Around £7 billion is expected to be spent in the UK during Black Friday events this year, with a large proportion of this spending through online channels. Whilst it helps to kick-start the busy Christmas season for couriers, delivery drivers, and retailers, any issues in the supply chain can have a dramatic effect. Good business continuity planning can help you to minimise the effects of any unexpected issues that may occur, ultimately helping you to stay ahead of your competition.
Your contingency planning can be made easier with NetCourier. Our courier software contains features that offer you a ‘Plan B’ to help keep your business running:
Scenario one: One of your carriers is hit by a cyber attack and their whole system goes down.
Losing one of your courier companies, especially at a peak time, could have a devastating effect on your business. However, our courier software offers several ways to cope with this issue so that it won’t affect your customers. Firstly, if you know that the error will be fixed shortly, you can disable direct bookings and simply capture all of the delivery information. Your operations team can then set up these deliveries to be rerouted via a different company, or booked when the system comes back up again. This ensures a seamless customer service for your clients.
Secondly, our system allows you to set up additional carrier integrations to be held in reserve in the event of an emergency. On these occasions, you can set a carrier exclusion for services that are having issues, and replace them with your backup. This option guarantees that your shipments will be delivered, no matter how long your original carrier is offline, and offers a major competitive advantage.
Scenario two: Your driver loses internet in the middle of their delivery day.
Carrier companies are not the only companies in your supply chain that could affect your deliveries. If your driver apps rely on constant connection to the internet, then any issue with your network can be disastrous. Our driver app allows you to work offline – capturing PODs, scanning labels, and viewing delivery details – and will then upload everything back to the courier software system when connectivity has been re-established.
Scenario three: One of our servers loses power.
We are committed to ensuring a seamless experience for our customers, but we are aware that no system is 100% perfect and that issues can occur. This is why our very own supply chain features contingencies. Our servers have been set up to ensure that you never lose any data, and that all of your information is kept up to the minute. If one, for instance, loses power, then we have a failover system in place to automatically switch to one of our backup servers with no loss of service.
If you are interested in finding out more, or would like to book a demo of our software, please contact us on +44 (0) 20 7912 2000 or sales@metafour.com.
