News

Worldwide, postal organizations are developing new services using the workforce that has an incredible presence in every street almost every day of the week. In January 2015, Accenture estimated the market value of “proximity services” as a 10 billion market within four years.

Last week I shared the project of the Spanish postal company: mailmen were hired as data collectors for the municipality of Santander. This week, the Belgian postal company announced that their cars will be used to measure air quality. Bpost has the largest fleet of vehicles in Belgium.

The network of a postal company is very interesting: it is a combination of a static network of letterboxes in the street, able for 24/7 measurement which is complemented with a dynamic network of vehicles and mailmen in every street of an entire country.

Postal companies, thus, have an incredible local presence with different networks (static and dynamic) and have the possibility to implement new strategies on a nation-wide level within a short period of time. Their workforce have a great reputation – proven by the fact that people open their door when the mailmen is at the doorstep.

Although the initiatives of Bpost and Correos are yet to be proven business cases, it is my firm belief that the future for postal organizations delivering proximity services focused on data collection is a bright one!

Source Accenture article: https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-postal-transformation-postmen-open-door-new-era-consumer

Check news article of Bpost: https://translate.google.nl/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stadszaken.nl%2Fsmart%2Fnetwerksamenleving%2Fbestelbussen-meten-luchtkwaliteit&edit-text=&act=url

Also applicable in urban areas and for other purposes

Great initiative by some of our partners; Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Rainproof and the Knowledge Mile.

Today it is still a demonstration drive only, but this might be the bus that I will take from my hometown Haarlem to Schiphol Airport in the near future!

TomTom (TOM2) today announced that TomTom City – a traffic portal that provides live traffic and travel information – has now extended to 50 cities. The traffic portal showcases the extensive range of traffic information available on a city by city basis and provides a platform to connect traffic authorities, businesses and citizens to jointly manage sustainable and efficient mobility.

Heb jij hét idee dat het culturele erfgoed laat herleven? Doe mee met het innovatieprogramma van de provincie Noord-Holland waarmee je een succesvol product of dienst voor de cultureel-toeristische sector creëert. HollandCall is voor iedereen: start-ups, (lokale) ondernemers, studenten of juist grotere organisaties die maatschappelijk verantwoord willen ondernemen.

Heb jij hét idee dat het culturele erfgoed laat herleven? Doe mee met het innovatieprogramma van de provincie Noord-Holland waarmee je een succesvol product of dienst voor de cultureel-toeristische sector creëert. HollandCall is voor iedereen: start-ups, (lokale) ondernemers, studenten of juist grotere organisaties die maatschappelijk verantwoord willen ondernemen.

https://www.noord-holland.nl/Onderwerpen/Cultuur_en_Erfgoed/Projecten/HollandCall_2016

Solar Carport Charger

Ever thought about developing a board game to enable implementation of new working methods? That's my speciality

Check this interesting article on using the mailmen as data collector in the city. Worldwide, postal companies are looking for opportunities in proximity services; mowing the lawn (Finland), checking the quality of the roads (US Post) or visiting elderly people (Belgium).

If you know other examples of Smart City Mailmen or if you have interesting thoughts on this topic, please share them here!

https://translate.google.nl/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&u=www.correos.es%2Fss%2FSatellite%2Fsite%2Finfo\_corporativa-1363190531465-contenidos\_multimedia%2Fdetalle\_noticia&edit-text=&act=url