Second day of Parcel and Post Expo 2020 stresses postal reinvention, while continuing to examine how posts are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic
When a shipment from Slovenia is
intended for Croatia, a complex cross-border delivery system makes
dealing with every-day disruptions time consuming and costly.
But a new postal project has been introduced to adapt to real-time needs and to allow for agile responses.
The solution is called the Cognitive Adviser tool and its project
manager, Slovenia Post’s Alen Kahvedzić, outlined the main objectives at
the Parcel and Post 2020 Expo on Tuesday.
“We would install a system or a mechanism that could respond to any
changes in the environment,” Kahvedzić says. “Any ad hoc event, such as
traffic interference or border crossing closures, or any other
discrepancy, can be resolved with this technology.”
The tool is based on cognitive logistic objects, which can be anything
in the supply chain such as delivery trucks or post offices, he says.
Many other posts are considering what actions to take for their own
cross-border services as new data requirements for Europe are scheduled
to come online next year.
JP Thorpe, the global director of business development for parcel
solutions at BlueCrest, at a presentation Tuesday, said data is becoming
more and more relevant as Posts face new cross-border compliance
requirements.
“It’s no longer sufficient just to look at the address and deliver the
piece,” says Thorpe. “You have to show and tell everybody that cares
about that piece what you’ve done with it when it’s been delivered.”
Today, 8 percent of parcels passing through a postal network have a
valid tracking or unique number. In the future, Thorpe says, parcels
with incorrect or insufficient data will be the exception. There will be
no room for duplicated tracking numbers or incorrect formats in the
data behind the bar code.
“Ultimately, the modernization of Posts to deal with higher volumes means you have to be able to rely on data,” Thorpe says.
Also on Tuesday, speakers shared their experiences working during the COVID-19 crisis.
The Ukraine Post, in a pilot project, partnered with a start-up
marketplace for pharmacies to provide citizens delivery of
pharmaceutical products, says Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, the Post’s former
Chief Operating Officer. It started small scale, but now the Post
delivers a few thousand pharma orders daily. The programme was widely
supported and eventually a law was passed to keep pharma delivery as a
permanent service.
The Post also grew its mobile post office programme, which is a network
of vans that service small rural communities. In 2018, the programme was
launched in one of Ukraine’s 24 postal regions with plans to move into
another six. With the COVID crisis, the Post accelerated its efforts and
now plans to cover the entire country with its mobile post offices by
the end of 2021, Pertsovskyi says.
“What the mobile post office represents is not just a traditional postal
service, but is indeed the window to the modern world to people in the
small, rural communities,” he says. “Pharma deliveries are done through
those mobile post offices, also grocery deliveries.”
The Post is also pushing to expand its financial services. Pertsovskyi
says approximately 4 million retirees depend on the Post to deliver cash
pensions. But in a pandemic, this creates a possible point of disease
transmission via the cash itself as well as exposure from human contact.
The Post would like to bring services like these into postal savings
accounts. He says the Post is hoping to get parliament’s final approval
for full scale banking activities in the next few months.
“We should think beyond traditional postal or logistics services, and
with the COVID challenges, postal players can reinvent themselves and
think of all the adjacent services and business lines they can develop,”
Pertsovskyi says.
The COVID-19 crisis has shown the need for flexibility and adaptability.
One area in particular is the sorting process, says Dirk van Lammeren,
the commercial director of Prime Vision BV.
“We believe COVID is not so much a revenue crisis but an uncertainty
crisis,” van Lammeren says. “Our customers had to deal with a decline in
available staff through sick leave and reduced productivity. It’s a
paradox that requires even more automation to deal with heavy
fluctuations in assets, volume and people.”
He says companies need to prepare themselves for ongoing turmoil in the
market, but also to utilize data. Data on volume, customer response and
performance can help Posts optimize, he says.
He also sees new ways of sorting in the future, such as autonomous
sorting, as well as a need for open technology and connectivity so Posts
can adapt quickly.
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