France’s largest mail delivery provider, La Poste upgraded the open source scanning component of their employee app for mail and parcel deliveries with Scandit-powered smartphone scanning. The move dramatically improved scanning accuracy and speed of delivery, minimizing costs associated with misdelivered mail.

“Scandit technology immediately delivered a level of performance that open source mobile scanning simply couldn’t match. Our mail and parcel carriers now complete deliveries with greater speed and accuracy, with fewer scanning errors.”

Pierre Prygoda, IT Manager, La Poste

Challenge

Improve performance by minimizing delivery errors

Postal activities comprise over half of La Poste’s revenue. The company employs over 90,000 mail and parcel carriers in offices and distribution centers who are responsible for delivering 23 billion items annually. Therefore optimising operational efficiency is a major priority for the company.

La Poste’s mail and parcel carriers relied on low-end smartphones using an Android application, integrated with open-source barcode scanning software for proof of delivery, track and trace and other workflows. Scanning speed and precision is essential to help drivers complete their routes efficiently, and any scanning errors can lead to mail or parcels mistakenly delivered to the wrong address, costing La Poste time, money and reputation. 

La Poste wanted to compare the performance of smartphones using open source scanning against those using proprietary software across a wide variety of devices, under a range of challenging real‑world conditions.

Solution

Replace open source barcode scanning with superfast smartphone scanning

A trial was conducted by La Poste, equipping a number of mail carriers with a version of the application integrated with the Scandit Barcode Scanner SDK. “We were seeing high error rates with the open source scanning software, so we decided to investigate if integrating a proprietary scanning solution from Scandit into our employee app could boost performance and reduce mistakes. We quickly determined it could,” said Pierre.

During La Poste’s extensive trial, Scandit outperformed the open source alternative across all the Android models tested. Carriers who used the Scandit-powered app confirmed that deliveries were faster as:

  • The performance was better than other proprietary software options tested.
  • The scanning was fast and reliable, generating zero incorrect scans.
  • It worked even in low light, glare, at awkward angles and on damaged barcodes.

Results

Faster scanning per document compared to open source scanning solutions.
>55%
Smartphones with employee apps are powered by Scandit.
>90K+
Scans recorded monthly.
>1M+

High performance scanning improved delivery efficiencies

La Poste compared Scandit and open source alternatives in real-world conditions by timing mail carriers processing documents in batches of 50 on a variety of devices, including Samsung and Huawei models. The results showed that using the Scandit-enabled app was up to 55% quicker per document processed than with the open source software, across a wide range of devices.

La Poste carriers perform several millions of scans per month, so speed has big implications, with the time savings rapidly adding up as delivery routes are completed more quickly. Following the successful trial, La Poste deployed the Scandit-powered app on over 90,000 smartphone devices. As the Scandit solution can perform concurrently with La Poste’s existing data capture capability and devices, the rollout can be managed incrementally with minimum disruption.

According to Pierre, “Scandit technology immediately delivered a level of performance that open source mobile scanning simply couldn’t match. Our mail and parcel carriers now complete deliveries with greater speed and accuracy, with fewer scanning errors that lead to costly mishandled or misdelivered mail. When the trial was completed, the participants loved using the Scandit-powered app so much they didn’t want to return to the old version.”

La Poste also saw a dramatic reduction in the number of scanning errors, resulting in far fewer pieces of mail and parcels being delivered incorrectly. This reduced the various costs associated with misdelivered mail.

Seamless integration – provides a platform for future improvements

Integration with the La Poste employee app was straightforward. Internal developers conducted the integration and managed the trial in-house, including training employees, and reported that it was very simple, requiring no extra effort.

The Scandit integration was included as part of a larger overall update of the La Poste app, meaning overall development only took around 3-6 months. The developers appreciated the ease with which they can integrate new releases of the Scandit software, delivering future value as scanning efficiency continues to improve.

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