As the popularity of e-commerce has grown, so has the efficiency and speed of product delivery. Online ordering has become easier than ever, eclipsing the former convenience of traditional high street shopping. Even small- to medium-sized businesses now consider delivery speed a top priority, as customers increasingly favor the quickest option available.

Daily online purchases have skyrocketed since these developments took hold, placing strain on buildings receiving the incoming packages. For reception areas and mailrooms of multi-home buildings and office complexes, where one delivery point serves hundreds (even thousands) of people, the new volumes can prove unmanageable without the appropriate resources.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, mailrooms struggled to cope with the influx of deliveries. But when brick-and-mortar stores shut and stay-at-home mandates kept consumers at home, e-commerce sales soared to new levels, with online orders jumping 74% in March 2020 compared to the year before. Buildings were flooded with more packages than ever, forcing mailroom managers to rethink how they stored and distributed packages to tenants.

Building managers who adapted quickly had the most success with handling the new volumes. Those who invested in improvements such as increased staff and mailroom management software got parcels to units more quickly and maintained tenant satisfaction.

Now that lockdowns have lifted and more people are returning to work, attending social events and traveling, tenants are not always home to receive packages upon arrival as they were at the beginning of the pandemic, leaving mailrooms to store even more parcels for longer periods of time.

Managers who scraped by during lockdown without implementing new mailroom management software or increasing staff should expect even more challenges ahead, as e-commerce sales are unlikely to return to their pre-COVID levels.

In order to cope with the new normal, ill-equipped property mailrooms need to become the nervous system of the building, handling each new delivery with ease and efficiency, so it can reach its recipient with as much speed as possible. The faster parcels reach their units, the less burdened the mailroom is by package overflow.

One of the most effective ways to level up is to implement top-quality mailroom software to streamline the delivery logging process, which can help safeguard against liability issues, improve storage and retrieval systems with internal parcel tracking and even reduce the need for manpower when dealing with high delivery volumes.

Building owners who want to maximize the efficiency of their mailrooms, enhance tenant satisfaction and relieve unnecessary stress for their employees should consider mailroom enhancements a top priority. By simply implementing the right software and training employees to handle higher volumes, mailroom managers can streamline their delivery fulfillment system, improving both the employee and tenant experience.

Arthur Zargaryan is co-founder and chief executive officer of Deepfinity.