DEATH AND THE POSTMAN

I found this essay I published 23 years ago. Millennials may be tickled by the issues that consumed us back when owning an email account was a luxury. The essay, which ran in two installments in the Guardian (Nigeria), triggered some interesting conversations back then.

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DEATH AND THE POSTMAN (1)

Time for electronic commerce

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(Guardian newspapers, January 28, 2001)

In his book, “Only the Paranoid Survive”, Andy Grove described strategic inflection points as a time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change. That change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights, or a signal for the beginning of the end. These realities dawn upon businesses – most times, unannounced – and change the nature of the business forever. Grove expounded that only the paranoid look out for these changes and prepares for them, such that when this point is finally arrived at, like the Boys’ Scout of old, the business will be prepared for it.

These strategic inflection points can be triggered by any event or combination of events: a change in government, a policy review, an earthquake in Kobe, mad cow disease in Britain, death of a supreme ruler in Africa, and so forth. Whatever the event may be, one better be on the look out for it. For if it doesn’t make one, it will take one.

In the good old days of the Towncrier, it was business as usual. I can visualise him relaxing in his recliner in front of his hut, with clients lying in supplication around his feet, begging him to do them a service of announcing an age grade meeting or the much awaited wrestling match. The Towncrier feels very important and indispensable. Unknown to him, a strategic inflection point lies in ambush, just down the bush path leading up to his pseudo-fiefdom.

That was then. Sooner than our dear Towncrier realised, his world came crashing down. The Whiteman introduced new and obviously better communication media and this changed the way messages were to be transmitted, forever. The advent of the radio marked the strategic inflection point for the Towncrier but he refused to acknowledge it as one. I can hear him saying that the villagers can never afford the radio sets, hence, would always require his services. He concludes that even if the entire village succeeds in collectively purchasing one, no one would ever have enough money or the wherewithal to place advertisements on the radio. “In fact, this new radio technology is not for this part of the world. It must be for the Whiteman. I will FOREVER remain in business”. Oh! How ignorant thou art!

The world of the Towncrier changed before his very eyes without his acknowledging it. A change for ever and ever. Today, our dear old Towncrier who used to be an elite of sorts, has gone extinct. In some villages - unfortunately like mine - where his services are sometimes engaged, he is no longer the man of honour he used to be, but a man of ordinary, if not low, standing in the society. Oh! How hath the mighty fallen!

With the advent of the Internet, eCommerce, “free” e-mail services, Internet-to-phone services, Internet-to-fax services, and a zillion other services, I see a similar strategic inflection point down the bush path leading up to the house of the Nigerian Postman. The question is “How ready is the Postman”?

In these good days of the Postman, it is business as usual. I can visualise him relaxing on his recliner in his office, with clients lying in supplication around his feet, begging him to do them a service of providing them with fast, efficient and courteous postal services. The Nigerian Postman obviously feels very important and probably indispensable. Unknown to him, a strategic inflection point lies in ambush, just down the corridor leading up to his pseudo-fiefdom.

The reality today is that daily more and more Nigerians exchange mails via the Internet. Thousands of Nigerians are hooking up to these services from neighbourhood cybercafes, university e-mail centres or from their offices. We are all getting to live life @net speed such that the inefficiencies of the Nigerian Postal System (in this article known as the Postman) can no longer be tolerated. The Postman needs to get paranoid about these realities or sooner than later, he may go the way of our dear old Towncrier. How mighty the fall would be!

What does the Postman need to do to ensure that he turns this strategic inflection point into an advantage and probably, a sustainable competitive advantage? The answers will be in the second part of this essay.

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DEATH AND THE POSTMAN (2)

Time for electronic commerce

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If my dear old Postman will listen I will tell him that it’s time to change the model. It is time to get on the Net @eSpeed. I will tell him that although he might not know it, he holds the aces for eBusiness in Nigeria.

TO-DOS

Electronic Commerce (or better still, eCommerce) is a business reality Nigerians can not afford to sweep under the rug. There is no way Nigeria is going to stand alone in this eWorld. In my earlier articles in The Guardian on Sunday, I had expounded on the opportunities for eCommerce in Nigeria and since then there have been a lot of action in this regard. Andersen Consulting has been at the forefront of this crusade, organising seminars and workshops on eCommerce business opportunities. Added to this is an increased presence of Nigerian businesses on the Internet. A major brewery in Nigeria has recently re-organised its supply (and demand) chain to be aligned to the dictates of the eAge and is also working on a webpage through which to interact with all stakeholders in the business. There is also an IT company that is about to launch a portal for small and medium scale businesses in Nigeria. A bus transport company has just launched a website to offer special fares. What all these say to me is that in spite of the challenges posed by the telecommunication infrastructure and the electronic payment medium, Nigerian businesses have logged-on to the gains of eCommerce, and they are not snoozing.

