We send invoices. Lots of them.

We use a local courier firm to have them delivered all across the country. The invoices themselves reside in digital format, and we use a software to print them out to paper, stuff them into letters. Have the courier company come in the evening and pick them up and give us a receipt for it.

Presumably the courier company will take them to the collection center in Karachi, where these invoices will be sorted out, bagged with other letters / parcels and each bag will find its way on the conveyor belt destined for the cargo hold of the evening flight.

After a few hours (assuming no delays, etc), the flight would land at its destination, the bag collected, and de-sorted. Next morning, courier riders would collect their deliveries and hopefully if all goes well, my invoice is delivered to the customer by mid-day.

Now I could have saved myself the trouble of sending this invoice physically in the first place – by simply emailing it. However, customers who have to pay bills are very clever. They will cite mysterious reasons, email not received, the spam filter ate it, etc. etc.

They will receive all my other emails, except the one that carries the invoice.

So – novel times – call for a novel approach.

What if I simply were to email (or upload) the PDF file (which represents the invoice) to the Courier company’s server. Let us assume I have to send an invoice to a client in Islamabad. I email the invoice before say 1400 Hours, and the office in Islamabad will print it out. Print the delivery label. Stuff it into an envelope and deliver it the same day! And I get what I want – no – not convenience (that much is given), but what I want is the proof of delivery receipt; so now my customer cannot complain that he/she does not have a copy of the invoice.

If this service were to be launched, I am sure, there exists a great market for it. People may cite ‘confidentiality’. Strictly speaking, for our case, there is nothing confidential in the invoice that the courier company or its employees can ‘steal’. For non-confidential correspondence that needs to be delivered ASAP, I think this represents an excellent medium of choice for those who would like to reduce the carbon footprint of their letter (ideally we should just be emailing, but something don’t change).

Sure there are kinks and ifs and buts in this scenario – but nothing that cannot easily be solved if one were to put their mind to it.

I’ve always advocated, that the progress of any nation can be gauged by the efficiency and adaptation of technology by its shipping and courier companies. With the mobile / Internet age now at high-noon, how are our shipping companies fairing up?

Let me start reverse, the best out there is TCS, then perhaps OCS and then everyone else. But that is unfortunately where the good of it all ends.
Even in developing countries (Sri Lanka is an example, Maldives is another), the technology available at the walk-in center of any courier company would outshine its Pakistani counterpart many lumens over.

I still do not understand why consumer based packaging and labeling still not provided to the consumer. First of all, there is a ridiculous requirement at TCS (since I haven’t walked into OCS / Leopard in a long time, I cannot say, but I am assuming they are also playing follow the leader). Coming back to the stupid requirement. They need to see the envelope that I am sending ‘unsealed’ (I understand security concerns but ???)

Everything you bring there has unsealed (read: opened). Once the security guy checks it – only then will they allow you to close it.

Just to play a prank, one of these days, I will send a courier to the CEO of TCS, in a letter filled with talcum powder, which easily could have been anthrax. That would be the ultimate definition of a loophole in security.

Anyways, ask TCS for bubble-packaging sheets – and chances are they will stare blankly at you. The list is quite large…

• Security checks are a joke.
• You cannot transport a laptop – and the insurance premium is 8% (true as of 19th July, 2009, as indicated by TCS Shahrah-e-Faisal branch).
• No courier service offers tapes for sales, various sized boxes, packaging material, strong box material, tear-proof sheets, etc.
• Labeling material is not provided for.
• No courier company offers downloadable software for businesses to generate their own labels for the outgoing mail
• Bulk checking against their system is not offered, i.e. if a business has sent out 100 letters using the courier company’s software (let’s assume it is available), then there is no way to check in bulk from the software itself, the status and delivery confirmation.
• SMS based confirmations still not offered by industry. At time of booking a cell number can be taken, and you can be notified when your parcel/letter is signed for and delivered (this is such a simple application).
• 2D bar codes if generated by the client cannot be read by any courier company, albeit from what I hear Speedex is doing trials on this – rumor? I don’t know. The source is shallow.
• Peanut packaging material is not available.
• Insurance rates for high-value items is very high.
• Delivery updated are far and long.

