Feb-March 2003

Newspaper consumer pages frequently carry stories about readers' dire problems with booking visits by service engineers, especially from big companies. First, they wait in all day for the no-show engineer. When he does arrive he may not have the correct part to fix the fault. When the ordered part finally arrived three days later, it takes another two days to book an engineer to complete the job.

That might be an extreme example, especially in today's supposedly switched-on service world, but many of us have experienced this kind of frustration to a lesser or greater degree. Probably few of us appreciate what a complex business it is to get the engineer and the correct part to the same place at the same time.

This is partly because so many elements have to come together. Service calls have to be matched to available engineer, even to individual skill levels. Geographic locations have to be factored in, as do job completion time estimates and service-level agreements. And that's before you address the problem of actually delivering the parts.

However, at least the delivery aspect is now being addressed fairly comprehensively. Indeed, the job has turned into an identifiable sub-sector of the overnight parcels delivery market. For several of the leading express parcels companies, what began as a premium pre-9am delivery service has now developed into a sophisticated customer service and field service support operation.

Royal Mail, for instance, offers overnight parts deliveries through its Call and Collect service. It delivers parts to any of the 1,600 Royal Mail and Parcelforce delivery depots, which engineers can collect after 7.45 am. Centrica, by far the biggest user, delivers over 20,000 parts a night through the system to its 7,000 engineers.

Some carriers offer stockholding facilities, some will carry out swap-outs (exchanging a defunct piece of equipment for a working one). Returns often have to be accommodated, too.

In this sector the whole delivery operation starts earlier, too, because parts often have to be at their destination by 7am. That inevitably means what has come to be know as "in-night" deliveries ­ which give rise to one of the main challenges of the operation. Assuming the delivery driver isn't going to wake up the engineer at his home in the middle of the night to hand over the goods, where is he going to leave them?

The answer comes in four flavours. Goods can be put in the boot of the engineer's car while it is parked at his home; left in secure lockers located on 24-hour manned sites such as petrol station forecourts; held at one of the carrier's own depots, where they can be collected later; or taken to a designated building.

Another way in which these operations differ from conventional parcels deliveries is that they are even more reliant on the carrier's IT capabilities, and on mobile data in particular. For example, the carrier may have to be able to receive orders placed directly by engineers in the field, and to respond to urgent stock and replenishment requests made via handheld computers. Some systems are sophisticated enough to check stock availability and automatically allocate available parts to a booked repair job.

The carriers themselves are also adding more services to meet the demands of the customers. Under the Esprit Couriers name, ANC was a pioneer of in-night deliveries to engineers' car boots. A new division, ANC Logistics, will also make "keyholder" deliveries directly to premises, as well as to drop-box systems. It can also handle local storage of mission-critical parts and same-day deliveries, and plans to add swap-out services.

"Meeting delivery times is critical in this business. If you let your customer down, they let their customer down, too," points out Michael Conroy, ANC Logistics' managing director. "You need the IT infrastructure to avoid that, which is why we have developed our Embrace system." As you might expect, this includes real-time tracking and POD and customer visibility, but Conroy says it is the quality of the management reports it produces that is just as vital. "Customers are demanding more value-added services. We need the infrastructure to deliver that."

ANC Logistics operates as a separate division within the ANC network, with northern and southern hubs and a dedicated fleet. Deliveries are divided into eight regional areas. Parts have to be at one of the hubs by 9pm for delivery by 7am the following day. "That is one reason we need our own hub. The parcels operation can handle incoming parcels until 2am, but is not under the same pressure to deliver so early."

Another field service support company with long experience in the sector is Hays DX. It has been at the forefront of developing drop-boxes for parts consignments, especially on garage forecourts. "Most engineers are no more than a fifteen-minute drive from their nearest drop-box," says Ian Emerson, operations director of Hays DX's newly-launched Intellibox operation.

Intellibox is the product of a collaboration between Hays DX and ByBox, a pioneer in the development of box banks for unattended deliveries. Hays has its own network of boxes at strategic locations around the country. Historically, however, most of these boxes have been "dumb" (there is no electronic control over access and no built-in means of recording delivery and retrieval times). That's where ByBox comes in.

"Up to now, we have allocated a dedicated box to each engineer we deliver parts to," explains Emerson. "Occasionally, two engineers will share the same box. ByBox gives us more flexibility. The actual box is allocated only after the delivery driver has arrived."

All ByBox locker banks are linked wirelessly or by land line to a central control point and from there to the engineer's employer. That gives full track-and-trace capability, including the option for the customer to receive email alerts when parts are delivered. There is also a facility for engineers to order components online through the central console built into each box cluster. It's true that mobile data communications may make this capability superfluous, but it is still an attractive low-cost option for stocking up.

