FMS and IoT for Retailers
Background:
Many established brands ranging from supermarkets like FairPrice, Cold Storage and fashion apparel brands like H&M and Zara all have goods and merchandise being delivered from the central warehouse to different outlets island wide.
Through the delivery process, goods are subjected to great levels of uncertainty. So, retailers who are concerned about security issues would often use a one-time mechanical tamper evident seal to lock their delivery trucks. These mechanical seals have unique IDs that are recorded and matched at each drop off location. Sometimes, retailers may acquire delivery services from external logistics companies such as Ninja Van and hence, retailers and supermarkets cannot track these trucks in real time.
Challenges:
The current one time use of mechanical tamper evident seals is not cost effective especially when costs are incurred every time it is replaced. Also, given that this entire process is labour-intensive and non-digitalised, it does not give retailers valuable insights on what happens during delivery trips as no data can be collected.
Furthermore, given that mechanical seals can be easily duplicated, security can be breached easily as well. As such, goods may be tampered or pilfered without retailers knowing, especially when no real time data is put into place for them to gain visibility of their goods.
Solution:
Such operational inefficiencies incur unnecessary costs on businesses and hence, Rock Africa’s solutions can help to alleviate these pain points encountered by retailers and supermarkets.
Rock Africa provides an all in one digital solution incorporating both the fleet management system (FMS) and IoT to address common issues faced by retailers and supermarkets. Rock Africa’s ULock locks the truck doors and alerts retailers if the electronic lock is opened outside of a designated geozone. Our ULock ensures high levels of security because it can only be opened inside authorised geozones where delivery points are located.
Also, a GPS tracker is installed in delivery trucks to monitor the ULock and other types of sensors. IoT sensors are important as it gives retailers further insights on the conditions of their goods especially when supermarkets are delivering perishables. Our solution allows retailers to detect assets tagged with ATLAS tag and ATLAS temperature sensors to give real time alerts and notifications if any abnormalities that may crop up during delivery trips.
Furthermore, Rock Africa’s full FMS allows retailers to gain access to the real time location, visibility of delivery trucks and conditions of assets even when it belongs to external parties.
As such, not only does Rock Africa’s solutions allow retailers to do away with one time use of mechanical seals but with our full FMS and IoT solutions, it allows retailers to gain insights on delivery trips through the valuable data and analytics generated.