The Court of Auditors puts a yellow card in the post. In an interlocutory made public on Tuesday (February 25 but sent to its supervisory authorities), it is concerned at the delay by the public company in the modernization of its network it considers insufficient. “While France has the most dense post office network in Europe, the number of contact points and in proportion to its population,” writes the court, the decline in activity machines (- 25% on average between 2009 and 2014) does not result in reductions equivalent expenses (-8.9% over the same period). Hence an additional cost of around 250 million euros per year, higher than the tax concessions (€ 170 million), the Post has to compensate.
a move that is expected to increase due to acceleration of the dematerialization of services provided by the Post Office (-6.1% withholding mail activity over the period 2016-2018) and the Court of Auditors calls for better anticipate. In other words, the decline of traditional activities of the network which still represents 48% of the public group turnover and 56% of the workforce – but including the parcels business, growing thanks to the dynamism of e-commerce – makes its cost “less and less sustainable.” where the alarm driven by the sages of the rue Cambon who worry about the time bomb that is the inadequacy of the physical network the new digital provides.
992 post offices in rural areas
“the post has [...] not yet taken the full measure of changes that require rethinking its modes of relationship with the customer, “ says so referred. In 2014, about 9,574 post offices that account now, 173 were considered to be “very low activity” (less than one hour per day) in the city and 992 in rural areas. In its recommendations, the Court of Auditors therefore recommends increased outsourcing activity less profitable offices by converting them into “points of contact partnership.” It also proposes to “redefine accessibility criteria “ with the opening hours best suited in town and lunch, evening or weekend. As for rural areas, where “fixed costs are not commensurate with the activity,” the Court of Auditors recommends there are also increasing outsourcing and when it is impossible to increase the number of agents both factors and tellers to share costs.
in their joint reply, dated 27 April, the Finance Minister Michel Sapin, and the Ministry of Economy, Emmanuel Macron, argue that these savings measures have already begun to be implemented. In the city of all, through the deployment of “urban relay station” for longer opening hours, and “instructions pickup” for parcels of withdrawals. In the country then, with “service development homes to the public (MSAP) and the factors-tellers.”
La Poste had been pinned by the Court of accounts in February in its annual report, including the organization of the mail distribution. “ I understand the perplexity and doubts, [but] we, we are entrepreneurs” , replied a few days later the Group CEO Post, Philippe Wahl, during the presentation of results 2015 . a balance sheet improved significantly with net profit of 635 million euros.
Increase in price of postage and diversification in all directions
Despite the decline, almost inexorable, mail, bringing in its wake the attendance of post offices (500 million customers in 2013 to 458,000,000 last year), the post was able last year to increase its turnover by 4%. This result was obtained thanks to the rising price of the stamp and all-round diversification. Besides a “significant effort to control costs” according to its management, which has resulted according to the unions by 7500 departures not replaced in 2015 (3.5% of the workforce), the group also benefited from the dynamism of its subsidiary GeoPost dedicated to the transport of fast parcel in France and abroad, whose sales grew by 15.3% last year. The Post Bank, whose rates, although lower than the competition, have increased significantly in 1 st in January (from 4.20 euros to 6.20 euros per year for the cost of required account, an increase of almost 50%) confirmed his good performance with 1.3% of net banking income. It represents 25% of group activity
But the Post also multiplies the new activities in the digital (2% of total revenues) and logistics activities related to the Internet:. Launch Chronofresh (transport of fresh food), development of a connected button to send parcels from his mailbox and investments in various start-ups like Resto-in (fast delivery of meals on wheels) and Stuart ( urgent urban racing subcontracted to independent delivery). It was not until 2020 term strategic plan initiated by CEO Philippe Wahl, to see if the efforts of modernization and diversification of the first French company by the number of employees are bearing fruit and are likely to alleviate fears of magistrates of the Court of Auditors.
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