4x Faster Scanning-Enabled App Enhances PUDO Experiences

Helthjem, Norway’s largest media group has streamlined deliveries with Scandit’s high-performance, smartphone scanning solution powering their PUDO (PickUp DropOff) app. Fast and accurate mobile scanning saves time for parcel shop employees, and enhances the customer’s in‑store experience, as they can quickly collect or drop off packages.

Scanning speed and accuracy is a crucial differentiator for us, helping to attract and retain customers to our delivery service. Scandit has been spot-on in enabling us to exceed our main business KPIs (key performance indicators): speed of service and customer experience.

Fredrik Stavik, Chief Product Officer, Helthjem

Challenge

Create customer stickiness with speed of delivery

Helthjem was founded as a distribution partnership between Norway’s three biggest media groups consolidated under one name. The consolidation is a game-changer in the country’s logistics industry where Helthjem is active in the fast-growing home delivery market. They have a network of 3,500 couriers who make 1.3 million deliveries of magazines, newspapers, books and small packages each day. 

Until now, the media groups behind Helthjem used a leading post and parcel carrier to provide deliveries to customers. Helthjem knew that the speed of delivery would be a key differentiator, if it wanted to attract and retain customers to its distribution service.

The company developed a PUDO app for recording deliveries on smartphones, including pick-up and drop-off at parcel shops nationwide. They wanted to improve the overall delivery experience for users by providing enterprise-grade scanning. 

The aim was to get rid of delivery delays that occurred with the earlier provider, resulting in poor quality of service to customers. To achieve this, the scanning had to be high-performing on all counts, from speed of scanning, to accurate capture of all types of barcodes, in different environments.

Helthjem tested various dedicated scanners, open source and commercial barcode scanning software, as well as Scandit’s smartphone scanning software.

Solution

Delivering seamless PUDO with high-performance scanning

Scandit’s barcode scanner SDK outperformed competitors on speed, accuracy, reliability and versatility, in tests conducted by Hethjem’s ISV (independent software vendor). The ISV integrated Scandit’s SDK scan engine with Helthjem’s PUDO app, which was deployed on Samsung X Cover 4S smartphones. The smartphones were handed over to parcel shop employees for PUDO recording, enhancing their versatility as communication devices for users. 

According to Fredrik,“Throughout our testing of different scanning solutions, we were looking for scan speed and accuracy in a lean, viable product. Scandit ticked the box on all these parameters, providing us with the seamless delivery experience we wanted.” 

Employees at parcel shops use the smartphones provided by Helthjem to quickly scan parcels when they are delivered in store, picked up, or dropped off by customers for a returns collection. Scanning barcodes on parcels, which in the past took approximately 2.5 seconds, is now completed within a fraction of a second.

Customers also gain end-to-end visibility on the status of their parcels throughout the last mile using Helthjem’s online Track and Trace service.

Results

of a second for parcel shop employees to scan each parcel

1/3

parcel shops equipped with Scandit-powered smartphones

1300

faster scanning improves customer and parcel shop employee experience

4x

In improving the delivery experience for customers and parcel shop employees, Helthjem is well on its way to building brand loyalty. The company is also reducing TCO (total cost of ownership) by choosing a smartphone-based scanning solution rather than expensive, dedicated scanners.

Helthjem is equipping 1300 parcel shops across the country with the Scandit-powered PUDO app on Samsung smartphones, offering:

• 100 percent accuracy: scanning correctly even in sub-optimal lighting, at awkward angles and on damaged barcodes. 
• 4x faster scanning: within a fraction of a second, which is critical for good user experiences. 
• GS1 20 global standards: Scandit is the preferred mobile barcode scan provider of GS1, the industry standards body.

Going forward, Helthjem is keen to continually improve customer service and user experiences by future-proofing the barcode scanning solution in its PUDO app. They are exploring the integration of Scandit’s computer vision technologies including MatrixScan and augmented reality (AR) overlays with the smartphone scanning solution.  MatrixScan offers the ability to capture an entire set of barcodes in a single sequence, which further speeds up the delivery process.