Postal Hub podcast

Dean Maciuba, Director Consulting Services at Logistics Trends & Insights, joins me to discuss how home delivery fits in with the e-commerce value proposition:

• UPS and FedEx's growing network of access points (PUDOs)
• How UPS and FedEx are using those access points for residential deliveries, including redirections of failed first-time deliveries
• Pressures on delivery drivers
• Residential delivery: what the customer wants
• Customer choice in delivery
• Multiple home delivery attempts
• Porch piracy
• Price pressure on residential delivery, promoting PUDO delivery but being absorbed by e-commerce sellers
• Amazon, home delivery, and losses in delivery
• Rural delivery fees
• Parcel lockers in the USA
• Putting the customer in control of their deliveries (interactive delivery management - IDM)
• Amazon's parcel locker network - including direct delivery to parcel lockers
• Amazon's focus on e-commerce delivery: the customer!
• How Amazon delivers in the last mile
• Amazon volumes going through UPS, FedEx, and the US Postal Service
• Reducing cost in the last mile

Mike Darchambeau, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at last-mile technology company Urbantz, joins me to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on the e-commerce last mile:

• The sudden boom in e-commerce - including grocery delivery
• E-commerce merchants are capitalising on the boom
• Creativity in the last mile to cope with the drastic growth
• Enabling local e-commerce
• Increasing capacity in response to a surge in orders
• Longer wait times for deliveries
• Delivery windows filling
• How to deliver faster
• Warehouses and personnel (including drivers)
• Automation and scaling up operations
• Coping with staff shortages
• Fast on-boarding of new drivers
• How Urbantz helped Red Cross France with the rapid expansion of its COVID-19 home delivery service
• Carrefour innovating to serve customers who aren't tech-savvy
• Contactless delivery options for residential delivery
• Balancing loads across networks
• Route optimisation
• Communicating with the customer during delivery (interactive delivery management) and the customer experience
• Real time notifications and the impact on reducing calls to customer support
• Preparing for the post-COVID19 world
  • The importance of agility
  • Technology to serve the market
  • The risk of putting projects on hold
• Will new e-commerce customers stick with e-commerce after the COVID-19 threat recedes?
• Fast delivery and green delivery trends
• Changes to the supply chain, including local fulfilment

Click here to visit the Urbantz website.

Kevin Seller, VP Sales EMEA at Escher, on applications for artificial intelligence in the postal sector:

• The basic principles of artificial intelligence and machine learning
• Some current non-postal applications for AI
• Optimising operation and performance of retail stores and improving the customer experience
• Harnessing the huge amount of data available in the business
• Making an optimum post office network
• Why would a post want to invest in AI?
• Managing and analysing staffing patterns
• How does a postal operator get started with AI?
• Build vs buy in AI solutions
  • Strategy
  • Competition for talent
  • Collect and clean data
  • Develop algorithms
  • Testing
  • Timeframes and cost
• Some potential outcomes of implementing AI across the postal network
• Transforming and being competitive - and driving efficiencies
• Scalability of AI solutions

Click here to visit the Escher Group website.

Mark Fallon, President and CEO at the Berkshire Company, joins me to talk about how the US Postal Service is helping bridge the digital-physical divide in delivery:

• How Informed Delivery works
• National census - a digital experience
• Sending the US census, and the role of the postal service
• Informed Delivery's role in the process
• The ultimate omni-channel marketing campaign
• Conducting elections by mail
• The role of the mail in election campaigns when person-to-person contact and large gatherings are restricted
• Unboxing videos, upselling opportunities, and the future of Informed Delivery

Ben Stickle, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Middle Tennessee State University, joins me to discuss recent research he led into the porch piracy phenomenon:

• Background to research into porch piracy
• Reporting e-commerce parcel theft
• Definition of porch piracy - the theft of parcels delivered to private property
• Distinguishing porch piracy from mail theft
• Who is stealing parcels? Is it organised or opportunistic?
• How package thefts are being committed, including times when thefts occur
• Prevention methods that residents can put in place (including concealment and removing the target)
• Environmental criminology
• Target hardening - making committing the crime difficult
• Risk vs reward
• A police perspective on porch piracy
• Future research

Visit Ben Stickle's website.

