The Parcelly team is back in the office after a very successful and inspiring few days at the European Post & Parcel Services Conference 2017!
Located in the heart of Amsterdam, the event provided an international forum for tackling challenges in the rapidly evolving delivery logistics industry and exploring new, disruptive business models. The conference attracted a pool of industry leaders from all around the world, ranging from international carriers and shippers as well as postal services like Deutsche Post, PostNL, DHL Germany, Post Office and UPS, to logistics technology companies and innovative Start-ups such as Parcelly and our latest business partner what3words, as well as Sentcloud and Bringr. The set up provided the perfect opportunity to network and exchange ideas and latest supply chain developments with highly experienced industry leaders.
Amongst an impressive speaker line-up, our CEO was invited to lead the workshop on ‘Encouraging Innovation’ which attracted a very high number of high-profile delegates. The workshop aimed at unravelling the development and delivery of new ideas and focused on how novel operational ideas could be fostered, assessed, supported and amplified across the business. The session covered many hot topics within the logistics industry and revealed insights on the use of late technology, first- and last- mile delivery solutions as well as the use of the 21st century innovation such as robots and AI.
Our CEO started off with a few questions aimed to understand the audience's thoughts on the present state of innovation in the logistics industry and what aspects, if any, needed and could be innovated to achieve an overall improvement of the current status quo. From the general pool it came up that 'minimising failed deliveries' was identified as the best means to significantly improve last-mile delivery.
To this point very interesting insights were shared by PostNL about local In-loop delivery solutions and alternative delivery locations. Lithuania Post and Norway Post stated that 98% of deliveries respectively in Lithuania and Norway are picked up in alternative delivery locations such as convenience stores.
Another hot topic that the audience showed to be particularly concerned about during the discussion was the 'Customer Demand'. Nowadays the so-called 4Cs (Control, Communication, Certainty and Convenience) are expected by customers when it comes to last-mile delivery decisions. From a business perspective it is extremely important to match customers' expectation in order to be successful long-term.
Towards the end of the session, 3 operational ideas were identified, concluding an exciting discussion and put forward to drive the development of the last-mile delivery industry:
1- Last Mile Delivery needs to be bespoke in terms of:
- Time and Price. Customers need to have the freedom to choose when to collect their parcels and whether to pay for it or not;
- Jurisdiction and Culture. Last mile delivery needs to be adjustable accordingly to the specific country's jurisdiction and culture;
- Generation. Last mile solutions have to be customisable based on the habits of different generations.
- Special Features. Important to provide a range of special features for specific customer needs - e.g. New Zealand Post allows for chilled store capacity.
2- Data: Processing consumer specific data is important to optimise the last mile.
3- Utilisation: The best last mile solution has to be chosen based on the parcel volume and preferred utilisation of delivery options.
The European Post&Parcels Conference has been a great opportunity to learn about the latest trends in last-mile technology and innovative, country-specific delivery solutions used by major postal services and couriers. The extremely senior audience from around the world also offered great networking opportunities. I regret to not have been able to stay until the last day, but will definitely aim to participate again next year.
- Sebastian Steinhauser, CEO & Founder of Parcelly
We had a great time at the #Post17 and would like to thank Marketforce Post again for inviting Parcelly to attend and running the popular innovation session at the event. #parcellove
