Multi-Site Tracking System for Parcels, Documents and Assets

Desk to Desk - Multi Site

DeliveryPoD Enterprise is an off the shelf system for businesses that need to track high value or sensitive items across multiple sites.

The journey items may go on, can be varied, but here are a few examples:

Desk in London Office to a Person at a desk in Tokyo Office
Bank Clerk in Bristol Branch to a File Storage Location in Leeds

Each step of the way can be tracked with DeliveryPoD. Here is one example:

Collection From Desk (perhaps scanning Collection Point Barcode)
Records where it was collected from, onto what trolley, by whom…
Scan Into Mailroom Location
Scan Onto Courier
Record which courier, vehicle registration, ask the driver to sign…
It is marked as being with that courier until scanned into next site
Scan Into Mailroom at Second Site
Deliver to Person Example
- Scan Onto Mail Trolley
- Deliver to Person (Scan Item) – Obtain Name and Signature
Store Item
- Scan Location Barcode
- Scan Item

Benefits / Who Is It For?

The system is used by organisations that need to move Sensitive Items (documents, data disks) or High-Value Items throughout their corporate infrastructure.

Typical benefits are:

Fewer items going missing
Easier to find missing items (you know the last location/date & time)
Early Warning of Items Missing (see automatic emails/location audit)

The benefit of high-value items not going astray is fairly obvious, but other organisations may be worried about:

Sensitive information being passed to a competitor

For example Oil Drilling Reports, Legal Documents, Research Information
Reputational Damage

For example the loss of Patient Records, Social Security Data, Customer Papers, Court Documents…

It is worth bearing in mind that some reports can contain information that has cost an organisation millions of pounds in research.

The loss of reputation to an organisation of losing confidential papers can be measured in millions of pounds as well.

Send From Any Location

The software allows you to set up any Person or Department to be able to produce tracking labels and start an item on a journey.

Single journey items such as Mail and Parcels go one journey and are then deemed to be delivered/completed. These items have several attributes:

Sender – this is the “From” address and might be an individual person or a department.

Staff are given either an individual Login or a Department Login, which enables them to:
- Send Items by Producing Tracking Labels
- See all items they have sent and where they are
- Set up their own set of automatic email requests that apply to all items, items to a set department or items to an individual company when certain things occur such as:
  
  Please note the system knows the email address for the person it is being sent to, so requests can be set up to automatically enter that persons email address.
  - Tracking Labels Printed – perhaps to notify the person it is sent to, that it is now on its way
  - Item has had damage recorded against whilst in transit.
  - A Set Tracking Stage (such as “Delivery Van Loaded” or “Received at HQ”) has been completed.
  - Failed Delivery Attempt Occurred
  - Delivered
  - Delivered, but where somebody else has signed for the item (just in case they forget to pass it on)
  - The gets to a set period of time before or after it is due to be delivered, but has still not actually been delivered.
    
    For example, a Solicitor may want a warning email if a letter they have sent to a site has still not been delivered 2 days after it was due to be. This concept of an early warning that something has gone wrong, can be vital in some organisations.
To Person / Address
The Service You Are Sending It On

DeliveryPoD allows different services to be set, by giving it
- A Name such as “Next Day 1 pm“, “Same Office Transfer 2 Hours“
- Defining which days of the week collections and deliveries take place, plus the hours of service
- To and From Country Availability and any notes.
  
  For example you could set up a “Next Day by 9am”, allow it for UK to UK journeys, not allow it for “Japan to UK”, allow it for “UK to Ireland” but put a note “Will not get to remote parts of Ireland” which will be displayed when somebody in the UK selects the Service and selects a Person / Department that is in Ireland.
  
