About the client

Kyrgyz Post is a state-owned company and member of the Universal Postal Union, established in 1992 by the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic, which operates national postal network of more than 900 postal offices of which almost 700 are in rural areas.

Kyrgyz Post is one of the largest employers in the Kyrgyz Republic with almost 4,000 employees. Every year Kyrgyz Post receives and delivers over 3 million letters, 150 thousand parcels, receives and pays 160 thousand remittances.

Kyrgyz Post is working to expand the range of services provided. Only in 2010 the first partners’ services were introduced and offered to Kyrgyz Post customers. Today Kyrgyz Post delivers pensions, benefits, other social allowances, as well as subscription publications. In the post offices you can pay utility bills, pay the traffic police fines, fee for technical inspection of cars, receive and repay loans installments, purchase air, train and bus tickets, buy theater tickets or lottery tickets.

Challenge

The Kyrgyz Post, a state-owned national postal operator, is looking to strengthen its role as nation-wide essential financial services provider, offering the 900-office wide network of post offices to deliver services provided and requested by organizations partners – ministries, agencies, utility and telco companies, financial service providers – remittance operators, banks, microfinance companies.

The transformation of the financial services delivery, supported by implementation of a new counter automation/point of sales system and ERP solution was critical to achieve the goals, and improve access to finance to the residents of Kyrgyzstan:

• Digitalization of the post offices and upgrade of existing infrastructure / workplaces;
• Sharp reduction of manual and paper-based work to provide and manage financial services efficiently;
• Increased efficiency of the postal network;
• Improved quality and reliability of the payment operations as well as corresponding cash accounting;
• Centralization of accounting, partner and contract management functions, which have been operated by 30 branches semi-independently;
• Ability to address regulatory compliance demands efficiently.

Solution

The World Bank has funded the Financial Sector Development Program to help the Kyrgyz Republic to improve access to finance for the residents, and this led to the implementation of new POS solution at Kyrgyz Post focused on delivery of financial services. ETRONIKA, part of NRD Comapnies, together with Novian technologies (former BAIP), a critical IT infrastructure company, stepped in to reshape, update, and implement new IT and financial solutions at the Kyrgyz Post.

ETRONIKA has deployed its KASU Retail solution – a point-of-sale operations and network management solution for modern retail operations, supporting the digital service provisioning and smooth integrations with multiple service partners. The system deployment has been preceded by the review of critical cross-functional processes within the organization, related to the delivery of financial services, and their modernization:

• End-of-day and shift management processes and policies;
• Cash accounting and transfer principles;
• Financial and service delivery information exchange within internal departments;
• Information exchange with the Enterprise resource planning (ERP);
• Cross-organizational policies and data flows between post offices, post branches and headquarters.

This pre-deployment work helped Kyrgyz Post to clearly define the tasks for the POS and ERP system integrators and to ensure that project can continue smoothly.

The new POS system allows centralized management of goods sales and financial service delivery and enables over 100 services partners with more than 200 products accessible for post officers in a uniform simple and reliable manner. The data is exchanged between a post office and central hub automatically. All services offered are managed centrally and delivered in a controlled manner with strong accountability and reliability of the service.

The system supports wide variety of financial services offered – from bill payments and service fees for public services to money remittance and to complex solutions required to pay out pensions, social security allowances, etc. Unified interface to deliver the services simplifies enablement of the solution in the post offices, reduces the time required to train the employees and minimizes the risk of an error.

The Post demands the optimization of central account function to support the new POS solution. Thus, the new ERP system is integrated with the POS solution and allows for centralization of cash accounts, cash movement and caters for registration of partner transactions.

KASU POST solution serves as a universal Point of Sales solution, allowing the post offices to provide to the customers all key products of the Kyrgyz Post Office, including basic retail items, numerous financial services, like remittance, bill payments, and disbursement of payments to third parties. KASU POST provides room for Kyrgyz Post financial services growth in the future, ensures that every post office is connected to the central hub, and eliminates inefficiency.

Services Provided

Following the digitisation project for postal services, Kyrgyz Post has acquired the means to quickly organize the integration of partners – payment service providers such as Western Union or Moneygram, and to simplify work with business customers providing financial services through the postal network. The solution implemented and adapted in the project also ensures that the financial services comply with international and national money laundering prevention requirements.

Prior to the system deployment ETRONIKA has assisted Kyrgyz Post Office in defining critical processes within the organization, related to the delivery of financial services:

• End-of-day and shift management processes and policies;
• Cash accounting and transfer principles;
• Financial and service delivery information exchange within internal departments;
• Information exchange with the Enterprise resource planning (ERP)

ETRONIKA Retail Solution allows to standardise delivery of financial services via post offices and allows full coverage of the future retail and service operations. The ability for a smooth and reliable integration with 3rd-parties has been delivered via Web Application Adaptor – a leading retail integration orchestration module, which allows a retailer to offer external services and allows a partner to integrate with the POS system via simple and reliable service interface.

The key products, supported by the ETRONIKA Retail Solution, will be as follows:

• Basic retail items, e.g. postmarks, envelopes, etc.;
• Disbursement of pensions, social allowances, salaries and other payments based on contracts with third parties;
• Remittance services;
• Bill payments.

Results

Before implementing KASU POST, the Kyrgyz Post faced many issues in providing efficient and standardized financial services. The implementation of the solution across Kyrgyz Post office network contributes to the development of the financial sector in Kyrgyzstan and ensures better access to essential financial services:

• The Kyrgyz Post can provide over 200 financial services across more than 500 post offices, including the ones in rural and distant areas;
• Centralization of delivery and accounting of partner operations ensures better transparency and efficiency, as well as better overall customer experience;
• New partner integrations can be enabled quickly, and the system allows the integrations to be developed by the partner rather than by the Post operator;
• Optimized POS experience helps for reducing manual work and paper-based processes;
• The system minimizes the risk of human error or internal fraud.

The implementation of ETRONIKA’s KASU platform at 100’s of post offices in rural Kyrgyzstan is the change maker; isolated, small communities in mountainous areas have now access to a wide range of digital services at the post office. No need to travel 50 kilometers to the nearest bank branch or ATM.

Hans Boon, Managing Director at PostFinanceInternational Development B.V.ST Consultant, Postal Financial Services, The World Bank

Replicability

The KASU Post solutions implemented for the Kyrgyz Post are easily replicable, and countries worldwide could enjoy the same benefits by retaining the services of NRD Companies.