How Outsourcing Mobile Support Cuts Costs

By Brian Albright, Field Technologies magazine

This parcel carrier company saves $500,000 per year with its new mobility management solution.

Supporting and maintaining a mobile computing solution can be an even more daunting and expensive task than deploying the technology. When parcel carrier UK Mail Group decided to update the mobile software and hardware it uses to support its approximately 3,000 delivery drivers, the company also shifted its support operations from its in-house IT staff to a managed service that has made it easier and less expensive to keep the devices running. This decision has improved scan rates by nearly 20 percentage points and is expected to save the company nearly £300,000 (more than $500,000).

UK Mail Group is the United Kingdom’s largest independent parcel, mail, and logistics services company, operating 52 locations and more than 2,500 vehicles. The company has used mobile computers for scanning parcels for years, but its device fleet of Motorola MC9000 and MC70 devices was aging and becoming unreliable. In turn, the company had little visibility of the devices, workflows were inconsistent, and the scan rate for delivery drivers had fallen to 73 percent.