AUTHOR ARCHIVES: David Upton

The importance of wearables is on the rise but this brings with it new security and privacy risks writes DA Systems David Upton...

A report recently issued by PWC suggested that wearables adoption will mirror the phenomenal rise of tablets in the enterprise. Apparently a fifth of American adults already own a wearable tech device and additional sales could top 130 million units in 2018*. Enterprise vendors are watching these predictions carefully and starting to anticipate their arrival into the workplace with dedicated platforms, such as Salesforce1.

Although many applications being developed are for medical workers and white-collar users, it is not difficult to see why wearables also offer great potential for the same-day delivery industries. They provide a significant opportunity for achieving service improvements through more seamless interaction with customers. Added to this, proof of delivery is more secure and evidence to refute claims of lost or damaged consignments can be captured automatically, potentially without the customer even realising it.  Customer service benefits aside, wearables also support hands-free working, which means productivity and efficiency levels can be further improved on existing rates achieved from using ‘traditional’ mobile devices.

But while the benefits of enterprise wearables are well documented, privacy and security remain the chief apprehensions among consumers. In PWC’s survey, 82 percent of respondents said they feared "wearable technology would invade their privacy" and 86 percent said they thought wearables would make them more vulnerable to security breaches. Privacy and security are serious threats that IT departments need to control carefully if wearables are to make the impact analysts are predicting in the enterprise space.

Below are five key threats to be aware of when considering how wearables might impact a sameday delivery business:

Security:

Top of the list of risks is security, which is as much an issue for the service provider as it is for the end customer. This is because devices like Google Glass are able to record and transmit images of anything in the wearer’s field of vision. Implementing and enforcing a robust security and privacy policy will be essential for an organisation to protect itself adequately from threats and avoid the prospect of litigation. This should be relatively straightforward to implement for most forward thinking organisations and an extension of their existing social media and BYOD policies.

Data theft:

A big part of the attractiveness of wearable devices comes from the ability to process and exchange data in real-time. Herein lies the security risk, because if they are stolen or intercepted, personal data could be compromised. The US National Security Agency highlighted this potential problem at a recent conference. Using enterprise-grade encryption to both protect data from eavesdropping and verify the identity of any connected device would be good first steps to prevent wireless attacks. Features like an automatic wipe will also help and reduce the attractiveness of stolen devices.

One of the other issues with wearables is that it is relatively straightforward for someone to ‘password surf’, seeing a PIN or password on screen and then use the information to hack into the device once it is stolen. It’s not a new problem but one that needs to be overcome if companies want to protect their workers’ digital identities and not risk security breaches due to stolen customer information. Biometric passwords could provide the answer to protecting a user’s identity, by ensuring a device is rendered useless if stolen.

Wearable device management:

Mobile device management is already an essential part of managing the technology used by a mobile workforce and the same will be true of wearables. These will add an additional layer of complexity to what is already a very complicated aspect of IT security management. Already many MDM software vendors are re-naming their applications Enterprise Mobility Management to signify their ability to cope with the greater complexity. Clear policies need to be established and enforced to define expectations around what employees can and can't do using wearable devices, balancing the need for flexibility with confidentiality and privacy requirements.

The viability of BYOD

Including wearables into a BYOD policy adds a whole new dimension to the level of device management required

extending a BYOD policy to include these devices is actually commercially viable.  From experience, managing the complexity created by having a multitude of different devices in use within an organisation will be a serious future challenge and one the IT department needs to prepare for to manage the potential resourcing implications and inevitable disruption created. Including wearables into a BYOD policy adds a whole new dimension to the level of device management required and presents a huge step change away from having a standard, company issue wearable in circulation and involves developing an understanding of, for example, support requirements for each device, plus an awareness of the individual operating platforms.

 

Employee privacy

Since wearables are able to continuously monitor employee behaviours and track their activity levels and whereabouts at all times, this creates an obvious employee privacy issue. Clearly, there are pros and cons to this issue. On the one hand, being able to monitor productivity levels is useful for KPI management and not too far removed from what companies are already using - for example; tracking on mobiles to monitor delivery drop speeds of individual drivers. Employees are accustomed to this practice and the data is only ever used internally.

