Technology gives couriers the edge on the street

Couriers have held a strange fascination for sci-fi writers. William Gibson, for example, made his Johnny Mnemonic someone who could deliver data too precious to send over the public internet - by downloading it to a chip in his head.

Sadly, such cyber-visions seem a way off. While the internet and email have made it easy to zap a document across a city or a continent within seconds, plenty of companies still rely on couriers to shuttle vital papers and packages around, just as they have for decades.

Most of the courier companies are doing business in a way that hasn't changed for years, failing to adapt to the fact the internet has altered the rules of the game. But one upstart is hoping to get ahead of its rivals by its use of new technology.

Jay Bregman, chief technical officer at eCourier, explains: "If you are a regular user of same-day couriers you realise that virtually everyone still operates the same old business model.

"They take all their bookings by phone, they have controllers sitting by radios who yell and scream when an order comes in and the first courier to call back gets the job. These guys have no idea where their fleet is at any one time."

Bregman said the largest London courier companies have a five per cent market share - partly because of the problems with managing large fleets of couriers - making for a very fragmented market.

He told silicon.com: "What we thought was that we could turn all this around using technology - we give all our couriers palmtop computers so we could know where they are in reality."

The company's fleet of vehicles has been outfitted with O2 Xda IIs and GPS modules, which communicate each unit's location and availability back to a main server every 10 seconds.

The company also takes 85 per cent of its bookings online - far more than its rivals which only take about five cent online, Bregman said.

On top of this the company has also automated much of its dispatch system. It uses the data coming in from the handhelds - mixed in with weather, traffic and bookings data - to select the best-placed courier for its 650 bookings per day.

eCourier said this reduced its pickup and delivery times by 33 per cent and 50 per cent respectively compared to the industry average.

The company is also giving clients access to a web-based system, reducing the need for them to call up and find out where their delivery is - instead they can track it from their desktops as it moves, street by street. Couriers, meanwhile, can capture details and send emails such as 'package on board' and 'proof of delivery' straight to customers from the handhelds.

eCourier's inbound query calls have now dropped to less than one per cent thanks to the online tracking facility - 95 per cent lower than the industry average.

As for the couriers themselves, Bregman said: "We make their lives easier because everything is automatic and they don't have to deal with a radio blaring all the time."