  DeliveryPoD can calculate the Due By date and time, based on the Service Selected and the date and time when the user said it is ready for collection. This in turn enables:
  - Service Level Reporting – set your own performance zones, such as “Very Early”, “Early”, “On Time”, “Late” and “Very Late”.
  - Escalation Emails can be set so Logistics Staff, The Person Sending and/or the Person It Is Addressed to can get emails at set times before/after the due delivery time.
Description of Item and User Defined Information

You can set up a Lookup Table of Short Descriptions – so the person can just select the item. They can type it in. It also supports the use of Retail Style Lookup tables, where the user scans the retail barcode and the full item description is entered for them (for those working in healthcare, this includes GS1 GTIN barcodes).

People Who Receive Items

The Self Service Portal allows anyone to see what is on its way to them from the moment the sender says it is ready to be collected. This brings substantial benefits to many organisations, for example:

Retailers – can see all the store returns, the day before they arrive at Head Office or say the Repair Centre. If you add in that they can see the type of item, a Jewellery Retails Repair Centre can see how many Watches, Rings, Necklaces are going to arrive the next day and plan staff rostering to cope with it.
NHS Logistics – Hospitals and GP Surgeries can see what is on its way to them and plan to receive it.

A User Name and Password is needed to access this part of the website. When setting these up, you set what items they can see as follows:

Individual Person – They can only see what has been sent to them personally.
Department Logon – They can see all items for their department at that site.
Company Logon Individual Site – They can see all items for their company at that site.
Company Logon Generic – They can see all items where the company name is the same, irrespective of address.
Generic Login – You can give a person access to all items.

Now people who receive items can answer their own queries, 24 hours a day, saving lots of time.

They can see:

Delivered / Non-Delivered Items
Description of Item
Who It Is From
Any User Defined Information

When they see the item they are interested in, they simply drill down to the Tracking Report.

Technical Information

DeliveryPoD was produced entirely by our own staff in the UK, using Microsoft Visual Basic .NET

The website is an ASP. Net web application that runs under IIS (5 upwards) and ASP. Net 4.0 upwards. It can be hosted on a standalone PC (need to check operating system) and servers.

The database ranges from Microsoft SQL Express 2008 (free edition) for smaller systems through to Microsoft SQL 2012 Enterprise R2.

We would jointly look at the scale of a project and agree on the appropriate server hardware and database configuration to match the amount of data / concurrent users.

The mobile software has several versions:

Microsoft Windows Embedded (current)
Android (current) and IOS (Q3 2018)

Web Based System

This is a Web Based system, which you can host yourselves or ask us to host for you.

People that send items, people that are due to receive items can check on the website for the latest status/whereabouts of those items, by logging onto the website, using a Web Browser that is already on their PC / Laptop / Tablet.

What can it track?

The Enterprise Version of DeliveryPoD can track:

Single Journey Items – These are things such as important letters and parcels that go on a journey, which is considered completed when it gets to the other end.

With these types of item, it is very much about:
- What Service are you selecting a Service which determines how long it has to arrive at the destination. This might be next day by 2 pm or maybe 4 hours from when it is made ready?
- It is it running to time or is it late (perhaps automatically send an email to a supervisor when it is 1 hour before due but is not in a vehicle or courier).
- Has it arrived or not?
- Did it get delivered on time?
Long-Term Items (Assets, Files, Documents, Transport Bags)

These type of items are with the organisation for years and are moved from time to time.

Unlike single journey items, they may be stored for years (in which case you had better make sure you accurately record where it was stored) and often require lots of additional information about the Asset / File. For example, Property Deeds being held by a Building Society might need Name of Customer, Customer Address, Mortgage Period, Customers Building Society Branch…

Here are some examples of Long-Term Items:
- Property Deeds at a Building Society
- Patient Records
- Loan Equipment for a Business
- IT Equipment

Long-Term items might be allocated to a member of staff or perhaps loaned to a member of staff or external person and you need to automatically email them when it is due (and at set periods after) to get the item back.

DeliveryPoD caters for both Single Journey Items and Long-Term Items.

