Developing a knowledge base for postal organisations

Abstract

A pilot study has been conducted to investigate the interest by international postal organisations in a 'knowledge base' containing case studies of innovations in postal services, to be delivered by the industry's governing body, the Universal Postal Union (UPU). The study analysed the current postal environment and identified that there exists a wide gap in the operational and financial capabilities of individual postal organisations. Using principles of user-centred design, and applying methods from current literature, four 'personas' of postal organisations, each representing a particular style of postal organisation were created in order to ensure the knowledge bases' relevance for the entire industry. Based on the results of a questionnaire distributed to 105 postal organisations of varying levels of development, the individual user requirements that all four personas identified as necessary for the knowledge base were identified and listed for the future implementation of the knowledge base. A template has also been designed based on the responses of the returned surveys to be used as the framework for the eventual population of the knowledge base with case studies.