Read the implementation process for StarTrack Courier and Adiona, or how StarTrack Courier is using Adiona for day-to-day optimizations.
StarTrack Courier is Australia Post’s Same Day Delivery business, with a focus on speed. StarTrack Courier services a wide variety of businesses, from same day delivery for B2B and B2C companies like The Iconic and Wesfarmers Health, to life-saving blood and live human organs for Life Blood and Donate Life. What these very different cargos have in commonis strict service levels that must be met for a successful delivery.
Strong service levels and routes optimized for efficiency are a must for winning new business – but it must be realistic to sustain the business.
Christopher Cano, National Business Improvement and Implementation Manager, says it’s common in the industry for vendors to over promise on unrealistic service levels and then not be able to actually meet them.
Since adopting Adiona, new business is simulated to model realistic service levels and impact to existing routes and shifts. This not only maximizes asset utilization but sets up clear expectations with the customer for what they’ll be getting.
Chris says, “if we look at a run that’s seven hours but we can do it in six and a half, our costs are going to be less, which means we’re going to charge the customer less.” This doesn’t just give results to the customer either.
Simulations also factor in the drivers: “What’s the most efficient route, so we can then redeploy the driver to doother work or finish early and maximize their earnings?”
Winning back a churned customer
StarTrack Courier was initially motivated to look into route optimization after a long term, large customer left and cited the lack of route optimization as one of the reasons why. After moving to a competitor, they came back to Chris’ team unhappy with the service they had moved to.
In that time, StarTrack Courier had already made progress towards addressing each point of feedback, including engaging with Adiona. Impressed, they came back to StarTrack Courier for a multi-year, multi-million-dollar commitment.
“It really came full circle because there were three key points [the customer had raised]. One we managed to solve in three months with Adiona, and the other two we’re in the process of solving. We took the feedback on and used that to initiate change.”
“They were quite impressed with what we had done in such a short period of time, because it was only three to four months from when they exited to when we started speaking again. In that time, we went to market, figured out the solution we wanted, went through procurement, and deployed it. Pretty unheard of for a company of our size.”
Preventing customers from churning
Another StarTrack Courier customer approached Chris’ team with feedback that their annual spend had increased from $1 million to $1.5 million. The customer said they were thinking of leaving not just StarTrack Courier, but their entire Australia Post account which was closer to $8-10 million in total value.
Same day delivery is a key part of that customer’s business and keeping stores stocked. So even though the total spend with StarTrack Courier was a small part of the total, it had an outsized influence on the account. In exchange for keeping their entire account, they asked for a 10% reduction in their rates, or to reduce driving time from roughly 135 hours a day to 110 or less.
Using Adiona, Chris’ team optimized routes so that driving hours totaled 105 hours per day. However, there were a number of business factors that hadn’t been taken into consideration and the routes weren’t viable. Once again, Chris’ team got to work, this time more collaboratively with the customer. The driving hours were recalculated to be 115-120 hours per day.
While this wasn’t the number the customer wanted, using the Adiona platform Chris’ team was able to demonstrate that this was a realistic reduction that factored in all business considerations. The transparency and collaboration showed the customer that this really was the most realistic and sustainable optimization.
The reduction of 10-15 hours and one driver per day has remained steady ever since implementation.
“The software helped show them that there can be improvements,” says Chris, “but then it also helped underpin what’s realistic.”
Enabling teams to win new business
Prior to implementing Adiona, evaluating the impact of onboarding new customers meant involving data science and Arc GIS teams. These teams would assist on initial route planning, optimizations, and evaluating how this would affect asset utilization, existing runs, and shifts.
Involving other teams inevitably slows things down, impacting the sales and onboarding experience for customers.
With Adiona, Chris’ team can evaluate all of these factors themselves, and get back to the customer with a clean proposal, faster.
“Putting [a patchy Excel spreadsheet] in front of a $1 million or $2 million customer doesn’t really drive confidence, whereas now we take professional looking outputs from Adiona and have the data presented in a uniform way across all regions because that’s how it comes straight out of the platform,” says Chris.
“It’s good to see our company embracing change in this way, because we haven’t really invested in technology like this beforefor our Same Day business.”
