How to choose the right solutions to launch your digital courier business

Courier service has certainly come a long way. It seems like it was only yesterday when everything was handled manually by humans. 

As more and more people start shopping online, the demand for instant shipping has also increased. To the point where it requires more labour to perform and manage all the incoming inquiries and ship them to its respective address seamlessly. 

Labour shortages, rising labour cost, and the reduction in automation costs have propelled businesses into the direction of digitalisation to streamline processes like predictive analytics, real-time route planning, and automated sorting.

On top of that, digitalisation can also benefit from gaining real-time insights into the delivery supply chain and enjoy a smooth and flawless delivery experience. But perhaps the most prevalent digitalisation efforts are courier providers’ investments in their digital platforms. The shift from offline to online transactions will continue to be the most noticeable change over the next 3 years. 

As businesses grow, the courier and logistics industry must also follow suit. The demand for faster and efficient delivery is at an all-time high, as such, competition is getting steeper and steeper.

Here are three major challenges for courier companies:

1. Understanding merchants pains

As merchants, finding a dependable and infallible delivery service that caters to customers’ needs is key to a successful courier business. As more orders come in, it’ll be harder to keep things in place and be organised. Little things like getting the right quote, making payment, labelling the package, notifying recipients, tracking shipments consumes a lot of time and effort and are likely to be prone to error. 

Instead of worrying about those, merchants would be more inclined to opt for a reliable delivery service that is able to help them with all the nitty-gritty details.

Little things like getting the right quote, making payment, labelling the package, notifying recipients, tracking shipments consumes a lot of time and effort and are likely to be prone to error.

2. Adopting a seamless operation

Gone are the days of doing things manually. In this day and age, a solution that can quickly expand or shrink its capability to meet the market demand in an instant is well sought after. By adopting this, businesses can now provide a fast and efficient delivery service to customers. 

In order to keep up with the competition, businesses would go for a courier service that stays on top of new advances. 

Manual tasks like printing and distributing flyers and labels, assigning tasks, notifying pick-up requests to riders and drivers, managing run sheets and proof of delivery, and overlooking fleets, drivers and riders can be solved and made simple with technology. 

By eliminating these labouring and time-consuming tasks and moving to an automated process, business owners can potentially cut down a significant amount on operation cost and speed up the workflow to make everything more efficient and effective. 

3. Building a customised technology solution 

Customisation is everything in today’s world. Customer expectations are increasing day by day – goods are expected to be delivered faster, more efficiently, and at a lower cost. And this, in turn, pushed courier services to become more and more customised. While this may sound like a piece of good news to customers, it’s a nightmare to those working day and night to make sure items are delivered right on time. 

Anyone who has customised or bought any customised software can guarantee that it comes with a high upfront cost. Not only will the entry and the operation costs cost you an arm and a leg, but the subsequent upgrades will also be expensive as well. And speaking of upgrades, you’ll be solely responsible for it, which is often expensive and time-consuming. 

Aside from that, if you’re thinking of launching a fully-loaded custom courier management software solution, be prepared to be patient because these things take time, which you may or may not have enough of. 

While customisation is highly favourable, it lacks industry standards. The build-from-scratch model with its endless customisation would be a recipe for disaster if you’re not ready for it. And then there’s the issue with scaling. Building a customised solution requires a capital investment in hardware and infrastructure. Not to mention it also needs long-term planning and commitment of resources for scaling.

So why spend your capital on courier management software development when a great courier management system is already available! Your limited capital should be focused on scaling up operations and on marketing to acquire more customers!

 

How to choose the right solution to launch your digital courier business

As the world advances, the demand for last-mile delivery has also increased tremendously. As such, courier and logistics services have to arm themselves with more sophisticated solutions to help businesses tackle problems and provide solutions to improve workflow and processes. Here are three types of solutions you need to launch your digital courier business

1. Digital ordering channel 

Today, more and more courier businesses are going online. As the world switches from offline to online, businesses need an effective marketing funnel that brings customers from the awareness stage all the way to the purchase stage seamlessly. 

Arming with the right marketing automation, setting the right pricing model, allowing easy sign-up, having an effective referral system, and providing great support are some of the important features to have. 

When it comes to booking, nothing ticks a customer off than a complicated booking process. Not only does the booking form have to be concise and easy to fill, but courier businesses also need someone to manage data in bulk and install e-Commerce store plugins on their customer’s websites. 

As online banking slowly integrates into our society, it’s more important than ever to provide an easy and seamless way of payment like online banking, FPX, credit card or debit card, online bank transfer, e-wallet, auto-debit, and cash on delivery. 

Other value-added services such as referral systems, automated email, SMS and push notifications, custom branding, re-marketing, insurance services can add great value to courier businesses when done right. 

2. Fleet and delivery management

Courier services rely heavily on efficient dispatch and distribution. Accuracy and dependability is something a courier service can’t afford to fall short of. To ensure impeccable delivery from the warehouse to the customer’s door, fleet and delivery have to operate at an optimal efficiency to deliver on-time and accurately. 

One way to keep this promise is to onboard reliable drivers and riders so that you have an elastic supply to cater to the elastic demand. Real-time insights into the delivery are also prudent to ensure a seamless delivery experience. Analytics for parcels, personnel tracking, customer satisfaction scores, instant delivery notifications personalised services and offers, and advanced geocoding can also improve efficiency and customer satisfaction for your courier business. 

3. End-to-end experience

There’s no doubt about it. Every customer wants a great experience. But finding a courier service that manages a seamless end-to-end experience for customers? That’s no easy feat. 

With technology becoming more intertwined with our lives, courier businesses must also take advantage of the new technology in the courier management system to accommodate customers’ demands and stay on top of the game. 

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But no matter how advanced the technology, it’s rendered worthless if it’s difficult to use. With DelyvaX, we provide seamless, end-to-end solutions from ordering to delivery at accessible pricing on a subscription basis. It is a very easy to use courier management system with practical features, open APIs, scalable processes with secure managed cloud hosting, and automated backups to give you peace of mind, all as one package.