What steps can Posts take to tackle high inflation?

A March 2022 Market Overview piece in Forex New Press confirms inflation shows no signs of slowing. The article pointed out that the rise in commodity prices and tight labor market inflation expectations caused a spike in March, bringing about a 6.6% peak so far. However, wealth fund manager, Nicolai Tangen of Norway, predicts that inflation will remain for a long time.

Businesses and Posts around the world would therefore do well to plan for higher costs, and to take action to counter the effects of high inflation.

The good news is that Posts can still turn to today’s top postal tech innovations for help. The same innovations that serve as game-changers amid the continued growth in e-commerce and related sectors since the beginning of the pandemic and throughout the supply chain challenges, can also help deal with rising costs.

While there are many options to lower costs, today we’ll examine three tech innovations Posts can use right now to counter the effects of higher costs and keep customers happy.

Track, Trace, and the Last-Mile

Solutions that enable pinpoint tracking and tracing capabilities are essential to last-mile delivery success and customer satisfaction. These tools support Posts in their efforts to boost last-mile success by:

• Route optimization, which helps drivers identify shorter routes.
• Allowing customers to request real-time parcel delivery redirect to a more convenient location.
• Being able to utilize the data collected for every delivery, helping to identify last-mile delivery bottlenecks and inefficiencies to course-correct.
• Offering real-time parcel tracking and traceability, providing greater visibility, transparency, and savings for all parties, including customers, partners, and stakeholders.

Optical Character Recognition

The lack of precision in handwriting on parcel address forms can lead to confusion and misdirected packages, and optical character recognition (OCR) has greatly improved this issue over the years. OCR technology can scan handwritten and typewritten labels to ensure accuracy. In fact, over the years, accuracy has increased from 70% to approximately 95% today, all thanks to advancements in OCR.

This crucial technology for Posts has reduced in cost over the years, especially when considering the time and financial resources that postal staff will spend trying to decipher handwriting with varying degrees of legibility. And it ensures that customers receive their packages on time.

And there are more ways OCR technology can help, such as:

• Maximizing the use of transformational technologies like deep-learning and intelligent voting logic, resulting in very few errors.
• Minimizing the manual processing of packets and parcels, without the need to replace existing sorting or scanning infrastructure.
• Boosting return on investment by accurately and efficiently speeding up previously time-consuming processes with faulty results.
• Being capable of reading various label types, including barcodes and 2D codes at any tilt or angle

Self-Service & Automation

Self-service and automation technologies offer Posts an excellent way to save money on operational costs while empowering customers with the ability to quickly perform tasks, from weighing packages to printing labels, scanning parcels, and more. Self-serve kiosks, parcel lockers, mobile apps for consumers, and customer-facing self-service tablets in the post office are all great examples.

Additionally, storing parcels closer to the customer is another great way to cut delivery times, and automation can help. Posts can repurpose their depots which are already in prime, urban locations and leverage automation technologies to make better use of these small spaces.

Here are a few additional ways automation can help fight rising costs:

• Enabling high-processing speed to move parcels quickly
• Ensuring accuracy and avoiding manual errors
• Conducting parcel sorting tasks

It’s entirely feasible to find cost-saving measures without sacrificing successful delivery and high-quality customer service. How is your Post saving money? Are you looking for more ideas or would you like to share some? Join us on Twitter and LinkedIn and share your thoughts!