CASE STUDY ASKBLUE

CTT AI Postal Warehouse Platform

“With OutSystems low-code platform we are able to deploy a new warehouse platform in less than six months, more efficient, future proof, and aligned with our corporate customers changing needs.”

Pedro Gomes
Pedro Gomes

CIO

images © CTT Correios de Portugal

Challenge

Postal shipping for enterprise customers is a very operational demanding business and needs to be effective and efficient to be aligned with CTT commercial goals, especially with the current context of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Solution & Goal

This project rethinks all CTT warehouse operations for postal enterprise customers, leveraging on: mobility, one tablet for each operator; computer vision to recognize simultaneously several barcodes; ERP, CRM and Advanced Analytics integration to improve overall operational efficiency, cost control and associated risks.

How-To

Development of a complete postal warehouse platform that manages all the postal shipment reception, several steps of conference and sampling, exception handling (retentions and returns) and billing and CRM interface:

  • Mobile App do be used by warehouse operators (8” Android Tablet) leverage in a computer vision native plugin to read simultaneously several barcodes (up to 100 with the right conditions) with one operation. The camera of the device is used to take photos for specific situations.
  • FrontOffice Portal, also used by operators for specific tasks. Different operators could be working at the same shipment reception process;
  • BackOffice Portal for supervisors and warehouse coordinators. The systems will compare declared characteristics and quantities with the ones obtained from automatic postal counting machines (MMSs) via Advanced Analytics Integration. Exception handling (missing documents, parcel classification, returns etc) are also handled by the platform. The final values are sent to billing via SAP ERP. All the intermediate states, photos and automatic counting images are sent to CTT Datalake and are available for exploration and algorithm training and optimization.

The platform was developed with version 11 of the OutSystems platform, supporting enterprise-grade scalability and security. The system integrates with several internal CTT Systems (Azure Authentication, SAP ERP, CRM, Azure Datalake, etc).

KPI’s / Client Value

The platform will allow to decreasing 30% average warehouse costs (direct and indirect), compared to the previous process.

Benefits

  • More efficient warehouse operation
  • Less manual processes based on postal manipulation.
  • Increased warehouse automation
  • Improved customer satisfaction due to alignment with SLAs
  • More autonomy and differentiation vs packaged warehouse solution. Roadmap ownership

About the Client

CTT – Correios de Portugal, is a Portuguese company that operates as both the national postal service of Portugal and a commercial group with subsidiaries operating in banking, e-commerce, and other postal services. It was founded in 1520 by King Manuel I of Portugal, during the Portuguese Renaissance, and CTT is the oldest company still in operation in Portugal to this day.