The increase in online orders affects many stakeholders in the long, logistical chain of package delivery. One of these stakeholders is managers of gated communities. They have to deal with overwhelming numbers of packages every single day!
Imagine how much time a community manager has to spend on managing packages in this case. In a survey conducted by the National Multifamily Housing Council, 68% of community managers report that they spend between 1 to 4 hours per week on this task alone.
But this is not the only challenge. The sheer amount of packages makes it difficult to keep an overview of the deliveries, which can quickly lead to theft or loss of parcels.
Luckily, package management solutions in the form of software are on the rise to help community managers and make their workday more efficient.
With this information in the back of our minds, we quickly want to jump back and see which challenges even caused the rise of the above-mentioned solution. Later on, we will discuss how package management software can further be improved.
Let’s go.
Gated Community Package Delivery Challenges
While gated communities provide peace of mind and security for residents, they can also create a few challenges. Next to challenges like managing amenity bookings or parking for hundreds of people, package delivery and therefore the management of parcels is one of the biggest challenges.
As previously mentioned, the amount of delivered packages skyrocketed in recent years, leaving community managers with a time-consuming and overwhelming task. Every single package has to be properly registered, which means that information such as the resident’s name and address, shipping number, shipping date, carrier etc. have to be manually noted down.
Under these circumstances, it is very challenging to keep an overview of incoming and outgoing packages, which can easily lead to the next challenge: theft. A stolen or lost package leads to frustrations and even legal consequences, making life harder for everyone involved.
But what could be a suitable solution to overcome these challenges?
What could be the solution?
The answer is simple: Software, as a streamlined package management solution.
Note: If you are one of the package management solution providers and are here because you are looking for a way to improve your software, feel free to jump to the last part of the blog. There we explain how Klippa’s solution can help you.
In general, a package management solution looks like this: Community managers make use of an app that allows them to register the delivered package, save necessary information, and notify the resident that a package arrived.
This makes package management so much faster as information is automatically stored in the app and made accessible to residents. Because each parcel is registered right away, packages don’t get lost anymore and therefore, pick-up time decreases.
An improved resident experience is one of the reasons to go for software. But which other reasons are there?
Why do you need a package management system?
There are several reasons why a software solution for package management is needed in a gated community. These reasons are:
- Saves time → Data extraction is completed within a few seconds, meaning the community manager can focus on more value-adding tasks.
- Reduces costs → Imagine the following: with a manual package management system a community manager needs 10 minutes per package, is paid $30 per hour, and has to manage 200 parcels per week. This adds up to 9,600 packages a year. That means that manual package management alone costs around $50.000. With package management software, the time per parcel is reduced and therefore, costs are saved.
- Better overview of packages
- Improved resident experience → Community managers have more time to focus on residents’ needs, as time spent on parcel management is reduced. Furthermore, with a better overview of packages, residents can find and pick up their packages faster.
- Minimized risk of stolen or damaged packages
If you are used to a manual management system, you might wonder how a package management flow with software looks. That’s why we would like to go through each step next.
What does package management flow with software look like?
In general, the whole parcel management process can be conducted in six simple steps. They look like this:
- Delivery carrier drops off the parcel at the front desk
- Community manager uses the app to scan each package
- The software reads the package label and saves the information in a database
- A push notification is automatically sent to the resident who received a package
- Resident picks up the package from the front desk
- Community manager logs the package as delivered and picked up in the software
Are you looking to improve your own package management software with a solution that can enhance your camera scanning features and accurately extract data from shipping labels?
In the following section, we would like to take a closer look at point three, “The software reads the package label and saves the information in a database”.
Using Klippa to enhance your package management system
With Klippa’s Document Scanning SDK, you can quickly and easily enhance your existing package management software. Our SDK can be integrated into your app and connected via an API, so that seamless information exchange is possible.
Making use of our Document Scanning SDK means that you can provide your end user (i.e., the community manager) with advanced technology. With the seven functionalities of our SDK, you can ensure that your app works smoothly and can read out shipping labels reliably.
Functionalities of Klippa’s Document Scanning SDK
Let’s have a look at these functionalities and discuss how they can improve a community manager’s workday.
- Real-time user feedback → Our SDK gives real-time feedback to guide users when taking a picture, e.g., “Conditions too dark”, “Move closer to the document”, and “Hold the camera still”. That way, a shipping label is captured effectively.
- Auto capturing → Auto capturing makes scanning documents super easy. Users don’t have to press the button to capture an image. They can simply place the parcel in front of the camera and the Klippa SDK will automatically recognize the shipping label and take the picture for you.
- Cropping → Our scanning SDK will recognize the borders of the shipping label and crop it automatically. Thanks to that feature, getting a clean and high quality image becomes much more convenient. On top of that, manual cropping is also possible to crop the image to the user’s preference.
- Lighting adjustment → If a user is in a darker environment and has no proper light source nearby, users can turn on the flash via flash control. This will help the community manager to get the clearest image possible.
- Image enhancement → The quality of the document is enhanced by our SDK’s image processing features to ensure the best picture quality possible.
- Single and multiple document scanning → It is possible to quickly scan multiple shipping labels and group them together to ensure a quick and efficient process. This is very handy when the community manager receives multiple packages for the same resident.
- Anonymization → In order to comply with GDPR, some information is not allowed to be stored in databases. Therefore, we offer the possibility to mask data automatically. This will not only increase the feeling of security for residents of the gated community, but also protect data in case of a data leakage.
In order for the community manager to be able to use the full potential of our solution, the Document Scanning SDK can be linked to our OCR engine via API. When connected to OCR, information on the shipping label can be detected. Our OCR engine is able to detect:
- Receiver’s name & address
- Sender’s name & address
- Shipping number
- Reference number
- Carrier name
- Barcode
- Signature
Once detected, information is extracted from the label and saved as structured data in the community manager’s database.
What happens after data extraction?
The community manager’s database of course already contains a resident’s information, such as name and address. When the extracted information from the delivered package is saved in the same database, the information is automatically matched with a resident’s name and address.
This will then lead to the next step of the package management flow. A push notification is automatically sent to the resident who received a package. Here, your package management software is taking over again.
With the addition of our Document Scanning SDK to your app, your package management system is complete.
Are you also interested in enhancing your package management software with Klippa’s solution? Let us show you how we can help you. Schedule a free demo down below or contact one of our experts for more information.