Quadient Announces Winners of 2019 ‘Best in Class’ Award for Parcel Lockers Solutions

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Technology has forever changed the way our society is wired. Gone are the days of having to leave home, when your next meal can be delivered with the click of a button.
As quick and efficient delivery has become a consumer requirement, it should come as no surprise that it also plays an important role in student life across the globe, as students make the move from their family house to a university campus.
With a market that is more accepting of technology and adopting it into their day-to-day, universities are turning to parcel locker solutions to meet the increasing demands of parcel management and delivery. Parcel Pending by Quadient Parcel Locker Solutions are helping universities across the U.S. improve their mailroom’s efficiency and enhance the experience of their students, faculty, and staff.

Why Parcel Locker Solutions for Universities?

The simple answer is that fast and efficient package delivery plays an important role in the lives of today’s students. Not only are students having e-commerce orders delivered to them on campus, but they are also receiving care packages from friends and family. On average, most students will have 31 packages delivered to them in a school year. For larger campuses, that means thousands of packages moving in and out that must be manually processed and delivered to the correct recipient.
With an increase in package delivery, there also comes risk. When working within a manual chain of custody, the risk associated with lost, misplaced or stolen packages increases. In addition, you also face the concern of higher traffic to campus with large carrier trucks moving in and out during the day- adding a potential safety concern.
With Parcel Pending by Quadient Parcel Locker and Web Tracking Solutions, universities and colleges are able to better connect their students to what matters most to them. By utilizing these technologies, campuses mitigate risk, lower costs, and more efficiently utilize their mailroom staff. This provides an overall improved experience via a 24/7 delivery service.

Best Practice Benchmarking for Maintaining a Standard of Excellence

Knowing that there was little best practice information out there, Robert Zinsky, Director of Parcel Solutions, and Daniel Greaney, Solution’s Engineer Higher Education, developed a user group comprised of industry experts who come together on a quarterly basis to discuss how organizations are leveraging parcel locker technology, and what key industry trends are driving adoption. One of the main goals of building this community was to establish benchmarks for utilizing parcel locker technology within the higher education industry.
In an effort to recognize those colleges and universities that have most effectively and efficiently leveraged their technology around package management and distribution, the user group introduced a ‘Best in Class’ award.

What is the ‘Best in Class’ Award?

The award consists of different rankings with specific criteria that the college or university must meet in order to be considered for it, including:

Parcel Turnover Efficiency

Measures adoption of the technology by the students by monitoring how quickly students retrieve their package, thereby freeing up the locker door for another user.
The benchmark for Parcel Turnover Efficiency is to be less than one day.

Parcel Occupancy Efficiency

The capacity of the entire system and how available it is to handle inbound packages at all times. This includes peak volume (when students return to campus) and seasonal periods (summertime), which is lower as there are fewer students on campus.
The benchmark for Parcel Occupancy Efficiency is between a rate of 45-70%.

Efficiency in Distribution Technology

A broader metric that measures the maximum throughput achieved by universities that are fully leveraging their package management technology.
The benchmark for Efficiency in Distribution is the overall throughput of how much you are putting through the system overall.
By tracking and gathering data from Neopost technology, Robert and his team are able to provide aggregated data demonstrating how each institution is performing in relation to the set benchmarks created by their community. This allows them to see what they should be striving for with their parcel locker solution(s). It has turned into a competition of sorts, as they “really enjoy seeing their numbers stacked up against the other universities and colleges,” said Zinsky.

What is the Future Vision of the Best in Class Award?

“The vision and goal of the Best in Class award are to continue to create awareness inside the higher education space for all colleges and universities to understand what ‘good’ looks like, said Zinsky. One of the biggest crimes is to invest in technology, but not get the return on investment. The future vision of this award is to help position colleges and universities so that they know what to measure against, so we can help them achieve the productivity and efficiencies that they are looking for.”
And the winners are…

Parcel Turnover Efficiency:

• Air Force Institute of Technology, Ohio
• University of Florida, Florida

Parcel Occupancy Efficiency:

• Depauw University, Indiana
• Kennesaw State University, Georgia

Efficiency in Distribution Technology:

• Middlebury College, Vermont
• Miami University, Ohio

Taking home the overall Best in Class award was the University of Pittsburgh who had the best-blended score in all three categories of Parcel Turnover Efficiency, Parcel Occupancy Efficiency, and Efficiency in Distribution Technology.

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In 2019, Parcel Pending was acquired by Quadient, the global leader in parcel, mailing, customer experience, and business process automation solutions. Parcel Pending by Quadient, with over 1.5 million packages successfully delivered monthly, offers a wide range of solutions that ensure the simple and secure delivery and retrieval of packages and online orders. With the strength of our combined power, reach, and offerings, Parcel Pending by Quadient provides state-of-the-art solutions and world-class customer service to solve the last-mile delivery challenge.