The console also incorporates barcode scanners, keypads, screens, printers, credit card readers and so on. To make a delivery the driver logs on with an identification card. He is given a code and enters the field support ID number, which then opens a locker door. If that is not big enough, the driver can reject the box and be allocated another locker. "You can't let drivers pick the box ­ it's human nature to pick a larger one than is strictly necessary."

Clearly the underlying IT is a key attraction. The computer is linked to a remote service using a conventional phone line, ISDN, DSL or VSAT satellite link. Data is transmitted half-hourly or at pre-set intervals, giving virtually a real-time service. The server will send an SMS or email alert to the recipient of the package, and at the same time update the records on the carrier or supplier's computer.

Where the third party runs the locker bank, its computer in turn will be updated. Meanwhile, the delivery driver or recipient can be issued with a printed receipt at the locker bank itself. No integration with users' IT systems is required.

The Partsflow operation from Lynx provides an established in-night service to car boots, parts collection points and drop-boxes, and the company guarantees deliveries before 7am. For the in-boot service, Lynx holds car or van keys for all the service engineers it delivers to, and these are issued to the driver at the same time as the delivery schedule for that night. The company points out that in-boot deliveries offer more time-saving potential than deliveries to drop-off points because engineers don't waste time travelling to collect parts ­ especially in less densely populated areas.

Lynx operates a three-level service. Parts received by 9pm will be delivered before 7am, while there is a 1am cut-off for delivery by 8am. The third wave is overnight delivery to Coventry, with day-time trunking to Lynx Partspoints and next-day stock replenishment.

Along with ByBox, other contenders from the unattended delivery market are now getting involved too. One is Collectpoint, which set out three years ago to build up a network of delivery points for consumers at convenience stores, and has now turned its attention to the B2B market.

The move was underlined by its decision last year to add filling station forecourts to its convenience store network. These tend to offer 24-hour opening, better access than shops for vehicles driven by sales reps and field service engineers, and often more storage space. Already Collectpoint has added 600 Q8 forecourt pickup points to its network, and also has a presence on some Texaco forecourts. Even without introducing any extra facilities, Collectpoint has at a stroke put itself in a position to grab some of the overnight parts market. Moreover, it has reinforced that position by teaming up with Lynx to offer collection options.

Managing director Jim Doyle told us he believes the B2B market will represent the main growth area for drop-off points over the next year to 18 months. "Our drop-off points are ideal for delivering parts to field service staff. We're finding that carriers are increasingly relying on being able to cite our service as part of the tendering process when they're seeking work."

In a reverse move, RelayStar, the forecourt over-the-counter collection point network developed by Texaco, has expanded into the high street by appointing agents from within the Spar grocery chain. Initially RelayStar will use up to 295 of Spar's 2,700 UK stores, which will offer the full range of RelayStar services. These include barcode scanning of packages, proactive order tracking and customer notification of arrival by email, voicemail or SMS message.

The RelayStar network covers 935 locations in the UK and 430 in Benelux. End users nominate a RelayStar location as their delivery point and are alerted by email when the goods arrive. Returned goods as well as outgoing items can be handled. Pilot RelayStar business users in the UK and Benelux included IBM, NCR and Sabre Supply.

One of Relaystar's early users is Securicor Omega Express. This carrier already had a parts delivery service called Omega Drop Point, but was able to increase the number of pick-up and drop-off points in its network from 98 to over 850 by switching to the RelayStar network last year when it first went live.

Securicor's drop-point service operates through a dedicated hub-and-spoke network, and guarantees delivery to the drop point by 8am. The company also offers warehousing for urgent spare parts.

unattended specialists

Other B2C unattended delivery box manufacturers have also started targeting B2B clients, and the boxes certainly have sufficient intelligence to provide the traceability required. BearBox, for instance, has moved into locker-bank territory with a beefed-up steel version of its original consumer drop-box. Groups of these are being installed in clusters at selected Esso, Jet and Texaco forecourts, and are pitched squarely at the B2B market.

Another box system supplier, POD System, offers a particularly extensive communications and audit trail capability ­ reflected, perhaps, in the fact that latterly it has focused more on its comms and tracking systems than on the boxes themselves.

Homeport, another of the original unattended home delivery specialists, has also gone into the business-to-business market. Its original system uses boxes that can be attached to a fixed anchor-point, again with a communications capability built in.

• A full run-down on the latest unattended delivery systems for both B2B and B2C markets is included in the e.fulfilment Guide 2003, published this month by the team behind m.logistics. This contains profiles of over a dozen drop-off or collection point systems with full contact details, as well as a short listing of leading parcels carriers.