Bren Standell, Commercial Director Parcel Lockers Division UK/IRL at Quadient UK, discusses the challenges presented by ever-increasing volumes of parcel deliveries.
For many residential sites, inbound mail management has well established, tried-and-tested processes. Yet, the volume and frequency by which mail is entering residential apartment blocks and other managed rental properties has changed.
Apartment blocks in cities and towns far and wide are experiencing an upsurge in delivered parcels. The convenience of online shopping, together with tempting benefits such as free and next-day delivery, has led to a rise in the volume of packages delivered on a daily basis. One report cites that for the 2018-19 financial year, total volumes increased by roughly 10% year-on-year, reaching a total of 2.6 billion items in the UK*. Of course, the current situation has only increased volumes of online shopping, and people are likely to continue to heavily favour this where possible, to further reduce any unnecessary contact in their lives.
Ideally, all parcels would be rapidly and efficiently delivered within apartment blocks. That way, residents can continue unimpeded by awaited items and property management staff don’t spend a disproportionate amount of time managing deliveries.
However, the reality can be somewhat different.
On top of the human interaction that goes hand in hand with accepting deliveries, parcels can pile up in parcel storage rooms and reception areas. Residents can be hard to track down. Security of items can be an issue. Time is wasted attempting deliveries and items may be mislaid. The list of pinch points goes on.
Personal Deliveries of Parcels to Residential Apartment Blocks
There are numerous challenges associated with the rise of deliveries to residential apartment blocks – particularly given the current climate. This includes specific operational issues for residential buildings. With many residents now having personal shopping delivered to their homes, a sizeable increase in residential parcel deliveries has been generated. In fact, the average apartment community in the U.S. receives nearly 150 packages a week – 270 in peak holiday times, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)** – a figure that is likely to have substantially increased since the start of the year.
It is not just the volume of parcels that is creating issues, the timing of deliveries can also be a problem. Mail used to arrive at predictable times, once or twice a day, now deliveries can be at any time, potentially disrupting the work pattern of the onsite concierge staff or admin staff who work for the managing companies, as well as that of the parcels’ end recipients. What’s more, seasonal peaks can have a knock-on impact on workload and resourcing.
This can coincide with when onsite concierge staff take holiday, leaving a larger workload for fewer people to manage. If the current return to work measures include shift patterns, this situation will only be exacerbated.
In addition to this, the processing and storing of large quantities of incoming parcels can be time-consuming and inconvenient for site staff. It’s a drain on resources for staff – now busier than ever with critical tasks – to spend time locating parcel addressees and to attempt deliveries, sometimes multiple times. Furthermore, until parcels have been delivered, they pose safety and security risks, particularly if they are stored in communal areas where they could go missing or become damaged.
With regards to the global temporary shift to working from home, this poses additional delivery challenges. A common occasion for ad-hoc human interaction during the day is accepting and then internally distributing deliveries to residents. But this must be limited so as to avoid any unnecessary human contact. We can expect to see associated processes and policies begin to adapt to address the need to reduce contact as it relates to handling package and parcel deliveries in residential apartment blocks. In the long-term, this is likely to have a permanent impact on how and where people receive deliveries, including a move towards more contact-free methods.
Therefore, property management companies are seeking new ways to conveniently handle rising delivery volumes, without having to give more staff time or storage space to an increasing number of parcels.
Technology to Tackle the Challenges
As ecommerce, delivery and other impacted organisations take on the challenges of last-mile delivery, technology is set to play a significant part. With technology’s influence in real estate continuing to increase, as is the case in all industries, it only makes sense that property management companies are looking to it to help smooth the way for innovations that benefit both themselves and residents.
Solutions don’t lie in allocating a greater amount of floorspace to parcel storage. In most residential apartment blocks, space is at a premium and must be utilised as efficiently as possible. Additionally, labour-intensive, manual processes for handling parcels are unsustainable in the long-term. They don’t scale as volumes increase, yet the companies that manage apartment blocks find themselves hard-pressed to allocate more staff.
An alternative approach to managing the issues is intelligent parcel locker systems. This enables the electronic tracking and tracing of parcels, with secure storage that’s available to residents 24/7 to collect their parcels, helping to alleviate the problems of inbound parcel management – without recourse to an increase in staffing and storage space. As NMHC notes, the apartment industry is moving away from manual forms of package handling, such as notices on doors, in favour of electronic notifications.
Over three-quarters (77%) of buildings now have, it states: ‘a dedicated space for package storage with package lockers being the preferred method among respondents’***.
Parcel lockers are fairly commonplace in retail as a way for online retailers to distribute orders and are growing in popularity in residential buildings for a variety of reasons – with the reduced contact aspect now being a key characteristic. We’ll likely start to see lockers being used to help facilitate the internal exchange of various items now too, enabling residents to further observe reduced contact processes throughout the day.
No one knows exactly how things will shape up over the months ahead but where deliveries are concerned, the disruption, inefficiencies and frustrations involved have seen a shift towards technology to help automate and streamline processes – something we can expect to see as we move towards a ‘new normal’.
*iOfcom: ‘Annual monitoring update on the postal market, Financial year 2018-19’
**NMHC: ‘Special Delivery: 2018 NMHC/Kingsley Package Delivery Report’, 14 November 2018
***Special Delivery: ‘2018 NMHC/Kingsley Package Delivery Report’, 14 November 2018)
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