Sandd is the second largest postal company in The Netherlands. Young, dynamic and ambitions, the newcomer grew in just seven years from 14 million to 400 million postal articles per year and a market share of 16 percent. ICT is crucial for the logistics of sorting and delivering mail. That’s why Sandd sought a software supplier as flexible and dynamic as they are.
Two days a week, on Tuesdays and on Fridays, 12.500 employees deliver the mail. Large amounts of addressed printed material, catalogues, brochures, magazines, periodicals. In 2001, the newcomer Sandd started with 25 customers and a turnover of three million. Last year, that rose to more than 2000 customers and a turnover of 80 million euros. The target is even more ambitious: one billion items of post per year.
This year, the company was confronted with an obstacle. In May, state secretary for Economic Affairs, Mr Frank Heemskerk decided to postpone liberalisation of the postal market for the foreseeable future. A considerable setback.
The rapid growth of the company meant also a changing role for ICT. Miquel Geelen, Sandd ICT manager for the last two years, remembers how that started: ‘Trailblazing. Getting your hands dirty. A few interactive webpages with the delivery planning; that was it. Now, there’s a complete server park which supports all business processes, and we work on the basis of projects and with business case driven impact analyses. That’s a bit different.’
The primary logistical process of mail delivery is supported by ICT for 95%. Such a system has to be water tight. But that wasn’t all. Geelen: ‘The problem is, all of our systems are tailor made. With our last supplier, the documentation wasn’t complete. Knowledge was in people’s heads. That was a huge business risk.’
At the end of 2006, Sandd went looking for a new supplier. The criteria were clear. The new partner had to be able to grow with Sandd, had to be flexible and independent, had to have enough qualified people to carry out multiple projects at the same time, and had to be able to work outside normal office hours. It wasn’t acceptable for knowledge of the system to be stored in the head of just one person. And of course, it had to be financially attractive. Geelen: ‘We didn’t want to be confronted with nasty surprises.’
HintTech was the most attractive candidate. It was decided that this supplier would not only take care of the system development, but also the system management.
The preference was for a fixed budget box. Geelen: ‘You work out how many development days you want. If it goes faster, you can include a few extra functionalities at the end. But if there’s overrun, you decide what can be left out. In this way, we stay within budget.’
The logistics of postal delivery begins with the client handing over his digital address file. This file gets sorted according to depot and postal area and every address gets a unique Sandd code, giving information on the delivery date, the depot and the area. After the addition of the bundle and pallet classifications to the above information, the graphics supplier delivers the physical postal items to the central sorting centre in Apeldoorn. There, about 100 employees sort about four million postal items daily.
All post destined for one distribution depot is gathered together and delivered to the depot. There, the post is sorted per postal area. Finally, the 12.500 delivery workers make sure the post is delivered to the correct address.
Geelen: ‘Presorting is crucial. In this way, we can increase the efficiency: we know how big the mail run is and how heavy the items are. Then we know exactly how many pallets, crates, trucks, and delivery personnel we need. This gives us the ability to check a random sample of the work of 4500 people to see if a specific postal item is delivered correctly. In this way, we can ensure quality and further optimalise our processes.’
Because presorting the digital address information is the basis of the whole logistics process, the first wish was for a new file sorting module. Also on the wish list, a good module for planning holiday leave.
The first thing that HintTech did was obtaining knowledge and information: mapping the Sandd Resource Planning system (SRP), the fundamental system developed in PHP and Java. Only then was the next step taken: adding a leave planning functionality to the roster and payment module. This Java module has now been tested and delivered. With the new leave planning module, Sandd can plan the availability and absence of personnel a year in advance. For every delivery day, delivery personnel must be available to cover every postal area.
The next challenge was the development of a new version of the address file sorter module. In the newly developed module, new functionality has been added and a few existing functionalities improved.
Technical system management is carried out by the Serbian branch of HintTech, and directed by HintTech in The Netherlands. Geelen: ‘One and a half people are continually working for us there. That’s financially attractive. Plus, those people are well qualified.’
Sandd chose to place the system management in the hands of HintTech precisely because HintTech developed the software. Geelen: ‘If something’s wrong, there is only one party responsible for solving the problem. Also, HintTech then has their own interest: if you’re responsible for the system management on software you’ve developed, you’d better deliver quality software!’
There are still two projects planned. The largest is the development of a logistic area management system. Using digital maps marked with delivery routes, the delivery personnel can sort the post according to their route, and will lose less time in finding the right addresses. Secondly, a new planning tool which will enable planning during situations where the post is not delivered to Sandd in the correct manner. This of course has an impact on the resources necessary to handle the postal items.
Geelen is especially satisfied about the different way in which HintTech works. ‘Previously, we worked traditionally: from functional design to technical design, then to development and delivery. That could take half a year. That cost us too much time.’
Sandd and HintTech now work according to the Agile method; a software development method which lets Sandd, as the user, be more actively involved in achieving the results. Geelen: We decide which functionality is included in the release. That can then be immediately tested. We’re more in the driver’s seat. We can spread out the testing better. And the end result can be put into operation better and more completely.’
The new method suits Sandd very well, because, as Geelen said: ‘We’re growing fast. We also want a lot of new things, very fast. Half way through a project, we already have new ideas and that’s why we want to be flexible. With our current system, we can easily cope with more growth.’
