OPINION: Australia Post’s next-day delivery a decade too late

Australia Post arrives late at the party and tries to make a big entrance as if it revolutionized the delivery space with its next-day delivery. In a statement released to the media, it even labeled the new service called Australia Post Metro as “the first new delivery service in recent years.” 

The government business enterprise will now allow selected retailers to take orders up until 8 pm, to enable next-day delivery. It’s hoping this will help with faster deliveries, especially in the lead-up to Christmas. 

Call me the Grinch, but there’s nothing to celebrate here. Next-day delivery was news 10 years ago. Mostly these big e-commerce businesses are now talking about same-day delivery. We’ve been running the Zoom2u business operating same-day delivery since 2014. Lots of e-commerce businesses have been doing this for years. 

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ALSO READ: Australia Post speeds up service, now offers next-day delivery

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The Australia Post is trying to extend the time window for pickups and orders. When parcels are to be received later on that evening. However, parcels only get delivered the following day.

Advice to Australia Post

Australia Post should rather be using its time to think about how it can get same-day delivery right. Before it’s another ten years too late. I even want to extend this to retailers and e-commerce businesses in general. In particular, companies which have a large volume of orders.

Retailers with a large footprint of retail stores have the ability to actually deliver directly from a store to their customers in a particular radius. 

Australia Post don’t wait another decade… please

Australia Post is fixated on next-day delivery, because the utility wants to use the infrastructure which it owns. The enterprise has massive warehouses and huge sort facilities and it needs to fill those facilities with volume. 

Australia Post is probably worried about losing volume to same-day service. The same-day delivery service typically goes directly from that warehouse to the actual consumer or from a retail store directly to the consumer.

So I think this is their way of trying to continue to capture volume, which may be shifting into the same-day network.

I have to give it some credit: It’s an interesting game plan. 

Other options for next-day service

In Australia, there are a number of different options that are available to retailers and e-commerce businesses for a next-day service. Australia Post is not the only option.

You’ve got companies like CouriersPlease, which is owned by Singapore Post, Aramex Australia, which used to be called Fastway Couriers. Don’t forget Allied Express or TNT which is owned by Fedex. You’ve got a range of companies which already offer next-day delivery and they have been in the business for many years.

I’d say these e-commerce businesses and retailers should explore ways to come up with a particular service that caters for their exact needs. They should consider having a late evening pick-up delivered to their warehouse to be sorted to go out the next day. There are options already available. You don’t have to only rely on the Australia Post. 

Scrap single carrier solution

Businesses should be thinking about stepping away from single-carrier solutions. No business can afford to be relying on only one service, one carrier. A multi-carrier strategy in terms of different types of goods can be delivered by different companies.

It may be determined by geographic location, the size of the item or the service that’s required for that item. There are a number of products on the market. Look at what Shippit is doing for instance. It allows e-commerce companies to connect and allows them to choose a range of different providers. There are also companies like Transdirect and Rendr. Locate2u has also just released a multi-carrier solution. This is essentially where you have a single point of contact where bookings can come in. You can choose the bookings based on some rules as to which is the preferred carrier to actually send that booking to. The preference could be based on criteria of location, but it could also be based on the most cost-effective carrier.

Time for your own fleet?

Historically, most companies have always outsourced and used third parties to do delivery

but they should now be thinking about controlling that delivery experience. When the delivery experience is so important to customer success and repeat customer bookings, it’s a must.

When businesses spend such a huge amount of money on investing and getting that customer, why are they relying on a third party to deliver that final experience in delivery? If they spend time looking through the reviews on their website, they’ll notice the negative reviews related to delivery. Being able to control the delivery experience by having its own fleet will allow businesses to improve the overall customer experience.

Look at Amazon, that’s exactly why it has invested so heavily in building the Amazon Flex network. It’s to allow the retail giant to have its own fleet of drivers. This way they have the ability to deliver orders the same day as it’s placed because they can create the delivery runs for their drivers. It’s their own responsibility to have the capacity to have the right tools and delivery management software programs . These software tools, like what Locate2u offers, allow them to capture all their bookings, do things like optimization and then provide that live tracking experience. The customer can see that orders are arriving.

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