Delivery Puzzles Have Become an Office Habit

Editorial

August 8, 2019

How Artificial Intelligence helps us manage incoming deliveries.

In small offices like ours, without a dedicated soul to triage incoming mail, deliveries mishaps occur quite a lot.

There are few reasons that justify this recurring problem:

The Postal Service well... has its shortcomings.
Delivery times remain constrained mostly to office hours. After-hour lockers are available for a restricted number of couriers and at an additional cost.
Most packagages require a signature upon delivery. Not every company offers the authority-to-leave option.
Parcel theft happens, so it's no surprise we're hesitant to leave unattended packages at our home's front door.
Preference aside, services like Amazon Key are not available in Australia.
Mail gets picked up by whoever seats closer to the door or any occasional bystander. Distributing those packages is consequently an afterthought. A timely one.

Research estimates shopping volumes are on the rise in Australia, especially after recent establishment of Alibaba and Amazon; have another read at the list above and guess where all those parcels are heading too... you got it, they are on their way to workplaces like yours.

Once we realised how frequently we were finding ourselves in that situation, we started researching for solutions. We found innovation happening at different stages of the delivery process, yet not at the very end of it: the cost of employee time.

The parcel problem is on its way to becoming a people problem.

This is not solely a startup issue. Some of the biggest employers in the UK have banned staff from receiving parcels at work altogether, as their post rooms had become overwhelmed by mountains of internet shopping. Others have resorted to charging employees a fee for personal deliveries.

Enterprises have overflowing mailrooms, some companies have overworked office managers... and most SME's have time-wasting riddles.

Good news is, your office may already be equipped to help you.

If there are IP cameras installed - or you're thinking about buying some for security purposes, all you need to add to the mix is a powerful brain like our Niro Hub.

We've built a platform that employs Artificial Intelligence software to analyse your cameras' live feed and send alerts when relevant activity is detected. Those alerts can be shared with your coworkers and sent to multiple devices. You decide when and how to be notified, and then let Niro handle the burden.

Every time a delivery man steps out of the elevator, the entire office receives a notification on our #delivery Slack channel. It has been a game changer for us. Anyone expecting a package knows exactly where to look for historical information, as we can track every single parcel to its signee and time of day. At the same time, cameras are keeping us secure, alerting us when a person is detected.

Without increasing mailroom footprint, staffing or distractions, we've managed to reduce the cost of office deliveries. Job satisfaction and employee happiness come from small freedoms like this one.