![]() ![]() Royal Mail’s data science team is working on a range of projects that either strengthen key services or generate data-driven products for Royal Mail. It is applied data science, which enabled us to provide estimated delivery windows, originally four hours wide, and after a cycle of algorithm improvement reducing the window sizes to estimates as narrow as two hours. ![]() This work was heavily reliant on cross functional solutions, keeping the business in the loop about progress along the way.Īt Royal Mail we have placed big data and data science at the core of our business growth, aiming to be increasingly data driven in our decision making. Consequently, considering the variability of workload delivering to 31 million households, an algorithmic approach to predicting doorstep delivery time slots was required.Īpplying cloud solutions enabling clustering and filtering of a vast amount of unlabelled GPS data in combination with regression techniques and an additional filtering based on confidence levels, has enabled us to nevertheless provide reliable delivery windows to the vast majority of our customers. Additionally, postmen may switch routes and approach journeys in different sequences or at different starting times, again depending on workload. In addition, postmen and women currently still deliver parcels as part of their normal route, which includes a variety of untracked items, such as letters and hence makes it difficult to evaluate workload beforehand. In Royal Mail, parcels are part of a broader traffic mix of which a large portion is not ‘digitally visible’. ![]() The data science challenge we were facing was how to provide a delivery window estimate for customers while not being able to track parcels, as seen in other delivery companies who follow a delivery manifest. … This latest innovation is part of our major investment in changes that increase convenience for our customers and their recipients.” (Royal Mail spokesperson) Coupled with a shorter estimated delivery time, of as little as two hours, creates a step change in convenience for online shoppers. “Notifying customers of their expected delivery time the day before we deliver is just one of the ways we are helping to make our customers’ lives easier. In April 2019, Royal Mail introduced higher precision estimated delivery windows, with time frames as narrow as two hours. This trend is accompanied by a shift in customer needs, such as the wish for trusted updates regarding deliveries. The parcel business is becoming more important with revenue increasing year on year. This poses a tough challenge to Royal Mail in order to stay competitive in a market that has, since 2006, been increasingly filled with other postal providers.Ĭonsidering the variability of workload delivering to 31 million households, an algorithmic approach to predicting doorstep delivery time slots was required The service Royal Mail provides today still follows the “one-price-goes-everywhere” universal service obligation on a range of letters and parcels going to 31 million households. Today Royal Mail is one of the largest employers in the UK, providing one in every 194 jobs, with 140000 employees, 90000 of which are postmen and women. In 2015, state ownership came to an end and Royal Mail became fully privatised. It can trace its origins to Henry VIII, followed by over 500 years during which it has influenced postal services around the world. The model behind this high performing product was built by Royal Mail’s data science team and has been successfully put in production thanks to great collaboration and communication across the business. ![]() IN 2019 ROYAL MAIL LAUNCHED ITS ENHANCED ESTIMATED DELIVERY WINDOWS providing an increasing number of customers with 2-hour delivery windows (see ). ![]()
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