Summer 2006

Having gained a high profile in online parcels booking systems, NetDespatch has now added a mobile dimension. But it's mobility with a difference. Peter Rowlands reports

Do you ship a lot of product through parcels carriers? If so, you'll probably be familiar with the concept of the "implant", even if you don't use the actual term. That was the parcels industry's initial response to the rise of the personal computer.

Basically, the carrier gave (or hired or loaned) you a PC, on which you entered your job details. It probably printed your labels, organised your manifests, and perhaps transmitted the information back to the carrier by modem link (or latterly email). It helped you to be more organised, and it locked you into that carrier (or that was the idea), so in theory you gained, and so did the carrier.

Along came the Internet, and all this seemed about to change. Now you could enter shipment details on the carrier's own Web site, so in theory you shouldn't need an implant.

 

The problem was that the carrier's Web site wasn't necessarily integrated with your in-house IT system, so you were stuck with re-keying everything - which is possibly why the carriers initially limited online booking to smaller customers with limited traffic volumes. Some still do.

Enter NetDespatch, a UK company that has rapidly defined a leading role for itself in online job booking. Starting with the courier market, it has steadily expanded into the mainstream parcels business, picking up major users such as Amtrak and APC along the way,

Its Velocity product is a hosted system. As a shipper, you interact online with the NetDespatch server rather than directly with the carrier, though the system will be branded to convey the carrier's identity. NetDespatch takes care of the carrier integration, using a Java-based product called Connector. It can accept bookings in a variety of formats, including email, XML message and FTP (file transfer protocol), as well as through direct input.

Becky Clark, energetic founder and managing director, calls it "extreme integration". She says it can orchestrate a complex series of transactions in which, for instance, a collection request might be submitted from the shipper's despatch department, the carrier's system is alerted, the shipper's warehouse is instructed to print out delivery documentation, and the whole lot is pulled together seamlessly.

What was arguably lacking was in some ways the most obvious element - a mobile dimension. Admittedly, you could access the Internet via a mobile device to initiate a NetDespatch transaction, but that was only half the story. There was no fully-fledged two-way mobile interaction between the office and the vehicles.

With its new product, Velocity Unwired, NetDespatch claims to have changed all that. It aims to bypass the desktop and indeed the office itself, allowing people like field engineers to order up parts from their company's stock directly from a mobile device and automatically initiate the despatch process. Stock is decremented, a despatch order is generated, the job booking is actioned, labels are printed and the product goes out; and only the engineer has to do anything to make all this happen.

NetDespatch is working on this with Cognito, the mobile data specialist, and it uses direct GPRS transmissions rather than the Internet for the data flow. Cognito offers a "managed network" system, in which the mobile network operator handling the GPRS transmissions routes them via Cognito's own servers, rather than directly, and there is a fixed link between the servers and NetDespatch. It is not a public GPRS service in the usual sense, although it can be offered via any of the four major network operators.

There are various benefits in this approach. For a start, Cognito is able to introduce added-value elements to enhance the service levels it offers, and ensure reliability. Also it means the NetDespatch system can be "locked down" to some extent, since the PDA or handheld device used by the mobile worker is not accessing the Internet, so he or she can't use it for mobile browsing or emails.

Finally, it does not run on a mainstream operating system such as Windows Mobile. Although the software uses a full-colour interface reminiscent of the latest proprietary systems, it is said to require less power, since it has simpler and less resource-hungry screen furniture and no standard browser. So in theory your batteries should run for longer on a single charge.

However, NetDespatch emphasises that if required, the application can co-exist on a handheld unit with a standard operating system such as Windows, giving users the best of both worlds.

Seamless and proactive

It is not a job despatch application as such, since it historically the task has been tackled from the perspective of the shipper (or recipient). In essence, the system is designed to help carriers interact more seamlessly and proactively with their clients.

However, in some respects Velocity Unwired has taken the system a little further in that direction. The latest system, for instance, can include TomTom navigation, and Becky Clark says the company is already looking at offering routing and scheduling from an established supplier, which might become available later this year.

There is also provision for the handheld unit to be linked by local Bluetooth wireless connection with a barcode scanner, allowing field staff to record delivery events as they go. It is not hard to see all this being bundled together into a more job-centric product.

Already there is a system called Quick POD, which allows shippers to request PODs online, regardless of whether the company running Velocity actually did the delivery or passed it to a subcontracted third party. This sounds simple enough, but actually invokes levels of complexity, since the service must interact with the systems of any carrier involved in the movement.

"Obviously we're reliant on the quality and timeliness of the carriers' input," Becky Clark says. "Some, such as DHL, are very good, and if they can supply details extremely quickly, Quick POD will relay that. Others may be slower."

Web services

NetDespatch likes to keep ahead of the technology game, and has used some of the latest systems to implement its current product range, including Web Services and other features of what Becky Clark considers to be "Web 2" (the current Holy Grail of the Internet community). The company is one of the earliest uses to introduce AJAX technology (Asynchronous Javascript and XML), which allows quicker and more invisible screen refreshes by downloading only changed data in response to user interaction, rather than the whole Web page.

Becky Clark acknowledges that within a year or two, the features offered by Velocity and Velocity Unwired could be regarded as the norm for the parcels industry. But she's keen to get across a sense that at the moment it is in the vanguard. Summing up the mobile input capabilities of the Unwired system, she comments: "Very few systems can cope effectively with unsolicited transactions. That's what this system is designed for."

It's hard to resist the feeling that by the time the rest of the market has cottoned on to this, NetDespatch will have found new ways to edge in front.