What Is A Parcel Locker And How Can It Help Your Business?
Parcel lockers are bulkstorage units with multiple lockable compartments, designed to facilitate delivery and collection of orders at any time of the day or night. This 24/7 accessibility makes parcel lockers a powerful tool in an era of increasing e-commerce.
A customer can order an item online, for instance, and travel to a nearby parcel locker to retrieve their order. Shippers can deposit packages safely and securely, even when no one’s available to sign for the shipment. At construction sites and industrial facilities, this capability allows for after-hours deliveries, preventing costly delays.
At its simplest, a parcel locker features traditional keyed compartments. This is a common arrangement in the property management industry, for instance, where property managers can simply hand each resident the key to their mailbox.
But in the industrial distribution space, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) capabilities offer even greater convenience. Electronic parcel lockers can form part of an IIoT solution for delivering or picking up orders without costly delays.
Electronic Parcel Lockers and How They Work
An electronic parcel locker adds digital functionality to the traditional collection of locked boxes. This technology typically comes in the form of smart locks, digital keypads that users access through an app or portal for complete control.
There are five steps to filling an online order using an electronic parcel locker:
The customer makes an order through the supplier’s estore and selects “pick up at locker” as the delivery option.
Employees at the facility recieve the order through their estore portal.
Staff places the order in a free locker and generate a one-time passcode for the electronic lock.
The electronic lock sends this passcode to the customer, informing them that their order is ready and available at the location, in this particular locker, with this particular code.
The customer picks up their order; the one-time passcode expires on access.
This set-up provides an Industry 4.0 approach to the challenge of delivery on project-saving orders. In the example above, the benefits accrue to both the customer and the seller, whether they’re in the B2C retail space or B2B materials distribution. But it’s easy to see how the arrangement could work similarly the other way around, too — that is, the customer can set up an electronic parcel locker and the distributor can use it for anytime deliveries using a similar system.
Delivery Lockers for Outdoor Use
Can you use parcel lockers outside? The answer to this question depends on the parcel locker, but the shortest answer is a simple “yes.” Industrial parcel lockers from BHS are designed specifically for outdoor use. Their waterproof coating, flush doors, and sloped roofs protect sensitive orders in all types of weather.
Some parcel lockers are designed only for indoor use. Maybe they lack a waterproof coating, or, if fitted with electronic locks, the electronics are not weather-proofed. While such a parcel locker might be fine for a property management application, for BOPIS use, parcel lockers and their electronics should be reliably weather-proof.
