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DA Systems, a leading UK provider of mobile data and transport management solutions for the transport, retail, healthcare and field service sectors, is pleased to report that its existing customer, Speed Couriers, has successfully grown its medical courier division by 45% and secured an important new business contract with an NHS Trust. These achievements have been attributed to the important contribution DA Systems’ Advanced Courier Interface (ACI) technology has made in enabling Speed Couriers to provide a highly efficient and reliable service, with 100% traceability of medical consignments at all times.

An ACI user for over a decade, Speed Couriers is the North West’s largest independent courier firm and seen demand for its medical courier services double in the past 5 years. Most recently the company secured a contract with a major North West NHS Trust to provide on-going transportation services to connect NHS hospitals within the region, which will help the Trust save costs and become more efficient.

Designed by DA Systems specifically for the courier industry, ACI has played a vital role in enabling Speed Couriers to grow its medical courier division and offer a secure, time critical service to the NHS Trust and other clients. The solution provides real-time track and trace functionality plus the ability to automatically email electronic signature capture to provide proof of delivery for every consignment.

On behalf of the NHS Trust, Speed Couriers provides an on-going outsourced transport service, which includes the provision of 4 vans on a permanent basis, responsibility for sample collection from local area GPs and a continuous shuttle service between the hospital sites. In addition to transporting medical consignments, Speed Couriers also provide a secure transportation service for the Trust’s specialist monitoring equipment. This benefits the Trust by giving it greater flexibility over how to allocate financial resources. Rather than automatically having to purchase multiple units of test equipment, it can be transported to the different sites as needed by patients, leaving more resources available for other requirements.

Using ACI, Speed Courier’s medical customers have the ability to communicate via a real-time portal to pre-book transport services and pinpoint the whereabouts of test equipment and other medical consignments in real-time. Services can be operated in a ‘self-service’ manner, enabling the customer to have full access to the job booking system and schedule pick-ups and drop offs directly, improving speed and efficiency.

“Our contract with the NHS Trust illustrates perfectly how the ACI technology has supported the on-going growth of Speed’s medical business by allowing us to be completely accountable for the service we provide and giving the customer full visibility online of every consignment,” says James Hadley, Commercial Director at Speed Couriers. “A major benefit of ACI is its ability to consolidate data from multiple sources into a single source of information for customers and the control room to act upon quickly.”

“Technology is important for any courier but is especially critical for the medical sector because of the time sensitive nature of their work,” says David Upton, Managing Director of DA Systems. “We are delighted that ACI has enabled Speed Couriers to expand its business so effectively and we wish them continued success for the future.”

 

 

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