The coronavirus has led to a surge in online shopping by Australian consumers, with many changing their shopping habits to avoid visiting stores that remain open and trading. As the rise in online orders increases demand for delivery services, it has also increased the risk to many drivers. Automating your Proof of Delivery processes can minimise risks and provide contactless delivery, providing foolproof transaction evidence. Find out how.
The rollout of new health and safety measures for essential workers helps to limit the spread of coronavirus, including recommendations for social distancing, no contact deliveries, and sanitising items. However, there is still a risk to drivers when it comes to delivering critical items that require signatures and collecting relevant paperwork for deliveries.
How do we keep workers safe when they are exposed to increasing numbers of people during their workdays? For many companies, automation may be the solution as it helps to reduce the risk faced by employees when delivering items.
Minimise risk while maximising profit
For many industries, automating business processes has led to increased productivity, better communication, and a reduction in time and cost. Technological advancements that streamline workflows let employees focus more on business and less on admin. Automating proof of delivery (POD) is one example of this.
Automating POD saves time and money for companies that rely on meticulous recordkeeping. Rather than physical notes, receipts, purchase details, and signatures, capturing these elements digitally provides a more efficient POD process.
However, clear and concise record keeping isn’t the only benefit of automating POD. When each delivery increases the risk to drivers of contracting COVID-19, using an automated POD process helps to minimise this risk. Removing paper from the equation, automated POD uses digital capture to prove delivery replacing physical signatures with photos, timestamps and geocapture to record deliveries. Using photographs to record deliveries removes the risk of contamination of physical signatures, providing drivers with an added element of protection on deliveries.
Eliminating the need for contact on deliveries will also ensure the continued safety of customers. Letting customers know ahead of time what they can expect when their items are delivered can also streamline the communication process and provide peace of mind to customers in self-isolation.
More efficient administration
Automating the POD process can also streamline the administrative side of the business, while helping employees to still adhere to social distancing measures. Moving towards electronic record-keeping cuts down on double handling and makes documenting each delivery a more efficient process.
All information is stored digitally and collected from the drivers as each delivery happens, removing the need for time-consuming paperwork. Drivers can complete each delivery quickly and safely and know that all the information needed for customer records is instantly available to the admin team.
By eliminating the need for physical records, automating the POD process lets administrative staff work remotely. There’s no need to head into the office and risk infection while you physically sort, match, and file documents. Electronic storage of this information simplifies the process of searching and locating data for customer inquiries. Ease of access also means that staff can access these records whenever, and from whatever device, they need.
Automating the POD process can have many benefits for your company long term and not just during the COVID-19 pandemic. More efficient data collection and record-keeping can help to simplify administrative tasks for staff, as well as keeping your drivers safe while delivering goods.
To find out more about how automated proof of delivery services can help streamline your business, contact Upstream today.