Over the last six months, Australia Post has experienced a 20% decline in letters, but a boost in households shopping online. During that period, the postal service had 8.1 million households within its 12 million delivery points that ordered goods online.
People were also buying bulkier and heavier items, such as gym gear, office supplies, and in true Australian form, alcohol, so Australia Post also had to change its mode of delivery.
Australia Post executive general manager of transformation and enablement John Cox said this meant the organisation had to transition many of its bike delivery posties into van delivery roles.
"The challenge with all of that is our most experienced drivers know their route, they work out exactly where to go and they optimise very quickly the pathway. The posties have a different way of delivering, they actually have a very safe route where they always turn left to avoid going into traffic and it's the same path pretty much every day," Cox said.
"Going to a van and delivering parcels, actually requires a much more dynamic route that they need to select."
Speaking at the Digital Transformation Agency's Disruption and Change Digital Summit on Tuesday, Cox said the organisation took the scanner app that it built and fed it delivery route information. Using machine learning, Australia Post was provided with the best routes for delivery, he said.
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But what that gave Australia Post was a very accurate view of where a postie is at all times, so it's now trialling an estimated time of arrival feature.
"So based off when the postie scans the parcel in the morning to put in their bag, we'll be able to notify