Three Crucial Ways Our 2-Man Delivery Company Has Been Changed By Technology
When people think of deliveries and logistics, they think of it primarily as a service industry. For instance, you order an item, big or small, and if it’s delivered promptly and with good customer service, then happy days! Job done, right? Well, not quite.

We live in both an increasingly digital, and an increasingly busy age. One in which people are expecting that high level of service, but they’re also expecting it even quicker, with even greater levels of control and visibility, as well.

Customers don’t just want next-day delivery, they want to be able to track their item at every stage of the supply chain. Technology and IT play a bigger part in the industry now than they ever have before, for the customer, the retailer and for the 2-man delivery company, itself. From an IT perspective, there’s so much that goes on behind-the-scenes, work that’s unseen but certainly not unfelt. It’s the glue that stitches together every aspect of the customer’s journey, from the warehouse to the doorstep and much more in between!

Here at BJS, we wanted to look at that journey, at those integral bits of technology and software, in a little more detail. The mark of strong IT within a business is when you don’t notice it, so we thought it was time to give a little bit of attention to this unsung hero!

On The Hunt For Deliveries
When we order something online, what we want more than anything else is a feeling of control, especially when we’ve parted with our hard-earned cash. That’s why it’s so appealing to us, as consumers, to be able to see the progress on our order and to be regularly updated. Humans are also highly changeable, fickle creatures. Sometimes we want to cancel orders, or simply amend it in some way. Traditionally, this has been difficult to accommodate. Once your item was ordered, it was ordered, however, this is changing. At BJS, we’ve developed an extensive suite of ‘in-flight’ options allowing customers to take actions on their orders ‘on the fly’, as it were. Flexibility, above pretty much everything else, is a customer’s best friend.

'On The Road Again'
Firstly, an apology for having inevitably gotten that song stuck in your head. But in fairness, it is a classic. The delivery stage of the chain, when the van or lorry is actually en-route, often ends up being one of the more anxiety-inducing elements for a 2-man delivery company. You can have the best drivers in the world or the most well-maintained, modern fleet of vehicles, and still have your delivery disrupted by something completely out of your hands – an unexpected road closure, for example. IT systems help us allay those anxieties…

Route Planning
In total, the UK has over 260,000 miles of paved roads. The number of possible permutations when planning any one route, therefore, is pretty staggering. With the logistics industry now as streamlined as it is, it takes something a little more technical and modern than simply whipping out the AA road planner and a ruler. Distance is only one of the considerations needed when route planning, as well. When you’re driving huge lorries, you need to consider HGV restrictions, congestion and emission zones as well as real-time incidents.

In order to deal with all of this, whilst at the same time still meeting customer demand, we developed a bespoke, fully-integrated route planning system that allows our drivers not only to drive the optimal routes, but to manage route changes as and when they come in.

Goods In Transit
Traditionally, visibility is something that’s always been a bit of an issue for any business when it’s interacting either with other businesses or with customers. Perhaps a more accurate statement would be that a lack of visibility has often been an issue. What do we mean by this? Well, let’s say a delivery team was en-route when they came across an unavoidable delay, or there was an accident on the road. While it’s not the company’s fault, it isn’t the customer or retailer’s desired outcome either. Here at BJS, we’ve implemented in-vehicle CCTV as well as on-the-move goods scans. This way, we’ve been able to mitigate that element of subjectivity, and instead, we can put together a picture of what actually happened, whether that be good or bad.

IT is helping build a more communicative and accurate picture of the delivery chain. The number of ‘blind spots’ within the supply and delivery chains are consistently being reduced through the implementation of these systems. Something which drives company standards ever higher whilst keeping the customer increasingly in the loop.

Knock-Knock... Who’s There?
For any 2-man delivery company, the company’s most important facet is irrefutably the delivery itself. No matter how many other cogs there are constantly whirring and working together, it is the delivery more than anything else that the customer remembers as it’s the link in the chain where the customer comes into direct company with the delivery team. Within that relatively brief window of time, lasting impressions are made.

It’s your delivery team asking where he can take his mug to wash up after he’s finished his brew (milk and two sugars please, if there’s one going). It’s whether it’s shoes off at the door. But most importantly, it’s the smile that meets the customer as soon as their door opens. Surely this can’t be the realm of IT systems, of gadgetry and tech? Surely, this is the stage of the process which can’t help but be about the people?! Well, yes and no (and really, you should’ve seen that coming by now!)

IT On The Doorstep
The customer’s needs are always changing and adapting, and so the delivery process needs to adapt with it. Take the past few months, for instance, and what’s happened with COVID-19. We facilitated doorstep technology that enabled contact-free delivery, something that customers were (understandably) anxious about in the midst of a viral pandemic. We’ve also developed as near to real-time proof-of-delivery systems as is possible, enabling us to accurately monitor delivery progress across the network, and do so in a holistic way.

Personality and customer service remains very much at the forefront of point-of-delivery, and it has in no way been replaced by IT or technology – don’t worry, you’re not going to have your sofa delivered by a robot anytime soon. What IT has enabled, however, is a better customer experience, overall, and it’s enabled new challenges to be met that most likely couldn’t have been, otherwise.