Previously, in order to become a client of the Post, one had to have special knowledge about its structure: to understand the tariffs and rules, to get through the restrictions that only employees knew about. The conclusion of the contract took two weeks or more. There was no API for integration, all forms were filled out manually. In a word - a dense forest, through which there is no time for business.
We see the ideal scenario for using Mail as follows: the user clicks on the button and gets the result - the parcels go, the shipments are tracked. Internal processes - distribution by groups of shipments, the formation of documents and others - take place "under the hood".
Post has a solution that helps businesses become more accessible to customers - . This is a single point of interaction with the sender, where you can calculate the cost of the service, prepare documents and forms in one click, print labels, track parcels, see statistics on the number and type of shipments, costs, regions and users.
A distributed team from different cities of Russia is working on the Dispatch service: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Omsk and Rostov-on-Don. Our task is to simplify the interaction of business with the Post from the moment of connection to the daily sending of parcels. Now we are working on transferring Sending customers to online interaction, automating internal processes, eliminating errors, working on setting up electronic document management and accepting payments.
In 2019, we released 23 releases with over 100 features. New functionality has appeared and will appear every two weeks.
Connection in one click on the offer
We analyzed new contracts for 3 months and realized that almost all of them are standard. This made it possible to switch to an accelerated connection under an offer agreement. The offer has the same legal force as a paper contract and it already includes popular services - home delivery, branch, ground or expedited, cash on delivery.
If you need extended functionality and / or a paper contract, then the connection time will increase. You can start with an offer, and later expand the range of services through a manager. Very soon (the release is scheduled for the end of March), any business will be able to connect to Send by offer.
We have already reduced the connection time to basic services to a few hours, which is already better than a few weeks. Reducing this time is not easy, since on the way to using the service there is a human factor and long processes of data exchange between legal systems, but work is already moving in this direction.
This is how the Send connection window looks like
Integration with various CMS/CRM systems out of the box
In addition to the software interface, we provide official modules for popular CMS platforms, which are used by most small and medium-sized online stores in the Russian Federation. The modules allow the store to get integration with us out of the box and at virtually no additional cost, which greatly reduces the threshold for entering Mail as a service.
Today we support 1C Bitrix, InSales, amoCRM, ShopScript and are constantly expanding this list to cover all the solutions that are currently used on the market in the coming months.
Sending e-mails via personal account
The registered email service has been operating since 2016. Through it, individuals receive letters and fines from state bodies - the traffic police, the Federal Bailiff Service, and courts.
Electronic registered letters are delivered faster and more reliably. If the user has agreed to accept legally significant correspondence in electronic form, then the letter will arrive instantly and its opening is legally equivalent to receiving a paper counterpart in the post office against signature. In cases where the recipient has not given consent, the letter is printed out at a specialized center and sent in paper form.
Previously, the availability of registered emails for businesses was limited by the fact that there was no easy way to use them and the sender had to work hard to integrate the service into their processes through the API.
At the end of 2019, we made a user-friendly interface for electronic registered letters in the personal Sending account. Now businesses of any size will be able to exchange emails with government agencies.
Interface of electronic registered letters in the personal account Sending
Electronic issuance of track numbers
A long-awaited innovation for those who have already sent a lot of parcels through the Post, was the transition to the electronic issuance of postal identifiers (track numbers).
Previously, in order to obtain a pool of numbers for tracking parcels, you had to contact the department, where the range of numbers issued to you was recorded in a notebook. Such a manual mode worked with failures - the codes were inevitably lost, confused, duplicated, errors appeared in the service.
Now the process of issuing track numbers is automated. In your personal account, you create a parcel or upload an XLS file if there are a lot of parcels. Each shipment is immediately assigned a code. The documents necessary for sending are also formed here, which can be printed on a printer in order to prepare parcels and letters for transmission to the department. By the way, they can be immediately tracked on the website or mobile application of the Russian Post.
Delivery of shipments without papers
When you bring parcels to the Post Office, you fill out form 103 - a register of all sent items. The register serves as the basis for closing documentation and confirmation of receipt of shipments. There can be 10 or 1000 shipments in one invoice, and then you have to deal with a lot of paper.
Now we are engaged in the digitization and legalization of these forms, we are striving to ensure that they are issued in electronic form and signed with an Electronic Digital Signature (EDS) by both the Post and the sender. This functionality is currently in pilot mode, and we plan to make it generally available by the end of the first quarter of 2020. As soon as we launch this update to the masses, huge reams of paper will no longer be needed.
Support for the fulfillment service in your account
The Post has launched its first fulfillment center based on the logistics center in Vnukovo. It is not necessary for a business to organize its own warehouse when it is possible to use the warehouse services of an external provider. Mail becomes such a provider.
It works like this: the store system is integrated with the warehouse and orders, bypassing manual processing, are sent to the fulfillment provider and go to work in the warehouse. All steps are closed on the provider: packaging, shipping, processing returns.
Soon we will provide access to the fulfillment service through the personal account interface so that everything works transparently, automatically and online.
Facilitation of customs procedures related to export
Previously, when creating an international shipment, the service generated a package of necessary documents, including customs declarations CN22 or CN23, depending on the number of goods in the order. Paper declarations were attached to the parcel along with the label, and the user went to the personal account of the FCS, entered the same information with his hands, signed the declaration with an electronic signature and waited for a decision on release in the personal account of the Federal Customs Service. After receiving the issue, the items could be carried to the post office.
Now the Russian Post has integration with the Federal Customs Service, which simplifies the process of filing and processing documents. If you export goods through the Post, then fill out the forms CN23, CN22 in the personal account of the legal entity in the Dispatch, and the Post transmits the data to customs online, which saves the business from filing paper declarations. Such a process speeds up work from all sides - due to the fact that the exchange of data between the Post and customs is established, the goods do not lie pending clearance, do not undergo manual processing, and they are released much faster.
Usage statistics and development plans
Already, more than 30% of all parcels within the country go through the Dispatch. Sending is used by 33 users every month.
We do not stop there and continue to work to simplify access to services and make a single entry point for all Russian Post services, remove restrictions and make interaction with us easier and clearer.
Our main task now is to transfer clients to online interaction: we need to automate internal processes, eliminate errors, learn how to get clean data with correct indexes, spelling addresses, electronic document management and billing. And so that all this does not require the business to understand the inner workings of the Post, but is hidden βunder the hoodβ.
Now you know for yourself and can tell colleagues and acquaintances who need delivery of goods that working with the Post is not at all scary, but very easy and pleasant.
Source: habr.com