Jim Quinn is the kind of CEO most of us only dream of working for: a pro-technologist who allows people to make decisions for themselves. For a recent business-critical rollout of mobile devices and software at Express Couriers (ECL), Quinn was satisfied to place selection and evaluation in the hands of CIO Michael Pilkington and his team.

“The CIO and the business owners in each of the businesses signed off on this project largely because I’ve chosen to stay away as much as I can and allow the team to do it. Letting people take ownership and take pride in what they achieve is important.”

In 2005 DHL New Zealand and New Zealand Post entered a 50-50 joint venture to form ECL, extending the existing relationship between them to incorporate CourierPost, Pace, Contract Logistics and most recently Roadstar, a firm that transports domestic loads and palletised-freight. Quinn is a former general manager of both processing and courier services at New Zealand Post and is also independent chairman of Mobile Commerce Ltd (M-Com), a provider of mobile banking offerings.

While his passion is less about toys and more about solving business problems using technology, he acknowledges that his interest in IT could be seen as a disadvantage. “The danger with people like me,” he says, “is that we get excited about the latest and greatest thing rather than applying the best answer, and sometimes parchment and quill is the best answer.”

Point of difference
The courier industry evolved in a radically different way in New Zealand from the way it grew overseas, where it was driven by the adoption of the transport equivalent of parchment and quill: the consignment note. That dictated the development of information systems to handle the data.

“The industry here has been built around prepaid tickets — following a number — and that creates some interesting differences: you don’t gather a whole data-set like every other country in the world does.”

This has been both a weakness and an opportunity for New Zealand firms. For while the technology investment in other countries has aimed to reduce keystrokes — either by having the customer do the work, or automating the gathering of data — here, that prepaid ticket number may be the only known fact about an item, and Quinn says this has made the industry far more cost-effective than it is in other countries.

“We have less administrative cost compared with our sister companies offshore, and I would also argue that this data-paucity makes it much more effective and efficient.”

ECL’s largest business is CourierPost. Its contractors have been using scanners to read barcodes on their prepaid consignments for years; whereas the contractors at ECL’s urgent courier business, Pace, need to track each job individually from collection to delivery.

The frontline contractors at Pace hadn’t used mobile devices before the recent rollout, which included the deployment of a specially written application.

“We chose Datacom to write the CourierPost software and BlackBay to write the Pace and container tracking software,” he says.

“That shows the flexibility and portability of the environment we’ve chosen to go with.” The deployment was designed to streamline processes for the company’s nationwide contractors, as well as to improve visibility for ECL’s customers. Future-proofing was the reason for an agnostic approach to device, software and network. ECL can continue using the operating system even when its devices are superseded, and the software can simply move to the new devices.

“When the next device is released, we can leave the current devices out there and let the rollout occur over time; rather than what we’ve had to do in the past, which is to entirely swap-out the fleet to go to the next release.”

A working party including everyone from contractors to management evaluated five different vendor offerings for the hardware and chose a combination of Psion Teklogix Workabout Pro handhelds loaded with Windows Mobile 5.0 and Psion’s Mobile Control Centre software. As well as being an all-in-one device, the Workabout Pro is GSM, CDMA and GPRS-ready and has a colour display — providing additional ease-of-use to ECL’s self-employed contractors.

By the end of August, mobile devices had been rolled out to around 1000 couriers — approximately 700 Courier Post contractors and 150 at Pace. A continuation of the rollout to depots and trucks will include the capability for container-scanning, adding several hundred further users over time.

Local support for the Psion devices is provided by Pocket Solutions and the Mobile Control Centre software has remote management capabilities for online updates and patches; removing the need for devices to be returned to base for maintenance. “That enables us to probe what is going on in the scanner and get it right if it’s going wrong,” Quinn says.

Welcome to my roadshow
Everyone who has ever been involved in an IT project understands the challenge of winning user buy-in. ECL’s devices literally had to be sold to its contractors because they are self-employed and have to buy their own hardware. ECL won them over by organising a nationwide roadshow to promote the benefits of the devices and software (costing about $2500 per unit) and to reassure them they would be making a worthwhile investment.

“The IT team went round the country, explained what we were trying to do and what the options were.”

Few things frustrate the owners of small businesses more than having to upgrade technology before it is obsolete, but Quinn was confident the contractors could be persuaded, face-to-face, that their existing devices had outlived their useful lives.

“The contractors are savvy, and while they don’t want to spend any more money than they have to, equally they want the technology to work.”

In recent years ECL has also replaced its main enterprise application, which Quinn summarises as being about “taking control of our data”. The back-office now runs on Fujitsu CourierMaster Enterprise (CME) system, integrated by Synergy and ECN.

“It’s a long-term thing. Getting it in place was the first step and replacing the old technologies, which had run their life and were pretty old, was also important.”

Ubiquitous environment
Late in August ECL also rolled out some behavioural intelligence software by Intilecta to its frontline teams, with the aim of presenting information to sales staff, fleet-management teams and operations management teams in graphical form.

“It’s not about CRM or data warehousing,” Quinn emphasises. “It’s about designing pictures of the data that enable people to see there’s a problem or an opportunity to do something better.”

Quinn does not like creating interfaces that require additional training if he can avoid it. He believes systems should, wherever possible, be easy to use. Intellecta’s software presents data to users intuitively structured in the form of Outlook folders. An application with this look-and-feel was chosen because email is ubiquitous.

“It presents some very rich information to help split our customers, support the fleet and the processes. We’re in a people game, so the people have to be effective.”

Frontline ownership
As a former general manager of QED Software, Quinn also has an understanding of software design. The degree to which an organisation is able to drill into its data is usually dictated by the sophistication of its applications, and he says it’s important not to confuse a simple interface with what is hidden behind it.

“Sometimes, people get confused about simplicity in design, which can kill the granularity of data, and that ultimately drives more complexity. Oddly enough, you’re better to be a little more complex in design and then get the simplicity at the back-end.”

But in spite of being anything but a technophobe, Quinn’s philosophy is ‘leading-edge good, bleeding-edge bad’.

“There’s no reason for anybody in transport to take massive technology risks. We need to be able to achieve what the customers want at a fair cost. Being at the bleeding-edge carries the risk of failure.”

Due to business growth, Quinn has recently had fewer opportunities to observe at first-hand how his contractors do business. But while circumstances may have forced that style of management, a ‘hands-off’ approach has its advantages.

“Good service businesses run well if the people at the frontline own things. If everything’s got to come to me, we’re probably doomed — I’ll make the wrong calls and won’t have time to make them all.”

October 2007

By Chris Bell