By Winsley Masese
Nairobi, Kenya: The Postal Corporation of Kenya has set out to leverage technology to face stiff competition from social media and other courier service providers.
This is part of its objectives according to its strategic plan of 2013-2016, an exercise Post Master General Enock Kinara says would cost an estimated Sh14 billion.
“We want to leverage on ICT and have picked it up to deliver on the existing and new products,” he said.
He said the agency is in the final stages of rolling out Posta Registered Electronic Mail (Prem).
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The system aims to give a technological touch to sending of commercial mail such as financial and annual reports, advertising mail and bills. Safaricom was one of its key clients in sending financial reports through their system but no longer does so.
Changing needs
“Imagine making Sh80 per report from the over 1 million Safaricom shareholders who used to receive the reports through our system,” he said.
Kinara knows too well that the state agency can easily go out of business if it’s not proactive and it must reflect on the changing needs of its customers. Using Prem, once the receiver gets their mail, an alert is sent if it is opened. If the receiver reads the mail, a certificate of confirmation is issued as evidence that the document was received.
“We will thus register all the secured documents so that it reflects once the receiver sees and opens it,” said Kinara.
