Botswana Post retains 'Icon of Excellence' strategy

BotswanaPost has decided to retain its 2011 Icon of Excellence strategy that ended in March 2016 despite failing to reach its dream of P500million mark on its revenue.

“We have since not been able to reach the P500million mark as a single entity. Our forecast is to achieve a rather modest revenue figure of P440million for the 2015/16 financial year. However, this figure would exceed our P500million target when we include our subsidiary, Botswana Couriers upon conclusion of the audit,” revealed BotswanaPost chairman Polokoetsile Motau recently.

The strategy was adopted in 2011 with a view to unlock value from its assets and turn its fortunes around to become a P500 million revenue company with a low operating cost.

The strategy which was designed and implemented by former Chief Executive Officer, Pele Moleta who left for Barclays Bank Botswana in September 2015, has been faced with challenges over the years.

It required significant financial resources and the Post needed to diversify in order to sustain its operations as a business, while it meets its obligation to provide a traditional mail service.

Motau said Icon of Excellence strategy is still very valid. “We are still going to need it going forward. We need to redesign and rework where we have fallen short”.Given the challenges encountered, the BotswanaPost Board of Directors has adopted and approved management request to perform a business performance improvement scan in the current financial year.

This was to ascertain the real performance of the business so as to inform the decision making with regard to the business strategy beyond 2017. Chief Executive Officer, Cornelius Ramatlhakwane who has been in the office for about seven months said that with the extension of this strategy they have added an additional value which is ‘execution’ but not over burdening the staff and the resources.

According to Ramatlhakwane, the strategy beyond 2016 amongst others “is aimed at leveraging smart technology and partnerships, developing new revenue streams and enhancing existing products; as well as reviewing and implementing the property strategy.”

Meanwhile, the scan identified that the Post was overly resourced at its head office but struggling at the customer facing structures (post offices). According to Motau, as the parastatal continued to introduce more services at its counters, it meant putting more strain on its branches without the requisite human capital. It revealed that 44 percent of total annual payroll was consumed by only 18 percent head office staff. The Post also had more than 107 temporary staff at the branches, while support was centralised at head office. Moreover, the organisation’s key processes were found to be deficient and performance management system was also found to be out of touch with reality.

“To address this, we adopted a new business design (the value centre organisation) that ensured that resources are redeployed where they were most needed, that is the branches,” reveals Motau.

Initially, the Botswana Post had only four regional managers, each managing about 30 post offices. Now the organisation has 12 value centre managers managing only 10 post offices. With this regional structure the managers are able to connect with their staff and involve them in daily decision making as well as model the behaviour they want to see and in return get the results desired.