Download the full porch piracy report.

Ralf Garlichs, Chief Operations Officer at Siemens Logistics, joins me to discuss the automated future of parcel processing:

• Processing varying parcel formats
• Speed and complexity
• Removing the need for manual handling
• A brief history of automation in logistics
• Labour shortage implications for logistics
• Three factors driving advances in automation: labour, volume growth, and the battle for services
• Data analytics role in improving efficiency
• Step-by-step progress towards a "touchless hub" - from unloading trucks through to sorting
• The automation technology already available today - including robots in hubs
• Automation in the core of sorting centres
• Who can benefit from logistics automation?

Jean-Philippe Ducasse from the USPS Office of Inspector General discusses recent OIG research into the US same-day delivery market:

• Can anyone make money on same-day delivery?
• Same-day delivery market size, including what kind of goods are being shipped
• The major players in US same-day delivery, and the different operating models
• Typical customer profile for same-day delivery
• Why customers buy with same-day delivery
• Are customers prepared to pay for same-day delivery? If so, how much?
• The cost and revenue for same-day delivery
• What the US Postal Service is doing in same-day delivery
• The potential for public-private partnerships for fast delivery
• The USPS's strength in next-day delivery
• Buy online pick-up in-store (same-day)

Igor Smelyanksy, CEO at Ukrposhta (Ukraine Post) is my special guest. We cover:

• The main drivers for domestic e-commerce growth in Ukraine
• Staggering growth in inbound parcels - and the investments Ukrposhta has made to cope with the increasing volumes
• How Ukrposhta is helping local businesses to sell online, including social media and webcasts
• Streamlining induction of international outbound parcels
• VAT on inbound international parcels
• Postal banking
  • The process for Ukrposhta setting up a postal bank
  • How helping unbanked citizens set up bank accounts will stimulate commerce
  • Distribution of pensions
  • Regulatory and compliance hurdles
  • Competing with or complementing existing banks
• Postal privatisation
  • Political changes that have already enabled modernisation at Ukrposhta
  • Ukrposhta's plan to find a strategic investor to take a minority shareholding
  • Maintaining social obligations - including offering sustainable mobile postal services to areas with dwindling populations, without seeking a government subsidy
  • What privatisation means for employees
• Environmental initiatives
• Out-of-home parcel delivery vs residential delivery

Tim Harrison, Senior Policy Researcher at Citizens Advice and one of the authors of "The market which isn't delivering", joins me to discuss the failings and potential remedies in the UK e-commerce parcel delivery market:

• Where does the e-commerce parcel delivery experience begin?
• Unfair surcharging (for example, for delivery to remote addresses)
• Delivery information customers need when ordering online, including estimated delivery time
• Communicating consumer rights information
• Do customers need to know which delivery company will deliver their order?
• The main delivery problems UK consumers encounter
• Why isn't the available technology being used to solve these delivery problems?
• Delivery for customers with disabilities
• Accessibility information for post offices and PUDOs
• The link between delivery quality and contractor payment
• Complaints handling
• Consumer experience with e-commerce returns
• Does the UK parcel industry need to be regulated?

Marek Różycki, Managing Partner at Last Mile Experts (and ex-Amazon VP Logistics EU) discusses FedEx's travails and Amazon's continuing expansion in the last mile:

• Has FedEx taken its eye off the ball in B2C delivery?
• B2B mindset in the e-commerce era
• Could FedEx pull back from the B2C segment?
• Why FedEx needs to change or run the risk of being broken up
• FedEx's TNT acquisition
• DPD's decision to go for B2C business - and the mindset change that move required
• Amazon's willingness to invest and acquire… and should Amazon acquire FedEx?
• If not FedEx, would there be another carrier Amazon could acquire?
• Would other retailers (in particular those trying to compete with Amazon in delivery) be interested in acquiring a delivery company like FedEx?
• What would a privatised US Postal Service do?