Thailand Post focuses on e-commerce

The move is in line with the company’s vision “to be an international standard postal service provider and an end-to-end e-commerce logistics service that is always first in customers’ minds”.
Parisa said the company has restructured itself to improve its capability in providing all necessary activities in the ecosystem to help local operators in the e-commerce market – both online market place operators and SMEs. She said Thailand Post has increased its service hours in many branches from 8am to 8pm and is open even up to midnight at some branches. 
At major airports, the company provides post and express delivery service 24 hours a day, all days of the week. The move is to cater its services to fit in with the lifestyle of people doing online trading activities.
“In a strategic move to support e-commerce business activities in Thailand, we [Thailand Post] are providing integrated services in the ecosystem, comprising logistics and transportation, packaging, payment and other financial services, trading and market place,” said Parisa. She added that Thailand Post Mart has been created as an online market place for the development of community goods. A new subsidiary has been set up to provide logistics service for business-to-business activities.
Parisa said that Thailand Post has been moving into new S-curve businesses, including ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC), financially relevant services and applying full automation at its post offices, such as in the sorting of postal products. 
She said Thailand Post achieved about Bt30 billion in total revenue last year, of which 47 per cent, or Bt14 billion, were from logistics and delivery services.
“We have posted annual growth rate of between 14 and 15 per cent. It is much less than the growth of the total e-commerce market in Thailand, which is seeing average growth of about 30 per cent a year,” said Parisa. 
“We need to improve our efficiency to cash in on the growth opportunity in the online market,” she added. 
Parisa said that seminar and workshop activities are being held by Thailand Post to educate local e-commerce entrepreneurs so that they can treat Thailand Post as their partner in learning and growing their online business together.
Thailand Post has more than 8,000 drop points for its postal products, including a strong network of 3,000 own post office branches and 2,000 licensed and franchised postal outlets. 
“We have joined with major petrol stations such as PTT, Bangchak and PT, as well as hypermarkets, including Tesco Lotus and Big C, for the expansion of Thailand Post’s drop point network,” she said.