The Postal Department Shifts Responsibilities

SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that the Department of Posts (DoP), the government-operated postal system of India, has chosen SAP® solutions to strengthen responsiveness and reliability across more than 155,000 post offices. With this implementation, the DoP aims to deliver faster and more efficient services to the citizens and government and private organizations of India. The DoP is now one of more than 30 postal customers globally that have chosen SAP solutions to make mission-critical and customer-facing processes more effective.

"SAP postal services customers are leveraging the latest technology to transform their business, from improving efficiency in back-office and core processes to creating new lines of operations within their existing infrastructure," said Hans G. Landgraf, head of Business Segment Postal, SAP AG. "With our experience, SAP is eager to help India's Department of Posts improve its business and increase transparency across its organization in order to meet the changing demands of its customers."

As the backbone of India's communication for over 150 years, the DoP plays a crucial role in the socioeconomic development of the nation. Urbanization, increased demand for financial services and increased funding by the government for the weaker sections and the rural sector have opened up new opportunities for the DoP and necessitated the development of new processes as well as supporting technology.

Armed with a transformation charter that includes a complete overhaul of operations under an IT modernization project, the DoP will leverage SAP applications that include SAP® ERP, SAP® Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) and SAP® Supply Chain Management (SAP SCM) to help increase process efficiencies and meet its business, social and financial inclusion goals. As the DoP generates revenue of more than EUR1.1 billion while employing nearly 474,000 employees, it will also implement SAP solutions for streamlining internal processes in the areas of human resources, payroll processing and finance and accounts.

In addition to running core and back-office operations, SAP® Sybase® Adaptive Server® Enterprise, SAP® Sybase® IQ software, SAP® BusinessObjects^TM solutions and SAP® Data Services software will offer the DoP the data warehousing and business intelligence (BI) needed for its entire operations system. The Government of India also intends to utilize the DoP's vast network for its direct cash transfer function, which aims to reduce leakages, cut down corruption, eliminate middlemen, target beneficiaries better and speed up transfer of benefits to eligible individuals. Workers across India, especially those in rural areas, will be able to reap the gains from the direct benefits transfer (DBT) leveraging their existing savings accounts in post offices.

Today, the DoP delivers more than 6 billion articles every year through its elaborate network of offices. The reengineering of business process using SAP solutions will enable the DoP to increase its engagement with the Indian population through more customer interaction channels. SAP software will help the organization improve automation of core processes including postal counter automation, track and trace, logistics post, e-commerce and customer interaction channel.