More contentious is the ability to collect data, which other organisations can use. For instance, health insurance providers trying to understand how healthy an employee’s behaviour is when setting the cost of monthly premiums. In the case of the sameday delivery market, monitoring at this level could be regarded as an invasion of privacy as it’s not relevant in the context of the industry.

The best way forward:

Given current adoption rates, wearables will inevitably make a big impact on the way delivery companies work. Experts are already giving their arrival a new moniker and coining the issue ‘BYOD 2.0’. Even more so than with the original BYOD, it will be essential to have clear usage policies in place and an excellent understanding of responsibilities and expectations at both the employee and customer level.

Provided this is in place and appropriate restrictions relating to security, privacy and the types of devices that can be supported are implemented, there is no reason why delivery service providers cannot benefit from the improved productivity and efficiency that wearables can bring into a business. Our advice is to proceed with caution.

DA Systems' David Upton looks at how we must try to change the perception of technology costs from an expense to be justified to a necessary investment when approaching the board...

Recent research undertaken to understand attitudes towards investing in technology highlighted a generic problem within the transport and logistics industry. Companies all appreciate the benefits mobile technology can bring, yet they are not succeeding in securing the necessary investment required from business leadership. Why? Because technological investment is seen as an expense to be justified rather than an investment in reducing costs and generating more profits.

It was a problem for 80% of survey respondents, 88% of whom said that they wanted to introduce new mobile technology, but faced budget restrictions.

This suggests a further underlying issue because it means that they are not developing a compelling enough business case to address the return on investments to be expected. If they were, the funds would be flowing more freely. Most business cases centre on increasing revenue.

Obviously there is a revenue element to consider, but the primary advantage of mobile technology is that it increases the likelihood of a parcel being delivered first time around – which minimises some of the largest costs associated with business operations. This article explains how to develop a business case for technological investment and prioritises the benefits.

In the case of investing in mobile technology to provide customers with an estimated time of delivery to reduce the cost of failed deliveries, building a compelling business case should be relatively straightforward. The overall impetus should be cost reduction, with a focal point of preventing the cost of a missed first time delivery. This is estimated in the region of £23 per drop and causes a very significant erosion to profit margins when it isn’t achieved.

On average, 15% of deliveries fail on the first attempt because the customer was not aware of the delivery time, which could be managed by adopting mobile technology. Even absorbing the inefficiencies of a slightly empty delivery van because orders that have been pre-loaded get cancelled, is better than the cost of a missed delivery.

 

Optimising a delivery round to take the most economical route means saving on fuel, mileage time and being able to do more drops per vehicle. In turn this means a reduction in the number of drivers and vehicles, which again saves money. So taking all these factors into consideration, the emphasis in a business case should be on technology, which is self-financing, with payback achieved within the first year of investment at the latest.

Taking DPD as a good example of how costs can be reduced and revenues increased as a result of technological improvements, they have grown sales by over £100 million as a result of implementing ETA messaging. Of course enhancing customer interaction is an important factor, but the real benefit is derived from getting deliveries right first time and reducing the cost base.

If 15% of operational costs can be saved by getting deliveries right first time, achieving better optimisation of delivery routes and requiring fewer journeys means fewer drivers are required. And courier productivity levels can be further increased by using route optimisation software, which in turn can reduce the number of miles to be driven by 10%.

For a large delivery company with a £16 million fuel bill, this creates the potential to save up to £1.6 million on fuel costs. Given their profit margin is roughly 10%, this creates a net increase to the total bottom line of 10%, a huge bonus.

To quote another delivery company example, after it implemented route optimisation, fleet mileage was cut by 17% and overall fleet size was reduced by 7%. This is the type of rationale that needs to be used in a business case for technological investment, going beyond customer and branding benefits to deliver hard cost savings and potential for greater profits.

So far we have outlined just a few of the solid cost saving justifications to be included in a business case for investing in new technology and there are many more, ranging from improved communication with call centre staff and traffic management options, to reduced fuel consumption.

When developing a business case, delivery companies need to be clear about the tangible benefits and turn the way they approach investing in technology around. Think of it as less of ‘an expenditure to be justified’ and more as a way to make greater profits with immediate payback.

