Brody Buhler, CEO at Escher Group, joins me to talk about creating high-performing postal and delivery companies, including:
- Posts using real-time data and analytics
- Taking friction out of postal transactions
- Leveraging local knowledge, for example address data
- Using data to optimise inventory, delivery timeframes, and understand the customer
- Trapped value in the last mile and the middle mile
- Automation to play a greater role in the last mile
- Managing e-commerce returns, and the end of the "one size fits all" returns policy
- Using automation to strip out cost and increase capacity
- Trends in cross-border delivery
- Using OCR and automation capabilities for inbound international parcels
- The role of mobile in the modern postal network
- Making international shipments at the post office counter more efficient
- Freeing counter staff for higher value transactions
- Post offices playing a role in the broader delivery strategy
- Reducing costly failed first-time deliveries
- Anticipatory delivery - anticipating the delivery recipient's preferences
- Shifting focus to gather preference data for recipients and post office customers
