Winning this year’s Scotiabank Business Plan Competition is just the kind of public relations push that Lester Woolward and Samantha Austin need to help promote C-Post, an emerging enterprise that seeks to infuse a greater measure of efficiency into the delivery of packages across Guyana.
C-Post targets the business community in what it describes as an “aggressive corporate distribution strategy” that seeks to improve the quality of service offered by a local postal facility that is manifestly limited in its capacity to provide timely and reliable delivery to the local business community, far less all of Guyana. In its prize-winning presentation C-Post alluded to “growing complaints about the difficulty in sharing of information in a timely manner,” a less than subtle criticism of the current postal service.
Some of the attendant problems, the duo said, are delayed project completion and submission, non-receipt or delayed receipt of statements and bills, mismanaged or neglected day-to-day tasks and responsibilities and severe financial losses. There are myriad other ways in which the business community and the country as a whole suffer on account of a postal service which, for years, has simply been able to keep pace with the growing demand for the delivery of regular mail and larger packages.
While the longer term aim of C-Point is to serve the entire country, its current preoccupation is with some of the country’s major corporate players—commercial banks and insurance companies among others—in the hope, Austin says, that a breakthrough at that level will go a long way towards persuading the rest of the business community that C-Post can deliver the goods. The banks, she says, “are an important testing ground.”
Engaging institutions like banks and insurance companies involves going through thickets of logistical and legal issues and while the House Street service has already opened its doors to a limited number of customers, Woolward expects that C-Point will be fully ready to hit the road in January next year.
C-Post’s strategy involves the division of the capital and its surrounding areas into ten zones. Each zone is assigned an agent, who must be familiar with the assigned zone, including businesses and key industries.
At the moment, C- Post comprises a five-member team that includes a Public Relations Officer, a Strategy Director and an Operations Coordinator.
At full strength, C-Post will comprise multiple teams of 11 members and each team will be headed by a Crew Chief. The company’s business plan sets aside what it says is “the conventional method” of package distribution where a single courier is assigned to a particular zone. The two C-Post officials say that the service could prove particularly useful to commercial banks since their written communication are a critical part of both their business and their customer service.
Woolward, whose previous experience in business includes the management of a security service, estimates that C-Post’s startup costs will be around $10 million but that the incremental expansion programme will cost “several more millions.” Both he and Austin believe, however, believe that their initiative could be a game-changer in a sector that is growing in its significance to the Guyana economy.