Setting out the aim to make your company more environmentally friendly is not only healthy for the planet but also very healthy for a logistics and transportation business as well

Reducing your fuel costs for example obviously makes great financial sense and it also has the benefit of helping to differentiate you from other field based companies in what are becoming increasingly competitive markets across the board. For example, image conscious high street retailers are much more likely to partner with an e-commerce deliver partner that shares their (often very public) environmental values, and in fact this is a trend that is mirrored by consumer behaviour also.

According to a recent Eurobarometer survey 55% of consumers said they take time to understand the environmental impact of the products they buy. Further to that over three quarters of consumers said they would pay a premium for greener goods. It is natural that this powerful sentiment would flow through the supply chain and impact on a retailer’s choice of transportation provider for their ecommerce offerings.

Whilst environmental issues have been a large part of the conversation for many years, it is only in today’s world with the advancement of tablets, smart phones, white boards, the cloud, including facilities such as dropbox and skydrive, which are all able to communicate openly with each other, that a truly sustainable approach can now be grasped.

Adopting transport technology and with innovations in the mobile world, greener credentials are more attainable than ever; with the ability of SatNav, job scheduling, signature capture working on new devices with NFC and RFID capabilities encased in a more consumerist look and feel than previous rugged enterprise products means greater user adoption, think Honeywell Dolphin Black to Motorola TC55.

So moving towards greener working i is now an obvious progression for the transport and logistics industry to take under serious consideration.

As well as improving productivity and cost savings, using an electronic proof of delivery system, mobile field service management or a real-time job scheduling and route optimisation system for instance, has been shown to deliver a significant improvement when reducing physical costs i.e. of consumables and labour costs. It also has a significant impact on reducing CO² emissions and the carbon footprint of logistics operators.

The following results demonstrate the savings achieved by a medium sized logistics company, “XYZ Courier Services Ltd” using actual data.

“XYZ” operates a cloud based technology system to manage its fleet of 2,000 full time drivers. Before introducing mobile data to its fleet of drivers, the company had to provide each driver with a 15 page printed manifest showing their daily workload and schedule.

Over the course of a year, this amounted to 7,800,000 individual pages, or 15,600 reams of paper. The cost of purchasing paper equates to £55,000, print toner costs amounted to £110,000, which means that over a three year period the company spent half a million just on paper and toner alone.

Although financial savings are a factor in the decision to adopt mobile data that improves greener credentials, there are also carbon costs to appreciate, due to the energy and environmental impact of the printing process. Taking into account the amount of paper produced over a three year period for the paper manifests equated to 648 tonnes of CO² emissions, which has now been saved.

The transportation of raw materials and finished products are a significant source of carbon emissions in the supply chain. For some companies, logistics can be the primary component of supply chain carbon emissions. The Department of Transport found road transport accounts for 21.7 percent of the UK’s carbon emissions; of that, 19.8 percent is attributable to heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) and 15.2 percent to vans. The government is aiming to position the UK at the global forefront of ultra-low emission vehicle (ULEV) development, manufacture and use, and has a vision for ‘almost every car and van’ to be zero-emission by 2050. Furthermore, by implementing effective route optimisation that ensures the most optimal route is taken by a driver will result in less driven miles and fuel reduction.

What this analysis highlights is that for a mid-sized logistics or delivery company, introducing mobile data technology such as ePOD to the drivers has had a significant impact not just by reducing costs, but also by improving the company’s overall carbon footprint. And these cost savings are relevant to smaller and larger organisations alike.

Not only will changing to transportation and logistics partners with greener credentials help meet a company’s corporate social responsibility and environmental policies, by utilising transport technology allows a company to get a clearer picture of deliveries, scheduling, managing peak times; reviewing carbon emissions, driver behaviour - in readable, legible reports based on date and time driven events. This means more power through real-time knowledge transference, without having to sift through volumes of paperwork.

A business can never entirely eliminate its environmental impact, but that should not be a reason to not take advantage of the technology available to reduce it. Especially when having a green approach to your transport fleet helps to achieve positive environmental and financial goals.

