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When starting a locker network or re-looking at your existing network’s strategy, locker operators need to consider that at one point you may need to use solutions from different partners. As the market changes over time, your business and locker network grows, often there comes a need for different location types and implementing new services.
While turnkey locker solutions (combining hardware, software, and services from a single provider) offer an effective way to launch a parcel locker network, it can eventually face the need to decouple hardware, software and service elements to reduce single vendor dependency, offer new services to their customers and manage risk.
Our team at CollabNet has been through similar transitions before with locker operators and we would like to share our five key areas to focus on.
Once your locker network has become a strategic asset for your business, you need to build more in-house competency to understand locker hardware, software solutions, and network support management.
Often when customers become used to turnkey solutions, their internal technical know-how might reduce over time. This means that organizations can become too dependent on the provider’s expertise rather than maintaining their own.
We recommend:
Before making any changes to current partnerships, you need to think through the roles of your in-house teams and partners to clearly define the extent of each party’s responsibilities.
You don’t need complete in-house control over everything, but your in-house teams should be able to manage external partners effectively, including:
We have seen that in some regions, local resellers also act as maintenance partners for the operator. The transition to a new software solution often requires rediscussing these relationships.
When decoupling from a turnkey provider, you’ll need to:
The decisions made in the previous points determine your future partnerships. Moving away from a turnkey solution doesn’t mean ending the partnership entirely, you already have infrastructure set up with this provider. The cooperation scope may change, but the business relationship doesn’t need to end.
Managing this relationship is perhaps the most delicate aspect of the transition. In our experience, some pushback can be expected from existing vendors during migration.
Your exit strategy should include:
When consumers are accustomed to one user interface, you shouldn’t overcomplicate things. The new UI/UX should be as similar as possible to what was provided by the turnkey solution provider
Creating software that preserves the customer experience while optimizing flows presents a key challenge. Your customers rely on your service, so any changes need to enhance rather than disrupt their experience.
In our projects, we’ve found success by:
The final critical step involves migrating parcel data between platforms without network downtime. As the last phase in the transfer process, this needs to be executed with precision to avoid any impact on end users.
Two approaches exist: maintaining parcels in lockers during transfer (more complex but transparent to consumers) or removing parcels on site, doing the transfer and reinserting all parcels. CollabNet has experience implementing the first option, which preserves the seamless customer experience.
For networks still in the planning stages, we recommend thinking about your end goal from the beginning. Setting up a pilot with a turnkey solution is convenient, but you need to consider how your solution will scale.
Strategic planning can save significant resources and minimize disruption in the long run by avoiding the need for a major transition later.
At CollabNet, we combine technical expertise with practical knowledge of parcel locker operations across Europe. Our experience with successful transitions enables us to anticipate challenges before they arise, ensuring your network continues performing optimally throughout the transition and beyond.
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