The number of e-commerce goods sent via tracked postal services is increasing day by day. This puts a lot of pressure on the delivering postal operator, since the addresses often need to be entered manually into a system in order to handle things such as notifications. Naturally, this is costly and time-consuming. Prioritization may be made in other areas.

This has led to the situation that in many places, the distribution of tracked service items is considerably slower than the untracked service. Customs clearance is another source of delay, where in many cases the postal operator is in the hands of the customs authorities.

However, tracking is highly prioritized by merchants.

If you are using postal services, make sure you are using the right service for the right type of goods to the right destination. For the e-commerce merchant, it’s usually a jungle trying to figure out what service to use and to which destinations. Additionally, distribution time and tracking quality may vary considerably between postal operators.

A good logistics supplier should be able to give advice in this area and also provide simple, suitable and manageable solutions for merchants depending on price, service, tracking options, value of the goods and how the goods will be delivered, which has been discussed previously in this blog. This could of course also comprise DDP or other non-postal solutions to specific destinations, depending on the shipment profile of the goods and the situation in the destination country.

This does not imply that there is a turnkey solution, since all merchants have different, although similar, needs. A tailored and agile solution will be needed to get the best result for every scenario. A logistics supplier should also be aware of what’s happening globally and continuously suggest improvements, since the distribution world is changing constantly and finding the best way should in my view be a highly prioritized task for logistics companies.