Share
March 27, 2020
How our algorithm is saving eCommerce businesses
While Europe is mobilized in the fight against Covid-19, e-commerce has become an essential part of the economy of all countries. It is also the only way for millions of people to improve their containment conditions.
But e-commerce activity is also severely impacted by disruptions in the transport of goods.
As a reminder, in France alone:
All the players in the pick-up points business have closed doors since mid-March,
Closure of Colissimo on Saturdays, Mondays, and Tuesdays, processing only boxable parcels, stop of countersignature deliveries, closure of more than 6,000 post offices,
TNT and FedEx no longer serve a dozen departments,
UPS suspending dozens of zip codes and stopping its insurance...
At Cubyn, we have developed a specific algorithm, CarrierPredict, which determines the most efficient carrier for each package based on various factors:
Destination,
Actual weight,
Real final size,
Speed requirement,
Real time data from the carriers,
Previous carriers' performance on comparable shipments,
... and options such as signature, guarantee, etc.
But beyond being a very important competitive advantage in normal times, this multi-carrier adaptability has proved crucial in times of crisis. It has enabled us to maintain our Cubyn Standard and Cubyn Express offers until today. For the moment, there are no areas that are inaccessible thanks to our combination of carriers.
Even though the few remaining carriers have increased their tariffs in this period of crisis, we continue to operate without any additional charges, bearing any additional costs.
This is a great help for e-merchants who can stay open and continue to work without worrying about the shipping destinations when other merchants are forced to cut off Standard Delivery and no longer deliver to certain areas.
How does it work? A few examples:
Since March 24, Colissimo announced that they had to close 3 branches in Paris area, covering around 50 postcodes. The algorithm switched automatically these flows to Colis Privé and TNT and to our in-house last-mile delivery solution.
Since March 19, TNT has only been delivering to Health and Food addressees in the East of France. We have redirected these flows to Chronopost.
Since March 20, Colissimo no longer accepts parcels to some 40 countries (including most of South America and the Caribbean) because there is no longer any airplane capacity. Our algorithm automatically redirected these flows to DHL.
Starting March 30, Colissimo will reduce its overall processing capacity by 65%. We have secured additional capacity with Colis Privé, TNT, Chronopost and our in-house last-mile delivery solution.
We therefore remain mobilized to ensure the best possible quality of service despite the very heavy consequences of the fight against the Coronavirus COVID-19 on our carriers network as well as at our warehouse.
Find here our daily update on the status of Cubyn services and the network.