Carl is a Senior Operations Manager tasked with the management of 5 Abodus Student Living properties throughout the UK. Carl’s role includes ensuring that everything runs smoothly, students are happy, rent is paid and the property is well kept. To achieve this mission, Carl has an awesome team of property managers and customer service advisors at each of the sites he over sees. They work side y side to provide the students the best possible experience.

At one of these sites the Abodus team was working overtime to meet their daily requirements and manage the high volumes of packages they were receiving for their 1400+ students. Their parcel management process was paper based and extremely time consuming, the reception cluttered and value added services were beginning to suffer. Carl and his team decided to go looking for a solution and this is when they came across Parcel Tracker.

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Managing Parcels Manually

Before the introduction of Parcel Tracker the entire mail management process was manual, paper and email based.

1. A parcel load would arrive at the reception
2. The staff would log the parcel details onto a paper ledger
3. The staff would manually email students one by one letting them know their parcel were ready for collection
4. Students would come down to collect their packages, staff would look through the paper ledger and hand them their parcels

Students didn’t sign for parcels once they were collected, and this left a gap in security that could have caused some issues.

The Time it took for staff to notify students and the lack of automated reminders also caused the reception to rapidly clutter, 1400 students order a lot of parcels especially during check in and black Friday.

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Automation with Parcel Tracker

With Parcel Tracker, Carl was able to remove the core of the manual data entry tasks, which cut down their parcel management time by a few hours a day, making the overall task much more manageable and allowing the team to focus on value added work.

“Using the Parcel Tracker has given us the time to focus on delivering great customer service to our residents. The parcel tracker allows safe and secure parcel management and helps us reduce the amount of space being used in our mail room. Our residents appreciate the real time notifications of when their parcels are ready for collection.” - Carl

Previously, the team would record the name of the parcel’s recipient, the courier, the time it was received, storage location and other such notes. With the press of a button, the person managing the parcels takes a photo of the parcel label using a mobile device camera (iOS or android), all the relevant information from the parcel label is extracted, a note is taken of the storage location and the student automatically emailed to collect their package. If within a predefined time frame the student doesn’t collect their package a reminder email is sent.

Upon collection Students us a QR code or sign for the parcel for to prove the parcel was collected. This process is timestamped and the member of staff handing off the delivery is automatically recorded. This closed any previous security gaps there might have been.

Setting up Parcel Tracker

The Parcel Tracker set up process was quick and remote. Carl had to simply upload a list of all the student at the accommodation on to the platform, the Parcel Tracker team was available to support if he had questions.

The site team was also trained up rapidly via zoom and they immediately began scanning 100s of parcel a day. From day one the team was saving valuable time they could reinvest into improving the student experience.

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Setting up Parcel Tracker

The Parcel Tracker set up process was quick and remote. Carl had to simply upload a list of all the student at the accommodation on to the platform, the Parcel Tracker team was available to support if he had questions.

The site team was also trained up rapidly via zoom and they immediately began scanning 100s of parcel a day. From day one the team was saving valuable time they could reinvest into improving the student experience.

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