Professor Richard Wilding, Professor of Supply Chain Risk Management at Cranfield School of Management, believes that organisations should use the experience to analyse their systems, managing this risk to pro-actively gain competitive advantage. 

He believes they must build better relationships with customers, suppliers employees and other stakeholders which create value and also reduce costs in the long term.

"All businesses are part of a supply chain. The supply chain involves the flow of information and resources and the postal strike can disrupt these flows," he said.

Professor Wilding believes there are a number of key actions organisations can take:

Can you answer the following questions?

1. What are your key resources?

Identify your key resource flows and assess the impact postal disruption has on them. The key resources required for a business to function include Material, People, Information, Facilities, Money, and Utilities.

2. How will a postal dispute impact on your material flows?

Can orders be placed on suppliers? Can goods be dispatched to customers? Can goods be received from suppliers? Do you pay for utilities by cheque? Do they send the bill by post? 

Review these questions and look for alternatives.  Give your customers the option of different delivery services, they may be very happy to pay a bit extra to guarantee delivery.  For example can an alternative courier be used?  Can an electronic version of an order be sent rather than a hard copy?  For magazines, newspapers, journals and news letters can the online version be made available to customers?

3. How will a postal dispute impact on key information flows?

What business critical information is circulated through the postal system?  Can financial information and order information be circulated electronically?  If it has to be circulated by post what alternatives are available?   Remember, always convert documents into a format that can not be edited, for example, Portable Document Format (pdf) can be easily secured and prevents anyone from editing numbers!

4. How will the postal disruption impact on your cash flow?

The cheque is in the post is no longer a valid excuse!  Which of your customers and suppliers pay by or are paid by cheque?  Do you pay for key services by cheque? 

Investigate direct payment options, most banks have internet banking facilities, use these where possible as it will save you money as the charge for a direct payment is much less than a cheque. You also save on postage. Do suppliers accept credit card payments and can you accept credit card payments? Is your website capable of being used for credit card payments from customers?

5. How will postal disruption impact on your people?

What information do you regularly receive from your employees by post and what information do you send to them in the post?

For example, Are travel documents circulated by the postal system?  How are expenses processed and paid? Will they get their payslip?  Do you send details of payments by post to your bank?   Look for alternatives and keep your employees fully informed.  For membership organisations if you are balloting members explore the use of telephone voting or internet voting or use alternative postal providers to distribute ballot papers.

6. Communication builds trust, what new ways can you find to communicate with key stakeholders?

The key word is "communication". Communicate with customers, suppliers, employees and other stakeholders.  Use the postal disruption as an "excuse” to telephone people to discuss new ways of working, this will help build relationships.

Manage key processes electronically where possible, place on your website how you are dealing with the postal dispute and give suppliers and customers options. This helps build the relationships, shows you are being pro-active and not re-active. 

By reviewing your key processes and discussing the way you are working with customers, suppliers and employees you can build trust. 

Many organisations also find they save money by being able to manage information more effectively, save postage costs and reduce bank charges.  See postal disruption as an opportunity not a threat, it could enable you to secure competitive advantage in the future.

Related articles

• Royal Mail obtains Court ban on strikes

Related links

• Cranfield School of Management