 

 

Many of the UK’s courier businesses are small to medium sized operations, frequently employing fewer than 10 staff. For smaller firms like this operating in a highly competitive space, service reliability and customer satisfaction is everything and couriers understand the importance of having the right technology to achieve a competitive edge. Scheduling and proof of delivery systems are essential elements for any courier company but in addition, social media offers an opportunity to both improve competitive advantage and build a compelling brand offering.

As well as helping to create a distinctive brand, social media activity has a direct impact on the effectiveness of a search engine optimisation (SEO) programme, since, properly done, it signals to Google and other search engines that you are communicating relevant content on a regular basis with your community. This will inevitably improve search rankings and mean your website is more likely to be found by prospective customers looking for courier services.

One of the issues with social media is that although entry costs are low and anyone can set up a Twitter or Facebook account, the process of communicating itself can be time and resource intensive. Given how important it is for SEO and inbound lead generation - how can courier companies and especially the small to medium sized providers - incorporate social media into their business offering?

Don’t delegate to the most junior person

The first point to understand is that regardless of how small a company is, they should be dedicating some time and thought to social media.  The second point is that social media is important and should not be relegated to an activity controlled by someone very junior at an organisation, even if they are an expert on Facebook or Twitter. Would you let a trainee loose with your most important customers? Probably not, so why let them be in charge of your company’s social communications? Whilst it is unlikely they will create a social crisis, their industry knowledge is probably lacking and this won’t help you to build credibility amongst customers and industry peers. Instead ask them to share their knowledge of techniques and combine this with your deeper knowledge to create more compelling content.

Plan the content calendar to balance quality with quantity

Next, decide what to say and what content to share. Planning needs to be done on a weekly basis and involves creating a spreadsheet detailing what messages are important and on what platforms they will be shared. Working this way means you won’t overlook key messages and also means you can be more time efficient because it becomes possible to schedule announcements. When compiling a content calendar for the week, be mindful of the quality vs. quantity balance. It is more worthwhile to make two or three valuable updates a day than be ‘twittering on’ about something inconsequential.

Demonstrate your industry expertise with blogs

For an effective social media strategy, relevant content is everything and having regular, well written blog posts to share is essential. As a courier firm using social media, your primary goal should be demonstrating expertise and the fact that you are more knowledgeable about your industry than competitors. This strategy will enable you to differentiate your offering more easily and win a regular following.

One of the top ways to demonstrate expertise is by posting relevant blogs. For a courier, this could be on topics such as e-commerce shopping trends, delivery efficiency levels or industry statistics - all of which would feature relevant search terms or keywords. Having keyword optimised blog posts means that they will be found easily online and become an important source of traffic to your website.

Introduce social customer service

Social media offers a chance to engage directly with customers expecting deliveries and parcels. Many couriers rely on text messages and emails, directing customers to a website for real-time updates. Social media is also a real-time and very visible medium so why not communicate via Twitter or Facebook to confirm delivery times and gain feedback on your service? Certain customers will prefer this to more traditional channels, so by adapting your approach to suit their needs, you will help to build stronger brand loyalty.

Be analytical to determine what works well

Finally, measure everything you do with social media to understand what works and what is less effective. Be prepared to see a wide range of results from different activities and be open minded enough to accept when a strategy is less effective and change the approach.

A cursory scan of the social media activities of different courier companies shows that whilst some are actively using Twitter and Facebook for instance, a larger number have yet to take the plunge. There is also a wide difference between the tactics used by those using social media already and some couriers are using it very effectively to communicate with customers whilst others are taking a less interactive approach and using it for one way communication primarily.

Top tips for creating interesting blogs

Ten ideas for potential blogs relevant to courier companies, which provide keyword rich content.[unordered_list style="bullet"]

• Any interesting / unusual parcels delivered on time and in perfect condition?
• Celebrate important new contracts won with customers
• Discuss the latest technology and how it is of commercial benefit
• Discuss how technology helps job scheduling and miles on the road
• Highlight any use of bio-fuels or green vehicles
• Contrast regional trends in customer behaviour, e.g. popular delivery times, delivery to home or business addresses
• Comment on industry developments – mergers, funding, new launches
• Fundraising and work in the community undertaken
• Highlight important media coverage and include links to the articles
• New personnel who have joined the company and further expansion plans