Strategic Analysis: SWOT Analysis of Australia Post - Management 7

This report presents a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of Australia Post, a leading postal service provider in Australia. The analysis explores the company's robust market presence, diverse service offerings (including insurance, money transfer, and partnerships with financial institutions), and brand recognition as key strengths. Weaknesses include the slow pace of traditional mail services, lack of technological advancement, and workforce management challenges. Opportunities identified involve leveraging brand recognition for new alliances, partnerships with tech companies for service enhancements, and the growth of e-commerce partnerships. Threats include the decline in letter delivery, the need to meet minimum delivery requirements, and competition from industry giants like FedEx. The report also analyzes Australia Post's core competencies, focusing on its market share, government support, and reinvestment strategies. Current strategies, including leveraging other business sectors and embracing drone technology, are discussed. The analysis incorporates references to academic sources and industry reports to support its findings.

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Table of Contents
SWOT analysis................................................................................................................................3
Strengths:.....................................................................................................................................3
Weakness:....................................................................................................................................3
Opportunities:..............................................................................................................................4
Threats:........................................................................................................................................4
Core competency analysis...............................................................................................................4
Current strategies.............................................................................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................6

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SWOT analysis
A SWOT analysis is extremely significant for an organization to frame its objectives and identify
its strengths, weakness, opportunity, and threats regarding the organization’s operations and
objectives.
Strengths:
Australia Post is a leading name in the postal delivery service industries within the country. The
company has always made sure that it expands and remains in the market they have started with.
But they also took upon chances to spread their organization in the country. Their operations and
services cover a huge array of facilities. Insurance is one such major addition, such as travel, car,
and home insurance. They also facilitated money transferring service within the nation and
internationally by partnering up with an Australian bank, Western Union (Khazabi, 2017). There
were also gift and travel cards, document services such as annual tax filing, identity documents,
applications and renewals, passport and license renewals along with a special postal service only
provided to other business companies. Four major banks and other finance companies of
Australia have partnered up with the organization to expedite their banking facilities via the
Australia Post outlets for the general public to use. The company also has partnerships that
enable them to provide a safe server of online bank and card payments. The online payments are
equipped for real-time invoice payments and e-commerce website money transactions and
connect over 20,000 business groups with the rest of the world (Jaag, Moyano & Trinkner,
2016).
Weakness:
The old-fashioned postal service is now too slow for the current time period. The usual mail
segmentation process is not sufficient and many individuals and companies are choosing online

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services over them for communication and other matters. The company lacks advanced
technology. Their main service of sorting mail and delivering them is not required anymore. So,
the company has a huge number of employees who are financial burdens now to them
(Lachapelle et al., 2018). Technology has taken over these services and the company has failed
to adapt to new structures to stay in the business and remain useful to people. Their supply and
demand market is also low, even with their diverse markets. The company has to utilize the
workforce, they have in other ways.
Opportunities:
Due to being a famous brand, the company is open to acquiring some new alliances and partners
to help them in their current situation. While the company itself lacks technologies, other
Australian tech companies are able to utilize technology to develop their postal service. The
customers and business groups can use their service for data tracking, courier facility, and
international shipment service along with order tracking (Jo & Kim, 2017). An Australian start-
up business Shippit offers its customers to select Australian Post for getting their deliveries while
tracking the order, receiving package notification, and estimated delivery date. E-commerce,
providing partnership is also a strong opportunity for them.
Threats:
Letter delivery has decreased a lot in the past decade and the company has taken a huge hit. As
per Australian legislation, the company is required to meet a minimum number of letter
deliveries to remain in the postal business. Besides, their letter delivery service has not been able
to meet the minimum profit margin and instead it only increases loss compared to the operational
costs. Moreover, there are strong and famous names in the industry now such as FedEx, which is
a threat to them. Having current technology and faithful operations, these brands are recognized

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for their e-commerce package delivery and its extensive market growth (Lawrence, Coelli &
Kain, 2015).
Core competency analysis
Australia Post has a huge market share and brand recognition in the country. One of its major
competencies is its shareholders and the profits allotted for them. The company only returns
1.6% of its revenue, but its only shareholder is the federal government. So, the company thrives
on its own with gaining most of its capital and revenues over the years. Even though their letter
business is marking significant loss in the past years, yet it has been able to reinvest all of its
profits in the business to make it self-sustaining. This is possible because of the government
handouts and political strategy. They are in a position to utilize this opportunity to grow their
business. But it’s rather losing it's market to its recent competitors (Cummings, 2019).
Their package delivery service has the company succeed as it has shown a hike in the domestic
market share. The percentage of market growth and expansion has been changing every one or
two years in two opposite directions. But it has certainly helped them to maintain a cash flow
stream within the company. The company’s strategy was to stand out amidst email and online
business, but it is not working. So, it is better for them to change their strategy which would
sustain their market growth without losing anymore market. In the meantime, they can pick up
their letter delivery service.
The company has more than 12,000 vehicles and 15,000 post boxes to build a strong postal
delivery service. The central market share and customers’ faith in the service are still with them.
Their major advantage is their position in the country. So, they can research the customers’ needs
and build a better facility which would give their competitors a tough time to enter the central

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space. The company will be training its employees for a drone delivery system (Summers, &
Verikios, 2018).
Current strategies
Their major drawback is their old-fashioned letter delivery system. Meanwhile, some researchers
suggest that the company has been falling down as it has spread its branches in every possible
business opportunity it has deemed fit. They have an insurance business, franchising, online
payment, banking outlets and many more. According to them, the company could invest their
full attention to one business rather than entering into every space. Now the company is thinking
of creating leverage with its other business industries to develop and modify their letter delivery
business. They can build better logistics with their current recognition and revenues to facilitate
the parcel delivery system. The company has also taken up the latest drone technologies. It will
be using drones and automobile vehicle services operated by their postal delivery employees for
sending out letters and packages faster and more smoothly (Rogowski et al., 2017). Thus, it can
gain a competitive advantage with other organizations.

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References
Cummings, E., 2019. Barriers to Telehealth Uptake in Rural, Regional, Remote
Australia: What Can Be Done to Expand Telehealth Access in Remote Areas?. DIGITAL
HEALTH: CHANGING THE WAY HEALTHCARE IS CONCEPTUALISED AND
DELIVERED, p.174.
Jaag, C., Moyano, J.P. and Trinkner, U., 2016. Postal strategies in a digital age. The
future of the postal sector in a digital world (pp. 103-120). Springer, Cham.
Jo, J. and Kim, H., 2017. Development of a safety index to identify differences in safety
performance by postal delivery motorcyclists based either in different regional post
offices or within the same regional office. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-
Information, 6(11), p.324.
Khazabi, M., 2017. Postal service markets: an international comparative analysis. Journal
of Public Affairs, 17(3), p.e1599.
Lachapelle, U., Burke, M., Brotherton, A. and Leung, A., 2018. Parcel locker systems in
a car dominant city: Location, characterization and potential impacts on city planning and
consumer travel access. Journal of Transport Geography, 71, pp.1-14.
Lawrence, D., Coelli, T. and Kain, J., 2015. Updated Estimates of Australia Post’s Mail
Centre and Delivery Centre Cost Elasticities.
Rogowski, J.C., Gerring, J., Maguire, M. and Cojocaru, L., 2017. State Infrastructure and
Economic Development: Evidence from Postal Systems. Unpublished Manuscript.
Summers, M.P. and Verikios, G., 2018. Assistive technology pricing in Australia: is it
efficient and equitable? Australian Health Review, 42(1), pp.100-110.

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