Business Challenge 2011: Intelligent delivery access network - team 2

Itella Posti provides Finnish society with everyday mail services with 12 million items a day delivered. Itella is constantly developing its existing services and investigating new possibilities to use state of the art technology.

Now you can be part of the spearhead to make new society where postal services are more available and easy to use as part of daily routines!

Itella is looking new ways to use intelligent locking solutions as part of its infrastructure. Intelligent locking consist products from lock manufactures like iLoq and Abloy. Common to these products are that those can be easily programmed to accept certain keys and unlike ordinary smart locks some of the products don’t require any auxiliary power source. New locks will be used to support Itella’s delivery and gathering network containing “cold” delivery access points without electricity and “warm” access points that are stationed in Itella’s premises with electricity and solid network access. Elements that have potential to be combined with smart locking are especially P.O.Boxes, delivery carts, letter boxes, bundle boxes, doors on the route and all the containers like roller cages. Smart Phones are another tool that could be thought to reinforce the intelligent network by providing necessary sensors and network access for mobile workers in “cold” access points. Communication with smart locks, keys, phones and servers is doable with many methods to make a solid new infrastructure.

Project Goal

Study the technological solutions and possibilities in given field. Find new business models that new technology enables in the delivery field. Invent new services that use new infrastructure to be used by senders, recipients and couriers. Analyze the value chain and information flows. Describe what internal benefits Itella can have and what part of delivery processes can be automated outsourced or removed with new technological solutions. Expected deliverables includes new business model descriptions, use cases and brief value chain analysis describing Itella’s role in the forthcoming delivery field. Also brief market analysis for new invented services is wished.