Posti Group Oyj, Finland’s government-owned postal services company, is winning more international business from e-commerce shippers with the help of cloud-based service for managing data on parcels in transit, the company says.
“Every postal service in the world is suffering from the drop in letter mail, but we are growing in logistics services and at the same time improving our operations,” says Jaakko Kaidesoja, vice president of e-commerce strategy and development.
E-commerce shipments from business-to-business as well as retail companies, he adds, are driving the demand for logistics services, especially across international borders. It’s a market opportunity where Posti is winning business beyond its home country—namely, for packages getting shipped from China into Russia.
One important way that Posti is gaining a market edge, he adds, is in its ability to let shipping clients track and trace packages shipped via multiple carriers from suppliers in China, often via Europe, and to their final destinations in Russia. “Shippers need real-time track and trace—they want to know the exact location of where their goods are,” Kaidesoja says.
To provide that level of service, Posti last fall began working with Youredi Inc., a provider of a cloud-based data integration service that receives shipment status data from multiple logistics providers—including air carriers and ground trucking companies—as packages are scanned at multiple points of a delivery route. Youredi’s data management technology is designed to accept data in multiple formats, including XML and electronic data interchange, and transform that information into a common format used by Posti. “We won the business with Youredi,” Kaidesoja says.
“Shippers want more information on where and when their parcels are delivered,” says Dean Baxter, general manager of Youredi. “The global e-commerce market depends on the fast and accurate flow of information. This is particularly critical in complex, cross-border supply chain/e-commerce applications, where there are multiple delivery lanes for intercontinental shipments.”
Youredi is based in Helsinski, Finland, and recently opened a U.S. office in Woburn, Mass. It charges fees ranging from five to 15 cents per data transaction. The company is backed financially by Risto Siilasmaa, the chairman of communications technology company Nokia Corp. and F-Secure, a computer security company. The amount of Siilasmaa’s investment hasn’t been made public.
Youredi also provides data integration services in other areas of e-commerce, including in the exchange of invoices and payment data.
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