Spring 2006

Telematics and tracking form key components in a drive by Royal Mail to raise the profile and increase the market share of its courier operation, Royal Mail Sameday.

The organisation has commissioned a tracking and job management system that captures the position of vehicles every minute, and allows customers to view this information online in real time.

There is also a satellite navigation system for drivers, which is integrated with the job management element. The address of each collection and pickup point is transmitted automatically to the driver's unit, and directions are displayed to allow drivers to navigate to the destination.

Integrated with the telematics elements is an online booking system. Loads are allocated to vehicles automatically according to proximity and availability. And there is online access to proof of delivery information and past journey details.

 

"We're putting a massive amount of operational information in front of customers," says Gerry Farwell, the head of supply chain at Royal Mail. "This really leaves no hiding place for us."

Customers are shown the location of courier vehicles to within a three-mile radius of their actual position. Internally, Farwell says, Royal Mail's own staff can track them down to one metre, "but for security reasons we didn't want to make the customer information any more precise."

Royal Mail maintains that there is currently no system in the courier market offering so much information to customers in real time. It therefore regards details about the system as commercial sensitive, and was not prepared to tell us who had handled systems integration or project management, except to say that it had used a range of suppliers.

It did, however, give us some nuggets of information. The drivers' in-cab units are O2 XDA handheld terminals, which are operating on O2's GPRS network. And the integral navigation system, which runs on the XDAs, is by TomTom.

The organisation also gave us a detailed account of how the system works. For instance, customers are sent a confirmatory email once they have placed a booking, including an Internet hot link that summons up tracking information for the allocated vehicle and displays it on a map backdrop. Hovering the mouse over the vehicle pops up additional information such as speed, direction of travel and estimated time of arrival.

If the customer requests it, the same information can also be accessed by its own customers, who can for instance work out how soon they will receive urgent materials or components, and can obtain this information with unprecedented accuracy and promptness.

Proof of delivery information is also fed through the system extremely quickly (within ten seconds of confirmation at the point of delivery, we were told).

We did ask the cost of the project and the number of vehicles it affects, but were told that these details too were commercially sensitive. However, Gerry Farwell told us that all vehicles on the Sameday operation are included in the system.

Royal Mail's courier operation has existed for twenty years, but is being beefed up in its current Sameday guise, and represents one of a range of measures by which the organisation is fighting back in the face of postal deregulation and potential loss of market share.