Sadiq Akinkunmi, general manager, Rowsy International Cargo and Courier Services has said that the increased number of operators in the courier sector will help drive courier business to efficiency.
Speaking to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek, Akinkunmi said that competition in the courier industry is not a bad development even as he disclosed that without competition there won’t be any meaningful development in the industry. Competition, he informed, makes them to brace up to the challenges of doing business and he noted that the company is well positioned for effective competition.
One of the strategies adopted by the firm apart from the Nigeria Express Mail service that delivers goods and parcels coming into Lagos from the U.K next day in Lagos and Abuja, the company handles branding in a distinct manner. Akinkunmi revealed that the outfit has special way of packaging their consignments meant for both local and international destinations. "This is to make the brand different from the others and it has been working for us as once you sign on as our customer, you don’t just seize patronizing us," Akinkunmi disclosed.
In the delivery of consignment, he said once the goods are out, it takes them no time to get across to the customer on phone to inform him or her of the arrival of the goods before actual delivery is made.
On the level of expansion so far undertaken by the company, the general manager said even though the company is young but that within the short period it started business it has made remarkable progress.
The company started with a small warehouse for their consignments at Ikeja, but over time has acquired a bigger warehouse at Ajoa Estate when it discovered that the warehouse could no longer contain the volume of goods arriving into the country from their head office in the U.K as well as from their branch networks in Dubai and the United States.
The operations of the company according to Akinkunmi have also expanded. Five more offices have been strategically opened in different locations outside Lagos.
The courier firm has opened offices in Ado Ekiti, Ibadan, Ilorin, Abuja and Port Harcourt. These offices, Akinkunmi said, are strategic and are meant to link up transactions in the other parts of the country.
Though the company may be young in terms of start off date, but it has been able to distinguish itself in customer satisfaction in all facets of courier business the company engages in.
With the Express Mail service, parcels and consignments which they call Next Day Delivery, goods can arrive in Lagos today from the United Kingdom and the next day the consignee receives the goods in Lagos or Abuja.
In terms of human resource, the company has also grown from one staff for its Lagos office to thirteen after few months of operation.
To motivate the staff to achieve more, he said the management of the company has designed a welfare package that will be implemented soon which is tailored towards making staff satisfaction a major component of the company’s drives.
As part of the efforts of the company to monitor trends in the industry, Akinkunmi said the company staff always attend seminars and workshops organized by the Courier Regulatory Department (CRD) and emphasized that the import of those seminars are far-reaching as they are enriching. They are also told things to be considered in courier at such workshops.
In addition to the seminars organized by the CRD, Akinkunmi also revealed that internally, the courier firm trains its workers on the use of computer and other aspects. Their greatest asset in that area is that 90 percent of their workforce are university graduates and so lectures are quickly assimilated and this, he said, facilitates the efficiency of the company in their various line of courier business and also helps the company to achieve its mission of "Delivering Smiles Worldwide".
On the 48hours clearance process directive by the federal government, Akinkunmi disclosed that as the workers are able to operate the computers and with the company already online, they deliver next day from the U.K to Nigeria and within Nigeria. In that case, the company operates within 24 hours delivery ahead of the 48hours clearance directive issued by the government. Their target is also to surpass this achievement.
On the challenges faced in the industry, Akinkunmi said that if you talk of courier that you are talking about express delivery of consignments. However, he said that to effect this traditional role, courier companies in Nigeria especially in Lagos are constrained by a lot of factors. The traffic in Lagos hampers the speedy delivery of parcels by courier.
Another major challenge according to him is the local government officials that always harass and intimidate their despatch riders and making spurious demands from them.
They also suffer the same fate in the hands of Lastma officers and the police. He said that as long as the vehicle conveying the goods is branded and the staff of the courier firm inside the vehicle has identity card and driver’s license on him, what the police is expected to do is to ask for the waybill of the consignment and with the contact address of the consignee, the police could phone and confirm if the person is expecting the goods or not. He lamented over the delay and said that some of these goods in transit are time sensitive and needs to be treated as such.
