Parcelforce: Building the Future Project
With the rise in both domestic and international online shopping, we’re seeing rapid growth in the parcels market.
These volumes are only going to keep rising, with the potential to increase by over 30% by 2027.
Not only are we seeing growth in volumes, but our customers' expectations are also changing. Across the world, people want their parcels faster and with more convenience. The size of the items being shipped is increasing, and we are seeing more products with complex needs wanting to be delivered.
We want Royal Mail Group, inclusive of Parcelforce, to be the best in the industry, offering products and services for parcels of all sizes. But if we want to be the market leader, we must evolve to meet the demands of our customers and exceed what our competitors offer.
Where we are now
Although recent years have been challenging for Parcelforce, over the past 12 months we have made significant improvements, including achieving a consistently high quality of service score. Despite this, we continue to face key obstacles when it comes to responding to the changing demands of our customers:
- We’re operating at a loss, with a drop in both revenue and volume, limiting us in being able to invest in our future,
- We’re using a product pricing structure that puts us in unnecessary competition with Royal Mail and,
- Our current IT systems are coming to the end of their life and would cost more than £30 million to replace.
The need for change is essential, but we have vast potential to become the parcel service our customers want. With the right transformation, we believe we can grow from a 75 million parcels a year to a network that can handle over 160 million annually.
Through this growth, we also want to secure a bright future for Parcelforce, building career opportunities, job security and high-quality roles for our people.
How we are transforming for our customers
As an expert in the large parcel market, the Royal Mail Group Executive Board sees that Parcelforce has a crucial role to play in the future of the group. Because of this, they have decided to invest significantly in our people and network. That is why we’re excited for Parcelforce: Building the Future.
This programme of work aims to integrate the strongest capabilities of both Parcelforce and Royal Mail into a combined single network for medium and large parcels.
With our many strengths, such as loose loading and a low touch of parcels, along with a network that more closely aligns with how our competitors work, we’re in a brilliant position to share our parcels expertise with Royal Mail. At the same time, integrating more closely with a network on the scale of Royal Mail puts us in the best possible position to grow our products, volumes and revenue.
In short, this project will allow both companies to work better together and benefit from each other’s strengths. It will give our collective customers a convenient and reliable end-to-end solution for parcels, and allow us to grow further opportunities for our people.
- Operational interoperability, which will allow all products to be collected, processed and delivered by both networks, increasing the reach of both companies for our customers
- The alignment of the customer offering and ways of working across the Commercial and Operational teams, removing the competition between our companies and helping each to grow
- Shutting down the Parcelforce legacy IT systems and moving to a common IT platform. This will allow the free movement of parcels between the networks, increased parcel visibility and smoother operating between the companies.
What does it mean for everyone?
For the business?
For PFW colleagues
