Arthur Axelrad, chief executive officer and founder of Dispatch Science, brings us up to date on technology trends among couriers and parcel carriers serving the last mile.

Last-mile couriers are increasingly turning to technology to realize operational excellence, Axelrad says. The goal is to be able to meet the demands, not just of their immediate shipper customer, but of the end consumer as well. That said, they are being challenged by rising expectations in service, communication, quality and transparency.

As if that weren’t enough, couriers and parcel carriers are laboring to meet the very different requirements of industry verticals, such as food, retail, life sciences and bulky shipments, all through the deployment of a common packaged software application.

It’s not easy figuring out the most cost-efficient route for any given shipment, let alone the best means of handling huge volumes of parcels that might arrive at a warehouse on a moment’s notice. All of that constitutes a “traditional, laborious manual exercise,” Axelrad says. To boost efficiency in line with increasing demands, couriers and parcel carriers must look to technology tools such as route optimization and mapping applications. In the process, they can plan the most efficient routes, and react to real-time scenarios more quickly than was ever possible through the use of paper and spreadsheets.

Some companies are behind the curve because they continue to deploy legacy technology or have come to depend on home-grown systems, Axelrad says. They’re struggling now to keep pace with those who turned instead to off-the-shelf software that’s based in the cloud, especially that which incorporates artificial intelligence.

The next five years will see continued adoption of modern technology tools in support of last-mile delivery, Axelrad says. Together they will become “the foundation layer for the next level of companies that want to leverage AI.”