How Jersey Post Group’s Global Reach helped get Royal Mail parcels moving again

In January, news headlines across the nation reported that Royal Mail was the victim of a ransomware attack, crippling their systems and halting all international shipping out of the UK. It is well known within the postal industry that the quick resolution to this disastrous incident was resolved with help from none other than Jersey Post.

Tracy Hayward, Associate Director of International Service Delivery & Partnership for Jersey Post Group, sat down with Delivered to provide insight on how a small island postal operation saved a big fish at a time of crisis »

‘The ransomware ceased Royal Mail’s entire international operations. Their international distribution centre was the main facility hit by the ransomware attack and it shut down their entire system. For Royal Mail this was dire as they have a fully automated system for their sortation, they scaled back their manual operations a while ago as they were no longer required, meaning they had no quick alternative to resolving the issue.’

‘As soon as news broke of the ransomware attack our CEO, Mark Siviter, spoke with their International Director to ask if we could help in any way. My team and Mark then had a brainstorming session with Nigel Arkwright, Chief Information Officer, and his team to see what we could do.’

Jersey Post currently uses a software called IPS, a system that the postal technology group at the UPU developed and is used to dispatch tracked mail. This is used alongside Jersey Post’s own Atlas system for untracked mail.

Tracy explains, ‘Our IPS system is web-based and uses International Mail Processing Codes (IMPC) in the UK that define what country and office the mail has originated from, which allows us to post outbound mail. In a fortunate coincidence, we had shut down two IMPC codes on the same day as the Royal Mail attack as these were not being used. We quickly contacted the UPU and explained that we needed the codes to ensure they did not close them as we had initially instructed, this enabled Royal Mail to use them for dispatch, in large part due to the innovation of our IT team.’

The IPS system that Jersey Post uses is a web-based system, very light touch and created for small postal operators, it is not designed for the scale of Royal Mail, so the Jersey Post IT Team had a massive challenge on their hands to make it workable for Royal Mail.

Acknowledging that the international team at Royal Mail were out of practice dispatching items due to their fully automated systems, Tracy explains how as Group we stepped in to get them up and running, ‘We went to their international distribution centre to train their staff on the IPS software and teach them how to create a dispatch to send an item. We encountered several challenges, a lot of the staff there don’t encounter laptops or PCs in their day-to-day roles so were unfamiliar in using technology, we encountered language barriers as well.’

‘Louis Wilson, our International Service Delivery Manager, was integral in getting Royal Mail staff up and running, creating instructional videos for them to follow. Whilst Ray Legg, our Head of International Regulations and Settlement, was key in working with Royal Mail to put processes in place to ensure we were not billed by the overseas posts for delivering the Royal Mail shipments.’

Whilst Royal Mail had to contend with the backlog of international mail (they were still receiving items when they shut down international operations caused by the ransomware attack), there was also a pre-existing backlog from the previous industrial action strikes.

‘The IT team had the biggest piece of work as pre-advice had to be processed for all international items to enable Royal Mail to send through the IPS system. In total there were 11 million items to process pre-advice for, a massive undertaking for our team, they gave 100% dedication working weekends and evenings to turn everything around as quickly as possible.’

Tracy added that it was safe to say Royal Mail had no other viable options to get back up and running, Jersey Post ensured they were ‘business as usual’ within two weeks, with all staff fully trained and everything running operationally.

‘I would like to give a big shoutout to all involved who enabled this massive undertaking to be a success, including Adrienne Dawson in my team kept who successfully kept our ETOE business running allowing myself, Ray and Louis to work on the Royal Mail project, and of course Nigel Arkright and his team who were integral to the success. It no doubt demonstrates how innovative we are as Group and the in-depth knowledge we have of international business.’

It was reported in the Guardian newspaper that six weeks after the initial attack at Royal Mail that international shipping resumed normal services. According to Tracy this was the result of hard work and dedication from Jersey Post.

Jersey Post is a nimble business with a wealth of expertise and because of this it was able to jump in and support Royal Mail, an action that has been praised within the Postal Industry and has done no end of good for the reputation of the business. This experience also proved a successful commercial opportunity for Jersey Post and one that will hopefully be fruitful in future.

About Tracy

Tracy has a wealth of knowledge of the postal industry and has been at Jersey Post Group for nine years, having previously worked at Royal Mail for 20 years as the Regional Director of International for Royal Mail and Parcelforce. Within this role Tracy was in charge of Royal Mail’s relationships with all overseas postal operators. Tracy also as four years’ experience as chair of the Universal Postal Union Parcel Group. She moved to Jersey in 2014 to help set up the International Extra Territorial Office of Exchange (ETOE) Business for Jersey Post, which enables us to send mail from territories outside of our own, i.e. Jersey. Since then, Tracy has been dedicated to overseeing the Group’s international services.