In the early days of eCommerce, the business model was Land grab. All the early entrants tried every trick possible to attract and retain visitors to their site. This led to the birth of free e-mail services. Websites offered free e-mail services and these ensured that customers visited the sites daily to access their mails and as such were a captive market to advertisers on the websites.

The model is changing again. It has been observed that most of the eCustomers have been won already, albeit in the developed economies. As a result another way of making money on the Internet has been developed. This model is known as Navigation. In this model, Internet companies develop databases of their existing customers and make these available to any business interested in direct one-to-one marketing. If the Postman develops a database of his existing customers, he will be in a vantage position to navigate target customers to target clients as electronic commerce fully takes off in Nigeria. What this means is that it will have quite a number of databases to sell to interested parties. He will be the watchman at the gates of eCommerce in Nigeria. Herein lies an opportunity for the Postman.

For our Postman to leapfrog to the frontier of the eAge, I would suggest that he builds up databases of customers from his existing customer base. An approach to this is for the Postman to create e-mail accounts for all his existing customers, and fully equip his offices in major cities with terminals from which customers can access their mails.

The email accounts should be offered on the webpage of the Nigerian Postal Service. The users should be offered the capability of creating their choice e-mail accounts free of charge. It should be possible to also check whether one has received hardcopy mails in one’s mailbox, and if one wishes for the mails to be hand delivered, one should be able to specify from the website. Thus, it will be easy for me to visit the site and create a patrick.okigboIII@nipost.com account, and also check for my hardcopy mails. This may imply a new line of business for our Postman. It may mean transforming the NIPOST into a full-fledged Internet Service Provider. The potentials are endless and there is knowledge capital and experience available in Nigeria to meet these needs.

Although customers are not to pay for the service, the tariff for owning private mailboxes may be upped a little bit to defray the initial costs. The income will come from other businesses that wish to advertise on the website and also from businesses that purchases databases from NIPOST for their various purposes. It will make business sense for a Standard Trust Bank to purchase a specific database from the Postman and engage in direct one-to-one marketing of their new product (developed for young professionals in the Lagos area) than to engage in other forms of broad marketing.

The Postman can also partner with all the new portals that are being formed all over Nigeria to offer customer services: job advertisements, property sales or letting, tokunbo car sales, banking services and products, university admissions, demographic surveys for the office of statistics etc. Furthermore, besides making money for the Postman, the project will advance the nation in her sojourn to the new eEconomy and its gains. The Postman is sitting on a pot of gold. I just hope he realises this early enough before some other business gets there.

The question then is “What will happen to the Postman if it refuses to play in the eEconomy?” Probably, it will remain business as usual until some other person offers this service. “Does this mean that the Postman will have to shut down and sack all his staff, thus further worsen the unemployment situation in Nigeria?” I haven’t seen that in my crystal ball yet. Nigeria is not a country where business decisions are taken for purely business reasons, so maybe for some political reason, the Postman will still have his doors open even after it is clear to all that his business is on the downturn. What is clear in my crystal ball is that once this service is provided to Nigerians (may be by an independent investor), a near spiritual revival is going to occur. Nigerians will be jolted in to realising that mails do not have to take so long to be delivered. From that point, the Postman should start counting his last days. Once Nigerians get used to receiving mails in microseconds, they will expect such services from the Postman. With the volume of hardcopy mails reduced, Nigerians will find it more convenient to patronise courier companies who are the closest to the speed of e-mail delivery. What this means to me is reduced volume of business transactions and a dip in the income curve for the Postman.

Mr. Postman, I advise you to act now. For every mailbox, create an e-mail account. Make it free and grab the market. Don’t gasp at that because Cosmos Technologies, in affiliation with Microsoft Inc and a couple of other global IT firms are about to do it in Nigeria. You better get there first, or these businesses will steal the family gold from under your nose.

JUST DO IT

Start by contacting a reputable strategy-consulting firm to look at your strategy for playing in this market. With that out of the way, invite a management and technology consulting firm to review and possibly re-design your processes to ensure that they can support the operations. Of course, you need to make investments in the areas of human capital development. With the right strategy, processes, and people in place, then the only other component is the technology to support the business. Thank goodness, there is the capability to deliver Internet solutions locally. With all these in place, the rest are barely operational details.

Remember that the money is in Navigation. More Nigerian companies are getting on the Internet offering different goods and services. These businesses would wish to market select groups and target customers. You, Mr. Postman, would navigate the specific customers to the specific businesses. Think about this, for herein lies the business for the new millennium. He whose platform is burning does not chase little bush rodents. My dear Postman, please get paranoid. Get ready for eCommerce. The time is now!

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Patrick Okigbo III, Senior Analyst, Accenture, Lagos