How to improve the last mile in newspaper delivery

Modern media companies are well aware that the ‘last mile’ is one of the most important steps in the production of dailies. If the paper comes late or it is not in perfect condition, readers will quickly become unhappy with the service. If this happens frequently, they will not wait long to cancel their subscription. In this blog post, I will describe how adesso optimises the last mile in newspaper delivery.

Your paper will be delivered by 5 am at the latest!

Subscribers expect to receive their newspaper in their letterbox in the morning at the allotted time, regardless of whether they check the letterbox at 5:30 or 7 am. The newspaper should not be wet or in any way damaged. More important than that, it must be delivered on time.

Newspaper publishers make claims like this: ‘Your paper will be delivered by 5 am at the latest!’ To make good on this promise, they have thousands of employees who deliver the newspapers to readers’ homes overnight.

Now you might say: ‘Why not just get a digital subscription? That way, it will be delivered overnight so you have it when you want it in the morning.’ That might be true if it were not for the fact that digital newspapers are not always delivered on time and there are often technical issues that affect some of the functions. The newspaper must still be delivered to an app or in the form of an e-paper, albeit in this case over the Internet. Have you ever gone to read your e-paper only to discover that it is not today’s edition but yesterday’s news? Surely you have. Or maybe the page view does not work, certain images cannot be displayed, and the list goes on. But that is a different issue altogether.

Let us turn our attention back to the delivery of the print copy of a newspaper

You might think that the delivery process is really quite simple. Three steps – that is all it takes: the paper is printed, collected and sent out for delivery. Unfortunately, it is not quite as straightforward as that. The correct number of copies should be waiting for the delivery agents when they come to collect them. In some cases, they also have to insert supplements into the papers. Once that is done, off they go, be it by foot, by car or by bike. A lot can go wrong over the course of a night. For example, a road might be closed or impassable due to flooding. Or maybe the letterbox has been removed for a couple of days in order to perform work on fibre optic lines or it is hard to find the name of the customer in a multi-unit building. This is not a problem for experienced delivery agents. But for someone new to the job or someone who is covering for a colleague, this costs time and patience.

To solve these issues, adesso has developed the delivery agent app.

What is the delivery agent app?

In addition to route planning and navigation, the delivery agent app allows the user to store instructions for each location and each subscriber. The app also makes it possible for delivery agents to communicate directly with each other or with the publisher. Sick notes, holiday leave or substitutes are organised in external systems and can be integrated into the delivery agent app via APIs. A link to customer portals (for communication with readers) has also been provided for. In addition, it is also possible to switch between several languages or integrate internal publishing systems such as SAP or Salesforce. As added motivation for delivery agents, we have implemented a gamification feature.

The delivery agent app can be used online or offline. It can be made available as a native APP, though this is not necessary. Every delivery agent can use the app on their smartphone. It is secure and compliant with the rules of the GDPR.

We use low-code technology that makes it possible for any non-IT specialist to make changes themselves. This will please the product owners as well as sales staff, not to mention the management team at the publisher. Digitalisation, added efficiency, lower costs and improved communication are all benefits of the delivery agent app. The primary function of the app is, however, to make work easier for the thousands of delivery agents across Germany during their work each night.

You can find more exciting topics from the adesso world in our previously published blog articles.

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Author Thomas Mickels

Thomas Mickels has many years of experience as a consultant between IT and specialist departments in the realisation of complex IT projects. For the last 10 years, he has worked for various publishing houses throughout Germany and has successfully implemented digital transformation projects for both editorial and sales departments. At adesso, he is responsible for the topic of Media & Entertainment as CC Director.

Category:	Industries
Tags:	Digitalization Media and entertainment Publishers