Fund initiative of distributing a portion of its shares in Telkom to the public at a 20% discount.
"We have an infrastructure larger than that of all the big four banks put together," says Lefoka.
Quote: The Post Office may be a dinosaur... but it seems to have learnt a thing or two from Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection - adapt or die!
