Postal Hub podcast

Alistair Cochrane, Chief Operating Officer at Royal Mail, and Ricky McAulay, UK Operations Director at Royal Mail, discuss first and last mile strategy, including:

• Changes at Royal Mail after the 2022 industrial dispute
• Removing domestic air freight and moving to road or rail
• Restructuring costs in the business, including labour rates
• Restoring relationships and confidence with stakeholders and customers
• Reform to Universal Service Obligation
• Strategic importance of Royal Mail's new Super Hub
• Reasons for locating the Super Hub in the Midlands
• Automation, efficiency, and competitiveness
• Diversifying Royal Mail's last mile delivery offering
• Relationship with Post Office Ltd for delivery
• Partnering with third-party PUDO networks
• Parcel lockers
• Challenges of delivering letters and parcels to remote areas
• Importance of getting pricing right

Milos Zlatkovic, Founder and CEO at Mily Technologies, discusses optimising out-of-home delivery networks.

• Convenience leads to consumer adoption of lockers
• Proximity and parcel hold time in lockers
• Consumer preference to collect parcels close to home
• Coverage and density of out-of-home delivery in residential areas
• Managing risks in setting up an out-of-home delivery network
• Co-ordinating multiple internal stakeholders to increase likelihood of success
• Managing capacity in parcel lockers and PUDO points
• Sharing capacity with other carriers at PUDO points
• Finding the "sweet spot" of parcel volumes at PUDOs
• Improving coverage and capacity
• Integrating parcel lockers and PUDOs
• The role of returns in out-of-home networks
• Driving delivery efficiencies with out-of-home
• Assistance at various stages of setting up and optimising out-of-home networks
• Enabling internal collaboration via technology

Geopost has published its first 2B Recipient Barometer, which shows the growing importance of delivery to business success. Carmen Cureu, Group Market Research Director at Geopost, shares some insights from the research:

• Comparing B2B and B2C e-shoppers
• Surveying large corporates and SMEs
• Why delivery is crucial to business success
• Businesses' delivery expectations
• Importance of meeting commitments in delivery
• Solving delivery issues quickly
• Helping businesses track their deliveries
• Flexible delivery
• Improved customer service processes
• Delivery prediction and delivery slots
• Driver experience and expertise
• How businesses use delivery data

André Pharand, strategic advisor to Open Pricer, and Nicolas Nemorin, Head of Customer Success Management at Open Pricer, explain how to increase the profitability of parcels by using better costing to improve pricing.

• Postal and parcel operators not having good visibility of their costs
• Winning the parcel pricing wars
• The connection between costing and pricing
• The need to validate profitability in parcels
• Why costs and profitability is everybody's business
• Getting better granularity on costs
• Case studies of a post and express carrier showing what can be achieved with improved cost models
• De-averaging perception of costs
• Identifying unprofitable lanes and zones
• Making better decisions with existing customer base - including finding customers with hidden costs
• Reshaping base prices and discount policies
• What is holding carriers back from improving their cost models?
• Competing strategic priorities in the parcel and parcel industry
• How difficult is it to improve a cost model?
• Automating cost models
• Leveraging capacity utilisation data

Abdulla Mohammed Alashram, Group CEO of 7X, discusses the transformation of the Emirates Post Group into a new enterprise.

• The strategy that drove the transformation and rebrand of Emirates Post Group to 7X
• The significance of the number seven and the letter X
• 7X's subsidiaries Emirates Post, EMX courier and parcels, Fintx, and EDC electronic document centre
• Technology underpinning the new group-wide strategy
• Digitising Emirates Post services
• Making EMX the carrier of choice in the UAE
• Fintx financial services, including realtime remittances
• EDC enabling customers to travel a digitisation journey
• Technology driving changes in customers' delivery needs
• Plans to grow delivery options, including out-of-home delivery
• Understanding consumers' delivery preferences
• Why EMX has been launched as a separate delivery entity, including cross-border growth
• Integrating delivery services into a central app
• Growth strategies, including mergers and acquisitions
• Visions for the future
• 2025 UPU Congress

Alan Barrie, delivery sector expert and Chair of Stamp Free, discusses research into delivery sector trends.

