April/May 2008

 

DPD Ireland, the parcels carrier that used to be called Interlink Ireland, is to roll out a mobile consignment tracking solution in a deal valued at more than £1 million.

The company has chosen Blackbay as its primary supplier, and will be adopting its Delivery Connect solution to allow real-time online tracking of deliveries by customers.

On the ground, the contract will involve the use of Intermec CN3 handheld terminals, complete with GPS tracking and GPRS connectivity. These will be issued to 600 couriers, who will use them to track all deliveries from the point of collection through to proof of delivery.

The company is expecting that once customers can track their parcels over the Internet in real time, and see the exact status and location of each item, the need for customer queries will be reduced.

 

Brendan O'Neill, DPD Ireland's chief executive, says one of the attractions of the Blackbay proposition was the fact that its team was able to add real value to the project. 'Many of them come from the parcel industry, and therefore really understand how our business works.'

Interlink Ireland was founded in 1986 with ten depots, and was acquired by La Poste in 2002. It changed its name to DPD this February, and now claims to be the premier parcel delivery company in Ireland. Its 35 depots handle more than 6 million parcels per year.

Blackbay is an established enterprise mobility specialist working in the freight, field service and social housing sectors. Its solutions encompass both back-end infrastructure and PDA and smartphone devices. At their core is the company's iConnect transaction server, which allows it to offer customers a suite of mobility products as part of what it calls a fully managed one-stop 'mobile application service'.