When Innovation Is Only the Start
Bobby O’Keeffe, CEO of Fastway Couriers has both eyes fully focused on the UK retail online market and has a very particular vision in mind. “We launched our Parcel Connect brand in October 2013 and in a matter of months we secured contracts with ASOS, Littlewoods, MissGuided and Oxendales and recently won a major UK business award. My vision is to work with all the others,” commented Mr O’Keeffe. Parcel Connect is a new and unique delivery service that is faster, cheaper and easier for Irish consumers to use. It allows customers elect to have your parcels picked up from, delivered to and collected from a range of local shops, convenient for the customer. By partnering with Payzone they now have over 700 outlets already signed up, mainly across symbol group stores throughout the 26 counties. “Parcel Connect is very appealing to UK companies interested in increasing their footprint in the lucrative Irish marketplace, but also particularly valuable for any brand keen on finding a better solution for customers who want to return goods. Before we launched Parcel Connect the only option for consumers was expensive, time consuming and complex methods of returns which; was far from ideal. Now, we offer a range of free of very cost effective ways to return goods via in box labelling and local collections,” explained Mr O’Keeffe.
Parcel Connect is just one of Fastway Courier’s projects that came out of their new innovation centre in Dublin. The initiative, called ICE – or Innovation Centre of Excellence – is the brainchild of CEO Bobby O’Keeffe and has a dual purpose, as he explains. “The objective of ICE is to create an environment that allows the team and our partners share and develop global best practice when it comes to all things related to supply chain technology. As a courier company we’ve witnessed how online sales are growing at a phenomenal rate and in particular we’ve seen a massive increase of retail sales into Ireland from the likes of Littlewoods Ireland, ASOS, Miss Guided and Oxendales. The process within ICE allows us identify and create logistical products and services that have both domestic and global market. We then create strategies; brands and services that allow us shape and enhance customer experience, courier efficiency and client expansion. We then validate them with our partners including Innovation Delivery – a consultancy firm who works for both UCD and Stamford University – who road test them before launch. With 15 projects under development in ICE we plan on rolling out a number of new initiatives over the coming years,” outlined O’Keeffe.
“We want to exceed expectations of our customers, take the industry to a new level, and craft the perfect online shopping experience. We’re very confident Parcel Connect is in the best position to do that and we are happy to talk to anyone about it,” he concluded.