• Research commissioned by Stamp Free into postal and parcel trends

• Competition for market share

• Dynamism of the UK delivery market, with traditional and alternative carriers

• The growth and scale fuelling competition in the last mile

• Structural issues creating issues for established delivery companies

• Getting close to consumers

• Transformation of the delivery sector

• Three key aspects of out-of-home delivery: customer convenience, sustainability and business efficiency

• The potential impact of digitalisation on the delivery sector

• How data helped cross-border delivery

• Getting data right for C2C delivery

• The label - physical representation of data

• The Stamp Free concept

• How Stamp Free works in practice

• Data capture at source

• Stamp Free and parcel lockers

• Going beyond replacing stamps and creating a pre-validated physical delivery item

• Simplifying parcel assessment and drop-off for consumers and delivery drivers

Kathleen Cauwelier, PhD Researcher at Mobilise VUB, discusses her recent research on the green delivery attitude-behaviour gap, including consumers' willingness to select "green" delivery options.

• How consumers say they want to behave and how they actually act
• Defining the attitude-behaviour gap
• Survey understanding consumers' delivery preferences and habits
• Identifying groups of consumers with common attitudes towards green delivery, including the careless consumer, and ignorant consumers
• Education of consumers so they can understand environmental impact of their delivery choices
• Consumers' willingness to pay for greener delivery options
• What should the delivery sector do next to help consumers make greener delivery decisions?
• Difference in actual consumer behaviour relating to green delivery across different clusters of consumers

Restaurant delivery expert Peter Backman - the brains behind thedelivery.world and The Delivery Prophets - discusses the differences and similarities between food delivery and parcel delivery.

• The difference between restaurant delivery and grocery delivery
• Why restaurant delivery is not a new thing
• Technology and delivery aggregators changing restaurant delivery
• Importance of timeliness to restaurant delivery
• Delivery problems in meal delivery
• How delivery aggregators are using tech to upend restaurant delivery
• Ability to plan last mile deliveries
• Batching of orders
• Timeliness of meal delivery
• La Poste delivering meals, and planned meal delivery
• Consumers tracking orders and deliveries
• Delivery pricing and menu pricing
• Restaurant delivery companies struggling to make a profit
• Fees, food prices, up-selling, and other ways to fund delivery
• Delivery costs and impact on restaurant profitability

Belgian postal operator bpost has launched its carbon calculator, which estimates the carbon emissions associated with domestic parcels. Karin Enzlin, Head of Sustainability at bpost, discusses how the carbon calculator works and what it could mean for e-commerce delivery.

• Background on bpost's environmental and sustainability strategy and ambitions
• Electrifying the last mile and using out-of-home delivery
• Emission-free delivery in Ecozones
• Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive
• Lowering emissions
• Reporting bpost's emissions to e-commerce retailers
• How bpost's carbon calculator tool works
• Validating the carbon calculator and complying with standards
• Applicable for bpost parcels in Belgium
• Predicting parcel emissions and future improvements to the carbon calculator
• Helping consumers understand the environmental impact of different delivery options
• How the carbon calculator tool will help bpost reduce its own emissions
• Standardisation and regulation of last mile delivery emissions reporting, including conversations with Belgian regulator BIPT

Axel Dekker, CEO and co-founder of Packaly, discusses delivery optimisation, reducing emissions, and reporting emissions.

• Overview of the Packaly network
• Freelance riders and local partners
• Consolidating orders
• Ship-from-store and ship-from-hub
• Choosing the right vehicle for delivery routes
• Managing volumes (size) and routing for delivery vehicles
• Working with retailers and delivery partners to improve data
• Delivering to low-emission zones
• Sharing delivery hub infrastructure
• Giving retailers greater visibility of last mile emissions
• Calculating emissions at a granular level
• Need to standardise of emissions reporting