SPOTLIGHT: LOGISTICS
DELIVERING A DIGITAL DOLLAR
Logistics franchises deliver the goods in a fast-changing and challenging industry. By Sarah Stowe
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ogistics and distribution is all about speed and service. But today the sector is under constant pressure to deliver a better service at an even lower cost, suggests Mark McGinley, who heads up CouriersPlease. Here, four franchise leaders in the logistics and distribution space share where they believe change will lead.
CouriersPlease
“Consumers expect choice of where and when they can get a delivery. They want twilight, weekend, four-hour deliveries, they want to be informed where their package is. The one thing they don’t want to do is pay for it.” The business faces two crucial challenges: 1. Franchisee earning potential becoming increasingly jeopardised in a commoditised e-commerce landscape (e.g. retailers offering free shipping, the need to return products) 2. Urbanisation and the lack of government planning for parcel hubs. “The strength our business has to tackle these challenges is the ability to ‘transform through partnership’. This means we are leveraging the strengths of businesses who can assist with reducing delivery costs and create a better experience for customers,” says McGinley. But what is a seamless experience for the customer can be much less so for the courier. The logistics and delivery business is being pulled in opposite directions, with a resulting stretch in profits. It’s particularly true at courier level. “Historically couriers have done pickups and deliveries. Now with e-commerce there is the rise of residential deliveries. So two things have happened. There are all the problems of redelivery, really low productivity, zoning difficulties, traffic, people not being home and apartments that are hard to access,” McGinley explains. “Retail value is more or less halved. I’ve seen statistics globally that the cost of logistics is up 17 per cent but retail value is down 4 per cent. But that’s magnified more in Australia where there is a race to the bottom. Consumers expect choice of where and when they can get a delivery. They want twilight, weekend, four-hour deliveries, they want to be informed where their package is. “The one thing they don’t want to do is pay for it. It’s a double whammy; franchisees are working harder for their dollar.” The good news is that solutions are on hand at CouriersPlease, which is actively addressing these major concerns to franchise profitability.
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“So what are we doing? We’re investing in technology, we’ve just released a new driver app that can do real-time traffic updates, there is AI [artificial intelligence] attached to it around delivery addresses, route optimisation and prioritisation.” This means consumers can be kept informed about their parcels in transit, and given delivery alternatives. CouriersPlease has also partnered with Hubbed, a collection point network of 1700-plus locations such as BP service stations and 7-Eleven stores, which allows franchisees to deliver parcels to secure lockers that can be accessed by the customer 24/7. “Instead of delivering to 10 addresses we can deliver 10 packages to one spot. It’s an increasing trend and the more savvy consumers are selecting these locations, they are so convenient.” Additional benefits include a reduction in carbon emissions and an easy, safe parking option for franchisees who would otherwise be delivering to hard-to-access residential addresses like high-rise apartments.