Now you can have organisation wide visibility of everything you need to keep track of in one system.

Internal and External Tracking

Unlike most systems on the market, DeliveryPoD can track items both within buildings (such as offices, hospitals and banks) as well as externally (on vehicles. on couriers, in depots).

Tracking Stages are 100% configurable, so we set them up for each customer on installation. After that, customers can edit existing Tracking Stages as well as add new ones themselves.

Our tracking model is extremely comprehensive:

Buildings
- Physical Locations within building
- Mail Trolleys within building
Own Vehicles (your transport fleet)
Depots
Couriers (carriers that transport your items)
People – you may allocate or loan items to them

Track From Desk Into Post

We are often asked, can it track from the collection at persons desk/departments outbox into the post or onto a Courier – at which point our job is done?

Quite simply yes it can. We call it “proof of posting” and many organisations feel that at some point they may have to prove that a letter, document or parcel was put into the post or onto a courier.

The typical process is:

Scan Collection Point Barcode (or select it)
- Scan Items collected
Scan Into Post Room
Scan Into Post or Onto Courier

Configurable Tracking Stages

We set up DeliveryPoD for each customer. Our “Configurable Tracking Stage” approach enables us to create Tracking Stages to match a customers requirements exactly, in a matter of minutes.

Each Tracking Stage is given a name (e.g. “Load Onto Mail Trolley”) and then boxes are ticked, based upon what we want the Mobile Computer / Smartphone to prompt the user to do and what buttons are shown on the screen.

Customers can edit existing Tracking Stages and create new ones, which deploy to mobile computers in seconds. All of a sudden you have an Application Generator for anything Tracking.

Automatic Email Requests

Mail, Parcels and Items sent to a Specific Person

Automatic Email Requests can be set up to handle almost any eventuality.

Since the Email Address of the person it is sent to is known, Email Requests can automatically Email the person it was sent to (if you tick the “To Contact” box in the email request). Similarly you can do the same for the person who sent it, as well as adding specific email addresses to the “TO” or “CC” sections.

Item Dispatched (Tracking Labels Produced)
Goes Through a Set Tracking Stage (e.g. “Load Delivery Van”)
Delivered
Delivered but Addressee Did Not Sign (e.g. colleague signed)
Failed Delivery Attempt Occurred
Damage has been Reported
Item gets within a set Period of Before or After Due
- But has not been delivered
- This can be filtered to exclude items on vehicles or mail trolleys
  
  What this means is that you can have an automated escalation procedure, so items are not allowed to simply disappear in transit with nobody being informed of a problem.
  
  You might have 3 separate email requests:
  
  1) When within 2 hours of being due (not on a Trolley or Vehicle) to the Person In Charge of Logistics
  
  2) When late by 5 minutes to the person it was addressed to
  
  3) When late by 7 days to both the person it was addressed to and an office supervisor
Summary of Items Sent to a Person / Department / Company is sent at a set time of day.
Tracking Reports can be emailed at set times of the day

Email requests can be filtered by:

Who Sent Item

For example the “Fraud Investigation Unit” can have a set of Email Requests that apply only when they send an item. So people / departments can have there own set up.
Who It Is Sent To
- Person
- Department
- Company
Combination of Sender and Who It Is Sent To

For example “John Spence” or “Legal Department” can have an Email Request that only applies to items he sends to “HMRC Croydon”

Long Term Items (Assets, Files and Documents)

Email requests for these items tend to be different as the nature of the application is different. Here are a few examples:

An Asset / Document goes through a set Tracking Stage
Damage is Recorded
A Location Audit notes than an Asset / Document is Missing
A Missing Item is Scanned
A Set Item is returned
Item is returned to a “File Registry” location or an “Asset Home” Location (these are tags that mark when a physical location has a particular meaning)
Item Leaves a Asset Home or File Registry Location

All email requests can be filtered by:

Category
Description
Barcode
Owner

Enterprise Tracking