Singapore Post (SingPost), the nation’s postal service provider, has been adapting latest technologies to keep up with the evolving trends. Today it has announced an initiative named SmartPost that will utilise wireless and digital technologies to increase postal service quality and improve operational efficiency.
This integrated suite of solutions has been created to augment service levels and enhance the customer satisfaction. It will leverage near-field communication (NFC), radio frequency identification (RFID), digital imaging and electronic notifications. This will enable the postal service provider to equip postal staff with new skills and tools to elevate their operational capability and efficiency across the entire postal operation: from collection to sorting, last mile delivery and, quality assurance. Paul Coutts, SingPost’s Group Chief Executive Officer, who has recently joined SingPostin an official statement, said,
SmartPost is one of many innovations SingPost is using to exploit and leverage the proliferation of digital technology, this time to address traditional postal challenges and take a disruptive step forward to meet evolving expectations for faster and more flexible deliveries, especially for eCommerce.
The first phase will focus on delivery of registered mail, SmartPac and other trackable postal items. SingPost will issue smartphones to the postmen that will be equipped with a customised postal delivery app. Tapping NFC and serialised code scanning, the app will assist the over 1,000 postmen to keep track of deliveries made and generate real-time prompts of standard operating procedures. Also, it will have the operational information regarding SingPost’s several mail products and services.
Apart from this, NFC tags will be installed on more than 50,000 delivery and collection points across the island, which make SingPose one of the first organisations in the world to do so. Data of crucial operational activities ranging from posting box collection to letterbox delivery can be obtained, enabling extensive and dynamic analytics for future customer service enhancements and operational work process improvements.
This will benefit the customers using the postal service as well, they will receive delivery status updates by SMS or email and will get notifications of where they may collect items whose delivery they have missed. In addition, they can also collect the item directly from the post office, for that, all they will need is an electronic notice on their smartphones in lieu of the physical delivery notes.
The postal service provider will involve more solutions that will be powered by digital technologies. It envisions to enhance the integration and data generation across the entire postal operation chain.
Proof-of-concept and ground testing for SmartPost’s last mile delivery solution were completed earlier this year. The official statement adds the application, system and infrastructure development is underway in preparation for the rollout that will begin later this year and is targeted to be completed by March 2019.
