Imagine getting an e-mail or a SMS from your courier company minutes after the delivery of your priced consignment to the addressee. In a move that will make premium customers like financial institutions who send valuable documents via express courier rejoice, Indian logistics major Elbee Express will be the first company to offer a real-time tracking of consignments by incorporating mobile communications technology in their delivery model. Every delivery agent is given a hand-held mobile handset having a GPRS connection in which he updates the status of every parcel.

“Every parcel has an unique Way Bill Number, which is given to the customers. Our agent updates the status of the parcel on the mobile phone device, which is updated in real time on our servers. Based upon a request from the customer we can send an e-mail or SMS to him within minutes of the consignment getting delivered,” says Nikhil Shah, executive director of Elbee Express, adding that the total project cost is around Rs 10 crore. A credit card company, for instance, can take the follow-up action like making a call to their customer welcoming him on board.

The system is bound to minimise the extent of fraud as well as the credit card companies which send “live” cards—bearer instruments, which can be misused—will be able to send de-activated cards. “Currently, companies send live cards to avoid inconvenience for their customers. But now, using our Real Track system, their call centres can get an automatic message from our side saying the consignment has been delivered to the rightful person based upon which the cards can be activated without causing any inconvenience to the customer,” Shah says.

Stating that Elbee is among the top two express courier companies chosen by premium customers in India to send valuable documents, Shah says that their clientele, which includes SBI Cards, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra and Barclays, among others, has particularly liked the idea of sending de-activated cards. Logistics is a fragmented sector in India with over 2,000 big and small operators vying for a Rs 6,000 crore pie.

According to experts, the sector could grow at over 20%. Major players in the express courier market besides Elbee include Blue Dart, AFL-Wiz, DTDC and First Flight couriers. Apart from companies in the financial sector, e-Commerce customers also stand to benefit as data for cash on delivery transactions like name of the receiver, mode of payment etc will also be made available using the software real time.

“Earlier, our systems were updated late in the evening on the date of delivery after the delivery agent reached his branch and the customers could check the status on the web. This is when we decided to make it real-time by using the mobile communications platform. The application does not require any change in our current processes and was designed in-house while the coding for it has been outsourced,” says Elbee’s CIO Shirish Gariba, emphasising that no other logistics company in the world has developed such a system to track real-time movement of parcels.

A set of around 100 such mobile phone handsets are already being used by Elbee’s staff currently in Mumbai as part of the pilot project and the company plans to equip each of their 1,500-odd delivery agents spread across 180 branches across the country with such devices by the third quarter of 2009. “All of our agents are Class 12 passouts and are accustomed to using mobile phones. They will be trained by personnel from Elbee, the mobile phone handset maker i-Mate and our network partner Bharti Airtel in using the device,” says Shah.

The service will be offered to the customers at no extra cost as a value-add and Elbee is confident of a rise in its sales due to the implementation of this technology, Shah said, adding that the next step for Elbee would be going for GPS-enabled handsets, which will ensure greater accountability within the organisation as each agent’s movement can be tracked real-time.