Qatar Post processes thousands of documents daily and runs smoother postal services with Power Automate

Qatar Post has been the cornerstone of postal services in Qatar since its establishment in 1950. With more than 19 branches, it delivers everything from traditional mail to e-government services. "Qatar Post started its digital transformation journey in 2016," recalls Hamid Sadiq, Chief Information and Digital Officer at Qatar Post. “We aim to modernize our services including the infrastructure with physical and digital robots which in turn would enable us to provide end-to-end services.” 

The organization expanded its portfolio to include digital-first services like virtual P.O. boxes for e-commerce and specialized delivery services for medicine and ID cards. "We believe that a strong performance in postal services helps promote and improve other businesses,” Sadiq elaborates.

Laying the foundation for digital-first services

For Qatar Post, transformation meant not only keeping pace with technology but fundamentally changing how it operates and serves both individuals and businesses. With Ministry of Communications and Information Technology’s support, Qatar Post was able to build a strong foundation. “Because of our structure, we can keep on building in the future," says Sadiq. Qatar Post engaged SquareOne, which brought in its expertise in robotic process automation (RPA) and Microsoft technologies. Together, they got to work, initially focusing on operations and later expanding into other departments like quality assurance and human resources (HR). 

Automating dispatch documents

The first task was automating the dispatch documents. "This used to be a manual, repetitive task for our business users. We receive 1,000 to 2,000 documents that need to be analyzed and uploaded every day, and each one would take us on average three minutes," Sadiq mentions. Qatar Post built a workflow using Power Automate and Azure Cognitive Services optical character recognition (OCR) technology. This enables the solution to extract information from scanned documents and automatically upload it to specific platforms, which then notify third parties of receipt. “We have a dashboard that shows how many documents have been received and uploaded, and highlights any errors that may require manual intervention,” adds Sadiq. “In manual entry, people often capture only important fields like country or weight. With RPA, we can capture more information. So, this also helps other parties understand more about the data they are receiving.”

After a successful proof of concept, it was time to advocate for the solution. “We built this solution and showcased it to management. People saw that with the click of a button, something that used to take multiple steps could just happen automatically. That’s when we got everyone’s buy-in to expand RPA” recalls Sadiq.

Real-time service quality dashboard

Another routine task was service quality assurance. The Qatar Post quality team examined ratings across different national postal services, generating a daily report on Qatar’s service quality against other countries. To streamline reporting, Sadiq’s team built a bot that checks the ratings, and then generates and circulates the Power BI report automatically. "Before the bots came into play, our quality team had to manually log into three different sites to aggregate data. They now receive an automated report daily," adds Sadiq. The quality team is now free to focus on the assurance part more than the reporting. 

Retail system automation

Qatar Post extended the automation to retail. Employees needed to upload the data collected by EPOS, a retail platform for shipping, dispatching and selling merchandise to different platforms within their business network for further analysis. "With RPA, we've automated some of the uploads through Power Automate," Sadiq explains. The system automatically archives all documents digitally, ensuring a more paperless, sustainable workflow.

Overtime activity

Lastly, Qatar Post focused on automating its overtime activity reporting. This process involves three parties: the requester, the time attendance platform which records clock-ins and clock-outs, and HR, which validates the information before moving it to payroll. When the requester submits a weekly sheet detailing activities and extra working hours, this data must match the time attendance records before entering an approval cycle. “The RPA will automatically compare the request to the time attendance data and prepare it for HR to approve or reject. Given that we're talking about nearly 1,000 employees, this will save HR weeks of effort,” adds Sadiq.

Benefits of automation

With each automated process, Qatar Post increased its operational efficiency. Sadiq emphasizes, "Before RPA, our processes were manual. Now, it takes less time, and we have also eliminated data entry errors and improved accuracy." This efficiency also positively impacted the organization’s standing with its global partners. "Postal providers are ranked on several services. With RPA, we have real-time insights into our rankings and can act on gaps quickly," Sadiq mentions. 

Automation at Qatar Post has led to resource optimization. "Our aim was to free up employee time for areas where we need more resources. Instead of doing repetitive work, people can learn, grow and contribute more value to our customers," Sadiq elaborates. “We educate staff that automation is not about eliminating jobs, but about offering opportunities to learn and grow.”

Finally, Qatar Post decided to assist the ground team and deployed automated mobile robots (AMR). "When an item arrives at Qatar Post, it goes through sorting. We now have around 50 robots that sort items according to zones and routes," Sadiq notes. This development minimized manual intervention by bringing three processes into one and making the sorting process more efficient by 60%.

With timely, streamlined, flexible service, it is the citizens who reap the most significant benefits. “Our customers have seen a lot of changes. For instance, today they can use chatbots on WhatsApp for tracking packages, instead of SMS. We try to be available wherever is most convenient for Qatar Post’s customer.”

The future of postal services

With digital transformation well underway, Qatar Post looks to the future with a focus on further enhancing operational efficiency and customer experience. The company is gearing up to revamp its mobile app and website to offer an array of new services. The Smart Box project aims at deploying advanced mailboxes at individual residences. Finally, Qatar Post is also exploring more advanced machines that can fully operate a branch without human intervention in remote areas. 

"As technology evolves, we're exploring new service areas, and ready to share the expertise with other postal providers" notes Sadiq. "The efficiency and innovation in our postal services doesn't just upgrade us—it elevates the entire services ecosystem in Qatar. When we move forward, the whole community takes a step ahead with us."