Interview with Wolfgang Eger
Why Swiss Post is committed to digital innovations
Trustworthy, secure services in digital communication are the key to future success – and are becoming ever more important to the public service. That’s why Swiss Post’s growth strategy is also a digitization strategy.
Wolfgang Eger, as Head of Informatics/Technology, what does Swiss Post’s digitization mean to you?
Digitization is changing business and personal worlds fundamentally and rapidly. If you want your company to be successful, you have to be quick to identify and satisfy new digital customer requirements – so that you can remain competitive. Using and mastering technology and innovations are important success factors for the Swiss Post of tomorrow. That’s why our growth strategy is also a digitization strategy. Our aim is for recipients to decide for themselves how, where and when they receive their mail. To achieve this, we need both digital solutions and hybrid solutions that connect the two worlds. This will also ensure that Swiss Post remains a significant partner to Switzerland’s public service.
How is your unit Informatics/Technology driving Swiss Post’s transformation?
One particular emphasis is the expansion of competencies in digital communication, focusing on simple and secure solutions. Our second emphasis is on linking these competencies very closely to our business: the embedded IT model that we use for collaboration between I/T and other business units enables us to find the right applications, try out new things, learn from experience and offer ever better, more economical digital solutions tailored even more precisely to customer requirements.
What role do issues such as the Internet of things, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity play?
These three issues in particular will play a core role in the future of IT at Swiss Post. By using robotic process automation, artificial intelligence and large language models, Swiss Post will become even faster and more efficient. However, the key issue for Swiss Post as a whole is information security, because trust is the gateway to the digital world. Swiss Post already employs more than 200 cybersecurity experts. Our investments – such as acquiring majority shareholdings in the Aargau-based cybersecurity specialist terreActive and the Vaud-based company Hacknowledge – are an important addition to our security efforts.
What are the next big challenges?
As well as maintaining the quality of our systems, the next few years will be strongly impacted by use of new technologies and solutions for digitization in all business units, while also safeguarding our high ethical security standards. Balancing implementation speed, continuous learning and adaptation, digitization of processes for staff and development of the digital customer experience is a challenge that we enjoy tackling daily.