Traditional couriers and parcels seemed to be condemned to vanish after the digital era boom driven by the appearance of big, new players, as Amazon is. Nevertheless, as contradictory as it seems, these new players are the ones who have the sector more alive than never, bringing them on board into their innovation and evolution ships, making them the most-valuable players in the last mile deliveries.
As McKinsey&Company states in its “Fast forwarding last-mile delivery-implications for the ecosystem”, the last-mile delivery is the “final stage in the network of courier, express, and parcel companies (CEP). It is an entire ecosystem that brings a variety of goods to consumers’ doorsteps (or very close)”. This part of the logistic process, being the closest one to the final customer, represents the most expensive and inefficient one.
For facing this challenge, some of the new solutions propose:
- New technologies: here is where mostly all of the spotlights are. Drones are entering into a lot of industries and autonomous driven vehicles are not falling behind.
- Variety of delivery spots: offering the customers a full-hand of delivery places eliminates the “customization” of the delivery, letting companies deliver by volume covering a bigger zone.
- Intelligent delivery planning: new route planning systems that locate optimal unloading points and more efficient routes will begin to emerge.
- Micro in-city storage: some companies, as Ikea, are changing their models to include micro storage spots inside cities in order to shorten their operational times.
- New players: new incumbents in the industry are appearing, with a value proposal driven by route optimization and capacity and load sharing.
Its easy to identify how Amazon is leading the LMD (last-mile delivery) race with key initiatives that include some of the listed solutions.
Their Delivery Service Partner Program offers entrepreneurs interested in the logistics business to partner up with the e-commerce giant, offering their technology, demand flow, and customer base in exchange of delivering the packages to the consumers doorsteps. Another interesting way they are managing to offer a variety of delivery spots: recruiting local shops in rural areas. In some rural states from the USA, Amazon is recruiting from floral shops to restaurants to deliver packages in small towns.
Prime Air just received the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorization to start the testing and research phases of their drone-delivering project in the US. After the safety they claim drones can provide, the other big proposal for this technology revolves around sustainability. Amazon pledge is to achieve half of their objective of zero carbon emission shipments by 2030.
Amazon Scout is for land what drones are for air. This 100% electric robot-vehicle was created to go straight to the customers front-door with their packages. As a project in testing phase, this is only available in some places of the US.
The blog of Logistics at MGEPS at UPV 
Nice blog! Man, I love Amazon & Mckinsey