BCG’s Center for Digital in Transportation
We partner with postal and parcel services to deploy digital levers, including digital platforms, predictive analytics, advanced monitoring, and automation of operations.
Will large online retailers threaten the postal and parcel market the same way email decimated postal volume? Not if the industry can harness digital operations and embrace digital go-to-market strategies to build efficiency, business offerings, and customer loyalty.
In the face of new challenges and challengers, postal, parcel, and logistics services must rethink their assumptions and revisit their operating models. Now that e-tailers have begun to move into delivery themselves, the lines between clients, competitors, and collaborators are blurring. Organizations need help bringing the right strategies into focus.
BCG’s postal and parcel expert team helps companies steer a profitable path through the challenges of today—and tomorrow. We bring deep insights on customer and economic dynamics and the full breadth of BCG’s functional capabilities.
The expectations of postal and parcel customers have been shaped by their experiences with digital services and companies. Shippers and recipients demand minimal waits, maximum customization, near-immediate response times, and fully transparent processes.
We help postal and parcel services unlock the power of advanced analytics and connectivity with customers to exceed these expectations.
Our research shows that when a broad selection of postal and parcel services is available, customers are more likely to choose the brands they are familiar with. Some even report deep connections with their longtime postal and parcel carriers and organizations.
BCG helps services foster loyalty and trust at the point of delivery—and then retain and build on that trust through digitally savvy strategies and alliances.
To maximize efficiency and minimize emissions, postal and parcel services will need to reimagine the strategy and execution associated with the last mile of delivery. They will be working hard either to own the customer relationship at the point of delivery or to be partnered with the ones that do.
BCG helps organizations not only to peer into the future but also to shape it. Our scenario modeling explores the economics and implications of both high-tech solutions, such as robots and self-driving vehicles servicing the last mile, as well as lower-tech solutions, such as parcel lockers at retail sites. In our analysis, we also consider less obvious options, such as using a marketplace of logistics vendors or even crowdsourcing to provide delivery to the last mile.
Customer expectations extend to climate-friendly policies and services. BCG’s postal, parcel, and post office consulting advises on green strategies, practices, and partnerships.
We help our clients reinvent their operations to include new innovations. Among the areas we explore are new packaging and processes; the use of sustainable fuels and vehicles; and optimally efficient and tech-enabled routing, pricing, and scheduling.
Managing Director & Partner
Atlanta
We partner with postal and parcel services to deploy digital levers, including digital platforms, predictive analytics, advanced monitoring, and automation of operations.
Through this center, we help clients address such shared challenges as congestion, pollution, and the development of new technologies. We help clients connect with the right stakeholders at each stage of the value chain to take new ideas from the drawing board to the street.
This corporate investment and incubation specialty business of BCG aids companies in inventing, launching, scaling, and investing in startups. With our help, clients learn how to remain relevant in the age of new technology by acting like venture capitalists. We look for innovations and invest in companies looking to reinvent such offerings as parcel shipping and post office strategy.
Helping a National Parcel Leader Become a Global Leader. A national parcel service was concerned that its existing initiatives weren’t enough to hit its growth targets. Our parcel consulting team identified the market that promised the largest growth potential and focused the client on becoming a global leader within it. With our help, the company successfully implemented a more ambitious growth strategy.
Developing a Digital Strategy for a Large Courier Company. We worked with an Asian delivery services company to address its weak position in the e-commerce parcel market. We helped the company formulate a digital strategy for mail, parcel, and financial services, and then execute on that strategy, achieving profitability within a year.