Oman Post hopes to 'deliver post in one hour'

Muscat: Oman Post hopes to one day deliver post "within an hour", a senior official from the company has said.
Sayyid Nasr al Busaidi, manager of Quality at Oman Post, said, "We aim to deliver post within an hour if possible. This is far in the future and we need to bring our stakeholders in on the Lean journey."
Al Busaidi's comments came during a celebratory press conference on International Post Day, during which officials from Oman Post spoke about its plans to grow in two ways: E-commerce and 'Lean' strategies.
According to Al Busaidi, 'lean' would not mean reduction in staff: "When you have a specific process that includes a machine or digital systems, then a job goes away, yes, but your employees will then be trained to manage that process or machine."
A short-term goal for the company, Oman Post CEO Abdul Malik Al Balushi added, is to deliver mail within 24 hours in major cities.
Al Balushi said, "One of our current goals is to deliver post in 24 hours in 15 major Omani cities, and 48 hours in other cities. We also wish to expand the network, with or without post offices."
Khalfi Al Kalbani, Senior Finance Manager also said that Oman Post will try to be profitable in the near future. "We hope to lower government subsidies within the next 3 years by reaching the Break Even Point. This is where 'Lean' helps by optimising resources. Once we become profitable, we wish to join ASYAAD," he said.
Al Balushi said the company would focus on e-commerce during the next three years. "E-commerce is of vast importance to logistics, which can be our strength and role in Oman's logistic strategy because we and Oman are building an environment suitable for e-commerce," he said, adding, "E-post solves physical mail problems because it is digital platform with a life-time long virtual box. It can help you manage mail and decide where it can reach you. Another service is Matjar, which is one year old, and is a consolidation service for providing addresses to order from the USA."
When asked about the company's current gap between E-services costumers and those who use traditional services, he said, "Matjar has around 26,000 customers, and our E-post has 2,000. Traditional postage has 70,000, and those customers often also have dependants.The percentage compared to our total customers is currently tiny, but these are new services."
Al Busaidi, added, "I often look at Starbucks' drive-through and think that one day, why can't we do the same for post?"
The company also announced plans to organise a large event in December, where it will show what it has achieved so far.