During the peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic, commercial fleets found themselves under an enormous global spotlight to keep the economy moving. But, as we venture into the next chapter of our “new world”, we take a moment to review some of the trends that we have seen across post and parcel logistics and revisit some of our industry insights.
Trend 1: Explosive growth in e-commerce and demand for scalable solutions
The most significant trend saw shifts in consumers and businesses behaviour, with a larger number of customers, across wider demographics shopping online, and arranging packages to be delivered at home or to their desired click and collect location. It also saw record numbers of traditional businesses closing their doors or moving more of their operations online. Expectedly, this was the result of restrictions, the growing coronaphobia, high furlough rates, and of course customers generally avoiding public places.
However, the growth in e-commerce was steadily inclining pre- COVID and we are expecting it to continue at this trajectory in the future. We have seen; postal and parcel carriers researching ways to support the increasing demand and investing in additional vehicles and personnel, with the hopes that scaling their operations will ensure that their businesses remain competitive and customer expectations met.
Have you read our blog on The Importance of Right Sizing Your Fleet? Here we detail the ways that you can utilise technology to be prepared for rapid growth.
Trend 2: Customers & Fleets demanding a high degree of transparency and traceability
With the increase of “essential” products to be delivered at home, more so, than ever customers are expecting to be kept up to date about the current status of their order, in case something was to change during transit.
According to the report by the global Selligent Global Connected Consumer Index, 76% of customers value being kept informed on the status of purchases through real-time alerts and updates. Similarly, we have seen Fleets thriving when they have full visibility of their routes and accurate ETAs. Together, these trends highlight the need for businesses to invest in some form of tracking and alerting solution.
Integrating with our solutions you can continuously keep all stakeholders in the picture and manage expectations with exact visibility of the location and arrival times, watch how on the on-demand demo showcasing Precision in the final-mile
Trend 3: Rising demand for a choice of delivery
You would assume that as more customers are at home, first-time deliver success is more achievable. However, there is an increasing demand from customers for new delivery options, such as same-day, same-week, and precise delivery, as well as increasing pressures to serve and process returns in remote areas of the country . This is supported by Capgemini’s ‘The last-mile delivery challenge’ report, which states that 73% of customers prefer receiving their delivery at a convenient time slot rather than receiving it quickly.
Explore these concepts further, in our blog on How Using Real-Time ETAs Can Improve the Supply Chain
So what’s next?
For most postal and parcel delivery carriers, none of these trends is completely new. What is new is the repetition of seasonal peaks which has occurred 4 or 6 times this year rather than the traditional 2 or 3. This has created an urgency within the industry to find solutions that are "always-on" rather than in bursts to support changing customer demands, and of course, ensure successful delivery with little to no disruption to service.
Our recommendations to postal and parcel carriers;
- Find tools which allow for early refinement of the operational plan, to ensure maximum utilisation of assets.
- Investigate software that provides a complete overview, with real-time insights, of all assets on the road - to better monitor driver behaviour and accurately communicate arrival times to customers.
- Review and invest in commercial routing and navigation software. Unlike consumer navigation, it takes into account vehicle dimensions, load restrictions, and roadway attributes to ensure that the drivers are navigated to the most accurate final mile.
Don’t just take our word for it, we have been working with the global top postal and parcel delivery carriers as they invest in technology solutions to support this increase in demand.
Want to learn more, download our DHL Case study on how they benefited from our solutions.