POSTAL AND BUSINESS SERVICES

DIGITAL AND MULTI-CHANNEL SERVICES

With regard to the digital postal services that Poste Italiane supplies through Postecom SpA, the development and supply of the Hybrid Communication offering continued during 2014. This enable registered letters, telegrams, priority mail and e-commerce services to be provided online. In this regard, Poste Italiane’s e-commerce offering was expanded during the year, with the supply of web marketing services for the online promotion of merchants.
PosteID, the system that uses a smartphone or tablet to “provide proof of digital identity” for online transactions on participating websites (without having to key in one's means of payment data), was developed further. Thanks to a secure process guaranteed by Poste Italiane, the user can associate their digital identity with their smartphone in three simple steps:

• going to a post office to register and certify their phone number, or directly on the website www.poste.it using a PCR (Personal Card Reader) for BancoPosta online account holders;
• downloading the posteID app on to their mobile phone;
• making their mobile device secure by installing a certificate that associates their digital identity with their smartphone.

Moreover, PosteID functions were incorporated within the various Poste Italiane apps to authorise mobile transactions, also providing a means of authorisation to be used with PCR for online transactions.

SDA Express Courier also continued to offer interactive services through its www.sda.it website. Over 20.9 million visits were logged in 2014 (18 million logged in 2013), whilst around 82 million tracking requests were made (72 million in 2013) and around 2.4 million customers logged on to schedule pick-ups from their home or business address.
In addition to tracking and scheduling pick-ups, other integrated services available on the website include: clearance of shipments by the sender, via a system that automatically sends the stock list, together with codes the customer may use to clear shipments free of charge from the website; clearance of failed deliveries by the addressee; and search for delivery times to check active services and respective delivery times, based on the postcode and place of origin and the postcode and place of arrival.
A new web platform enables final customers, including retail customers, to manage their shipment on their own, printing the related forms, paying for the shipment and arranging pick-up from the sender’s address. Furthermore, since 2012 the SDA Mobile application has been up and running, which enables direct monitoring and management of deliveries using a smartphone.
Work on upgrading the website continued in 2014 with a view to improving accessibility and user-friendliness. In this regard, Skype was added to the online help desk for international services, and the Search for Shipments function was upgraded to also offer the option of tracking the shipment using not only the waybill number, but also the advice of non-delivery.