Our innovation
Our expertise

Innovation creates new value for our customers and communities, ensuring a sustainable enterprise for our people and shareholder.

While changing technology and a globalising world is providing many challenges to our letters business, it is also providing significant new opportunities to use the assets of Australia Post to solve the new and emerging problems of customers and communities around Australia.

The focus of our innovation efforts involve making eCommerce, eGovernment and the broader digitisation of trusted services more accessible. Pursuing these opportunities will enable all Australians to start and grow businesses, participate in global marketplaces and access government services.

There are three major developments supporting innovation at Australia Post:

• supporting all our people in listening to customers and solving customer problems
• co-creating new products and services with leading customers in our solution centres in eCommerce and trusted services
• launching the Australia Post Accelerator which partners or invests in new businesses created internally or via our investment fund

Innovating with our people

The basis of innovation continues to be our people. Their passion for customers and communities has been the core of the development of Australia Post for over 200 years. Today we are equipping them with enhanced tools and data to understand the customer requirements and improve the customer experience. The roll-out of our customer feedback management system and NPS tools is providing new opportunities for all our people to listen and solve customer problems. Employee immersion events known as The Grapevine give people across our business the opportunity to engage in the future of Australia Post and their role in making changes that benefit customers and our business.

Hack Dayz, where employees come together to identify customer problems and work intensively on building or “hacking” a working prototype or solution, are now common events inside Australia Post. Recently an “intrapreneurship” program where employees initiate new business ideas to test and develop with customers has also been introduced.

Our product, sales and marketing teams are aligned to customers and today work collaboratively to solve our customers’ most important problems. Design thinking and agile delivery teams are now a core part of the capability of these teams. This year we worked with customers on many important future developments that included:

• same day delivery options for leading online retailers
• new delivery solutions for regional customers through drone trials
• new co-working workspaces called the Small Business Hive, designed to support the business service and space needs of entrepreneurs and start-ups in local communities
• continued development of eCommerce application programming interfaces (APIs) and self-scanning applications for small to medium businesses
• new digital “one stop” change of address applications for corporate and governments.

We are also investing to support a more innovative Australia. Our Go & Grow Online events continue to be popular, particularly in regional Australia. In a forum designed to foster conversation about online opportunities, we bring in experts to discuss topics such as search engine optimisation and best practice eCommerce, so entrepreneurs can start online businesses, and established small businesses can grow and export. In 2015/16, we held 38 Go & Grow Online sessions with expert presenters, most of which were hosted by local members of parliament.

Other events involved our eCommerce partners Google, Facebook and LinkedIn, to help business gain insights from industry leaders about online trends and growth opportunities.

In 2015/16, we created an integrated campaign to promote the opportunity all Australians have in eCommerce. We Love Delivering was used to demonstrate the idea that now every Australian, everywhere, can start a business and their first customer can be anywhere in the world.

In 2016, we also launched on Alibaba’s business-to-business marketplace, called 1688.com. There are now five Margaret River (Western Australia) wineries on our 1688 storefront and recent orders included a shipping container of wine to China. Demand for quality Australian products in unlocking a world of opportunity for local businesses wanting to grow into China.

Further opportunities are available through our agreement with JD.com, China’s second largest online retailer. This includes a flagship online store showcasing Australian products, which exposes Australian businesses to more than 500 million customers on the JD Worldwide website.

Our strategy is to empower consumers, business and government to connect, create and thrive in the digitised future. This means growing our role in government service delivery, creating products that connect our communities to everyday services, like bill payments, and expanding our capability in identity, payment and information management services. Our range of services keeps growing and all four major Australian banks now use Bank@Post.

We are also providing identity services on behalf of the Victorian Land Titles Office, working with the Northern Territory Department of Transport to digitise vehicle licensing and the Queensland Government to process fishing licenses. In South Australia we are investigating a return to work solution that involves scanning compensation claims at Post Offices. Through our Decipha business we also offer digitised donations for charity groups, to encourage greater contribution through convenient channels.

From the seemingly simple notion of enabling customers to search and lease Post Office boxes via the internet using PO Box Online, to the digital native-style Snap It App launched in July that allows employees to log customer queries, safety and damage issues immediately, we have made customers the focus of our eCommerce discoveries and services.