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Couriering for the Masses

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DQI Bureau
New Update

Harish Patel, a small time hard ware distributor who dots Mumbai’s

congested Lamington Road, the Mecca for resellers, has been incurring heavy loss

due to delay in consignments. Though he understands the need to track the status

of these consignments, which he sends every week to his resellers in various

small towns in Maharashtra and Gujarat, either online or on phone, the wayside

courier service does not offer him that luxury. And Patel cannot afford to turn

to global giants like Fedex and DHL which have extensively e-enabled their

business.

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There is little doubt that Patel’s experience is repeated across the

country with a large number of people who just cannot shell out the money to

employ the big-ticket courier agencies. And it just seems impossible for the

small courier companies (numbering about 1,500 to 2,000 across the country) to

e-enable their business. Neither do they have the financial muscle or requisite

expertise to have an own internal IT team, nor can they implement expensive

third-party applications. The only way out appears to have a cheaper third-party

solution that will be affordable to the beleaguered small courier agencies and

therefore to all the harassed Patels. Thankfully, the Rs 250 crore PCS

Industries has brought some cheers to this sector–it has developed a new

solution that fits their requirements to a tee.

This is in the form of trackyourpack.com, an integrated software application

in the ASP mode designed to help monitor the movement of consignments in transit

with precision on a minute to minute basis and more importantly not burning too

much of a hole in the pocket. No wonder, AS Velpanur, V-P, SBU, PCS Industries,

the brain and the architect behind the trackyourpack application, is eager to

emphasize on the less expensive part. "Our solution with its affordable

pricing is targeted at the community of small couriers only. The Fedex and the

Blue Darts who already have more expensive applications are not our target

customers."

But why did PCS, primarily known as a hardware manufacturer, go for

developing an application addressing the courier industry? Velpanur provides the

answer: "PCS ships number of PCs throughout the year at various locations

across India. For this we were using the service of a number of courier and

cargo companies to move the shipments but we were unable to track the position

of these consignments on a real time basis." This incidentally triggered

off a search for a solution that could provide real time information. And

subsequently PCS developed a web-based solution to meet this internal

requirement. Therefore what started as an internal project was later devised to

become a solution catering to the small courier agencies.

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Dissecting

Trackyourpack
Some

Key Modules
Key

Business Benefits
Personalization

Module
Designing

data entry screens, setting operational rules and personalizing

report generation
Master

Module
Creating

different master databases and different directories to capture all

information
Transaction

Module
Registers

transactions in manifests, tracks PODs, generates delivery run sheet

and generate load intimation and co-loader booking
Billing

& Reports
Generating

invoices, preparing reports and billing transactions

Apart from helping monitor movement of consignments in transit realtime,

trackyourpack also offers a host of other functionalities. It generates invoices

for the courier agency to bill to its customers as well as monitor the

performance of regions, branches, franchisees as well as the delivery staff. In

the words of Velpanur, "Trackyourpack redefines the operating process and

facilitate information classification, exchange and retrieval in a smooth manner

allowing couriers to provide value added services to its clients."

Shirish Gariba, Elbee Services, believes that any good application for the

courier industry should always have these attributes. Elbee itself has a similar

home-grown application, and this scenario is replicated across all the leading

courier companies. But he admits that there is indeed a serious lack of good

third-party application, and once it comes to the question of having a solution

affordable to the smaller courier agencies, the cupboard is particularly bare.

So in the ultimate analysis what are the benefits apart from the cost factor

that small courier agencies gets from trackyourpack. Says S Mehmood, V-P

(Operations & Promtions, Big Guy Courier Pvt. Ltd., one mid-tier courier

company which has already adopted the PCS solution, "The customers’

consignments can now be tracked online realtime and this has allowed us to

provide value-added services to our customers." Velpanur suggests that

these small operators require other benefits like easy data entry,

simplification of processs, single point administration, assured back end

support and adequate safety measures for their solutions. The bigger courier

companies with their in-house solutions take this for granted since they can

afford large internal development/support teams as well as expensive data center

back up. Trackyourpack offers all these benefits, so that in terms of e-enablement

of their business processes, the smaller guys have a level playing field with

the Fedexs and Blue Darts. While biggies are hesitant to commercialize their

solution for the lack of an appropriate technology partner. With trackyourpack

perfectly filling this gap, it seems that this PCS solution will be the saviour

of Patel and his ilk for a long time.

Rajneesh De in Mumbai

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