For small industries to survive or even e-commerce based shops to thrive, sending small (volume sized) pieces of shipments in an effective manner is still something to be achieved.

I personally asked some website owners who are operating fantastic local e-commerce stores, if they had their trust in the courier service. None of them responded positively. They so much so had to rely on stocking in different part of the country and use their own runners, etc. for effective delivery services.

Another thing the courier companies can look into are mobile phone with cameras, and phone that allow 3rd party apps to be written for them. With cellphone cameras, you can take a snapshot of the bar code, have it read by the app written on the phone and then text this in a compressed manner to the central site, this is perhaps the fastest way to acknowledge that a parcel has been picked up or delivered. Even with the unreliability of SMS, apps exist to make sure the full-circle of communication takes place (for example if confirmation code is not received by the phone, it will try again) and vice-versa.

Courier services have been broken down to the basic functionality that of the post man. Try a package delivery and then see the ‘haalat’ in which it arrives at the destination. In FedEx you can get a FedEx envelope, various sizes boxes, tear-proof envelopes, tubes, etc. what does TCS or any other courier company give you in return for your postal needs?

What about 2nd day delivery or low priority delivery? None of it exists sadly. The courier companies sure need to get their act together and innovate, without which, we will see them as simply a replacement of Pakistan Postal Service.

One other point I must mention, as part of the courier companies grooming services, it must ensure that its employees wear deodorant. Because of the running around all day along in the field and sweating, wearing an anti-anti-perspirant / deodorant should be on top of their agenda.

We must realize the world in which we live in today moves two things: atoms and electrons. Atoms being the physical goods and electrons being the electronic Ones and Zeros on our digital infrastructure. We have adapted the electronic highway very well and are continuing to improve life on it. However, we still need physical goods, in order for us to become more efficient as a society on the whole, we need to remove inefficiencies and the stale-progress graphs and innovate and implement cutting edge technologies within our daily fabric. Failing to do so, will result in a totally disparate nation with two economies, the super-efficient digital economy and the super-inefficient physical economy.

For our futures sake, I hope we can hammer some sense into these courier companies, logistic companies and shipping companies.

Of late we have been sourcing equipment for the data center. Having servers, routers, parts, accessories, cables, drives, processors, switches, firewalls, power plugs, etc. picked up from various countries and cities across the world. The ONLY company worth mentioning is Fedex. We initiated a Fedex corporate account a couple of months back. It has been nothing short of a lifesaver for us. For example when we were buying KVM switches, from a small distributor in Texas. We did a wire-transfer for the money, and for equipment pickup – we simply gave our Fedex number to the company. It was as simple as that. No need to make an invoice, no other details. Simply provide the Fedex number. The Fedex man arrives, picks up the goods, and labels them, etc. and delivers them to our door step in Karachi. If customs clearance is required – that too is taken care of by our local clearing agent.

The whole process is so simple. Yes, it is expensive, but Fedex today has by far the best coverage. I use to think DHL and TNT were the prevailing tigers of Asia, but that is not so true anymore. DHL, when we wanted to open a corporate account with them in Pakistan, just kept on giving us the run-around, today the sales guy is coming. Tomorrow the sales guy is coming. I mean I literally had to call up their office so many times, citing I want to become a corporate customer. I guess we were not important enough. With Fedex, – everything was SO professional. Next day their sales rep came to us. Explained to us the entire process and we were up and running within a couple of days. I haven’t looked back since. We’ve even had shipments weighing up to 250Kgs be picked up and delivered. Such is the cool efficiency of Fedex.

I wish other courier companies can also get their act together like this. A good example is to use a friend to call their own companies and initiate a sales query and see how your own team responds. I will admit one thing for sure, I NEVER was a fan of Fedex. I thought DHL was the coolest company in the world to work with, however, all that changed with one experience.