The Delivery Conference that took place in London this week focused heavily on personalisation of the delivery experience and Delivery Intelligence. We will be publishing three interviews over the next few days with Yodel/Collect Plus, Hermes and Royal Mail and reveal what these companies are putting in place to serve the consumer better.
The whole industry has for a number of years been thinking more about the end customer and their experience than just the process of sending a box from A to B without considering if it’s convenient for the consumer. This is partly because many years ago when most carriers were first established, they served a business community with regular 9-5 office hours and a few decades ago when ecommerce exploded they frankly weren’t ready to delivery to consumer’s houses when no one was in during the day.
Carriers have evolved massively as has the delivery industry and to further this MetaPack have unveiled a brand new tool for their customers – with the launch of their Delivery Intelligence tool to help retailers understand Carrier and Network Performance. This innovative solution which provides in-depth insight and actionable reporting, fully integrates with the MetaPack Delivery Management platform, further enhancing the delivery lifecycle supported by Metapack solutions.
MetaPack Delivery Intelligence Tool
MetaPack’s Delivery Intelligence tool has been designed to give retailers a clear picture of delivery and carrier performance in real-time, enabling them to drive improved operational efficiency and ensure they are meeting the exacting needs of their customers. It is available as a software add-on for existing users of the Delivery Management Platform, and delivers accurate and highly valuable data from every stage in the delivery process.
MetaPack Delivery Intelligence tool features
- Assess lead times with three options: end-to-end delivery from warehouse to recipient; final mile from carrier collection to recipient; fulfilment time from shipment creation to pick up by carrier
- Calculate the speed of delivery in a particular geography or trade lane, even within cities and key locations
- Identify the location of a package and where and when parcels have been scanned
- Profile the count, weight and volume of a package to a specific destination on days, weeks, months and years, against the optimal carrier options
- Track scan compliance
The aim is to provide retailers with positive intelligence giving the information needed for intervention if required to smooth the delivery for the consumer as well as real time data on delivery performance and transparency for retailers on how their chosen carriers are performing.
MetaPack is anticipating that retailers with the most complex ecommerce delivery networks are likely to gain most value from using Delivery Intelligence, and is targeting those retailers who have a wide variety of delivery options servicing multiple geographic locations via many different carriers.
“Customers see delivery as a major differentiator, and retailers are responding by adding new options that meet customer demand and encourage long-term loyalty. This brings with it a need for real-time, accurate and actionable data, a 360° view of the entire delivery panorama, and we are providing this with Delivery Intelligence. Not only does the solution create logistical transparency for retailers, it also demonstrates the accuracy of carrier performance and will help to resolve issues quickly and underpin strong working relationships.”
– Duncan Licence, VP for Global Solutions at MetaPack
One Response
It would be interesting to see how they would calculate Royal Mail’s performance given that they refuse point blank to provide the 2d barcode information that they are applying to parcels to their customers and are now the only 3rd party integrator that do not provide this.
“The aim is to provide retailers with positive intelligence giving the information needed for intervention if required to smooth the delivery for the consumer as well as real time data on delivery performance and transparency for retailers on how their chosen carriers are performing.”
This would be easily achieved if a consumer or retailer could see that their parcel is awaiting collection at a delivery office.
Royal Mail generally perform well – our biggest problem is Metapack not providing information available to any Royal Mail client not using Metapack, and therefore consumers purchasing from a retailer that uses Metapack and Royal Mail are at a disadvantage. Metapack should concentrate on dealing with issues that have the biggest impact on their customers before embarking on projects that will have little benefit in real terms until this is resolved.