The papers are full of stories about Tesco's desire to become a bank, without many commentators pointing out that the Post Office is still ideally positioned to provide people in the UK with an alternative to the (currently) tarnished high street banks. While some postmasters have pointed out that their network is set up to handle financial transactions, it seems this will be yet another missed opportunity for the local store due to governmental inaction.
“Twenty years ago I was driving boxes to the post office in my Chevy Blazer and dreaming of a forklift,” says Jeff Bezos in his most recent letter to shareholders. A blink later and he points out that the company has grown from 30,000 employees in 2010 to 230,000 now. But his ambition is the same. “We want to be a large company that’s also an invention machine. We want to combine the extraordinary customer-serving capabilities that are enabled by size with the speed of movement, nimbleness and risk-acceptance mentality that is normally associated with entrepreneurial start-ups.” Amazon is great at disruption because of its customers focus and the fact that the internet means it needs none (or very few) people between its warehouses and the shopper. The threat of Prime, its membership service, is the biggest challenge facing the UK retail market and the wholesale market by extension. It is both a direct threat and an indirect threat in that is inspiring countless numbers of othe...
You are right there. The Government through their inaction will waste a significant community resource.
ReplyDeleteTo do the 'Peoples Bank' will not be easy, but there are many thing that Central and Local Government can do to secure the future of the Post Office network. For me its about ensuring that we attract and keep as many local business users as we can including the E-Bayers.
That means doing the things that we need to do to give them a smooth service, several of them are on a drop off and pay later process.
And by the way in five years we have tripled our Post office salary.
Steve