Ground Floor: Recently some of my e-mails have started to arrive with a little note on the bottom telling me that the sender has mailed it by BlackBerry. Any time I receive one I can't help visualising some poor soul tapping away at yet another hand-held device in yet another inconvenient location.
And the thing is none of them are so urgent that they need to be sent on the go. For sure, none are important enough for me to need to read them on my phone (although my mobile company keeps trumpeting the possibility of doing this) or on a BlackBerry of my own (one piece of technology to which I haven't yet succumbed).
I'm turning into a minority, though, as far as the BlackBerry is concerned because shares of Research In Motion (RIM), the company which makes them, are trading at 52-week highs, partly thanks to the popularity of the wireless device. RIM expects its new BlackBerry Pearl to bring in sales of $780-$820 million (€613-€644 million) this quarter. The Pearl includes a digital camera and music player and is aimed at expanding the BlackBerry's user base from business to the consumer arena.
I'm in a quandary over the complexity of mobile communications. On the one hand, the home office is now an almost cable-free zone as I have embraced wireless technology myself. I recently ditched the desktop computer altogether so that if I feel like it I can use the laptop downstairs or even outdoors and still print, surf the internet and e-mail to my heart's content. On the other hand, though, the idea of being out to lunch and having my phone inform me that I have e-mails (some of which may be almost important enough to make me feel guilty for lunching at all) is a step too far. And then the possibility exists that I, too, will have to turn into the sort of person who starts e-mailing from restaurants or pubs or stuck on the M50.
The problem with wireless communication, of course, is that it doesn't entirely eliminate snail mail either. There are times when only hard copy in the post will do, and so although I don't have to do this half as much as I used to, I do occasionally hoof it to a post office to avail of its services. Last week, needing to send a registered letter, I arrived at the post office at one o'clock. Big mistake. I'd forgotten that it closed for lunch - until a quarter past two. I'm all for people having uninterrupted lunch breaks but why on earth does the post office have to shut down completely? What's wrong with staggered lunch hours?
The shuttered doors presented me with a dilemma. To go home and come back later (thus bombarding the atmosphere with extra carbon fuels from the car and accelerating the likelihood of the planet's early demise) or to hang around for an hour and a quarter wasting time.
In the end I opted for the hanging around, bought a newspaper and had a coffee (at Irish prices thus inflating the cost of the trip significantly) and then moseying back to the post office 10 minutes before it re-opened - to discover that I was about 10th in a queue of people also waiting for the shutters to rise.
And this is what Fortis, the Belgian bank, has bought into!
An Post trumpets Government approval for its joint venture with the Benelux financial services company on its home page, boasting that the "fully functioning" retail bank will offer a broad range of financial services and that this is a "major boost" to the Irish banking sector.
Fortis, for its part, doesn't actually mention the An Post deal on its home page, but it states its mission, vision and goals as providing top-quality services and growing organically as well as by means of selective acquisitions.
It also lists a range of strategic targets for 2005-09, all of which would lead you to think that it is a forward-looking, innovative company with a drive to grow its business as much as possible. Retail banking contributed 23 per cent of Fortis's €3.9 billion profit in 2005, which shows that it does indeed have significant expertise in this area. And it has been involved in post office joint ventures in other countries so it clearly thinks there are opportunities in the Irish market.
Sadly, An Post hasn't got around to putting 2005 figures on its website and so it can only talk about 2004, in which it assures us that it recorded a modest profit of €6.5 million which marked a "significant step" in stabilising its financial position after three years of losses.
The services that the new joint venture hopes to bring include insurance, mortgages and credit cards. Somewhat breathlessly, An Post suggests that this partnership will "change the face of banking" in Ireland. Really? Right now, stepping into any open post office is like stepping back in time and I find it hard to imagine that An Post's programme of training, refurbishment, branding, promotion and product preparation will change its culture enough. While I'm sure there are plenty of efficient and dynamic people working in An Post (my postman is an absolute gem), any consumer-geared company which closes its doors during lunchtime needs something very radical by way of rebranding. And much as I champion everyone's right to have an enjoyable lunch break, there isn't a chance in hell that I'll be hanging around for an An Post loan when I can arrange one online with my bank from the comfort of my own home.
If I had a BlackBerry I could probably even do it standing in the shopping centre waiting for the post office to open.
www.sheilaoflanagan.net
