Taking A Look At Royal Mail

Royal Mail was established by King Charles the first in 1635 as a way for the public to cover his own cost of mail.
Over the next 370 years, Royal Mail has provide the UK public with its postal services, while at the same time providing innovations in the ways of postal delivery that will help shape the way we communicate.
With the ever evolving world of technology and the digital medium, Royal Mail, over the past decade and a half, have had to adapt to these new forms of communication by increasing their digital channels and improving parcel handling services.
11th November 1919, Royal Mail began the first regular international airmail service, with flights between London and Paris, with this service being extended to Holland, Belgium and
Morocco the following year.
In a time before mobile phones and emails, Royal Mail was at the spearhead of the evolution of global communication and the shortening the gap for domestic and commercial external exchanges for the UK.
With their already effective management of exchange relationship domestically in the UK with trains being use for national postal transportation as early as 1830, bicycles being used for local postal transportation in 1880 to horse drawn vehicles in 1910, Royal Mail went upon the decision to expand their consumers exchange relationships internationally, shortening the time it would take for mail to arrive at its transnational destination and also opening up the availability of postal delivery to destinations once inaccessible.
This would be the one of the first major innovations that Royal Mail will bring forward in postal delivery and making the world a smaller place.
Although they had there humble beginnings in London in the 1850s, it wasn’t until 1974 when the entire UK postcode system was complete. With the development of technology and a huge increase of mail volume since World War Two, the need arose for the development nationwide postcode system in the late 1950s as the labour costs for manual sorting was rising. With the new technology of mechanical sorting it became obvious that combine with a postcode system the long term benefits in costs and labour would be hugely valuable for Royal Mail.
Royal Mail identified and anticipated in the late 1950s the need for a nationwide postcode system was increasing, along with the ever developing mail sorting technology, a rationale of “faster sorting inevitably means a better chance of quicker delivery” along with foundation that the postcode will help keep the price of sending a letter down, to which Royal Mail began trial runs in Norwich in 1959. From these trials a system was developed and from 1966 on the task of coding the whole country was carried out in sections and will come to its completion in
1974.
Through this anticipation to the development of new methods, Royal Mail was able to supply its customers with the most efficient way to provide its postal services while at the same time reducing their labour costs which in turn will increase their profitability.
In 1990, Royal Mail made the decision to let its own parcel division become an independent division, rebranding itself Parcelforce. With a massive investment in IT infrastructure and the introduction on online tracking, Parcelforce would bring a new level of interaction between supplier and consumer. Since its inception 24 years ago, Parcelforce has grown into Parcelforce Worldwide with parcels accounting for 48% of Royal Mails £9.1 billion revenue.
With the internet becoming more widespread as the 90s progressed and with the turn of the millennium, online shopping becoming more prominent with companies such as Amazon and eBay at the forefront of the age of E-commerce. With this boom, the volume of parcels increased rapidly, as did the need for parcel delivery. The needs of consumers would be satisfied by the efficient services that Parcelforce provided with up to 71 million items being deliver by Parcelforce in 2012 with a reduction of overall delivery hours by 1.9% in the same year. The wants of the consumer would also be satisfied by the ever improving online tracking services such as dispatching 74,000 handheld scanners to delivery depots in 2013 to the enchantments of the SMS/email notification system, so consumers
can always track the when and where of their item.
Market orientation is defined as being when an organisation is said to have a sound understanding of external factors that could influence the needs of the buyer. The organisation would devotes resources to the understanding of needs and buying behaviour of a customer, competitors’ activities, current market trends and the external forces the organisation have no control over. Analysis of these factors will benefit an organisation with better understanding of their customer, market developments and potential threats and opportunities.
Recently Moya Grace, CEO of Royal Mail, delivered a presentation on the organisations 2013/14 results, in this she stated some of Royal Mails strategies that focuses on market orientation. Competitors announced an increase in third party click and collect station, Royal Mail extends hours in which parcels can be received. Competitors also announce Sunday deliveries, Royal Mail plan to open delivery offices on Sundays along with delivering on Sundays. Other such customer needs will be addressed, such as the “deliver to neighbour option” to modernisation up to 94% of delivery office, which in the long run will benefit the needs of the buyer.