Perform.AI’s Contribution To The SG: Digital Industry Day

These few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity for our Perform.AI astronauts!

Yesterday, we were at the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA)’s inaugural IMDA SG: Digital Industry Day 2018.  It was a special day for us as it was also the official announcement for Perform.AI’s appointment as the software provider for the Interoperability Platform for the Federated Locker and Collection Points Programme!

Needless to say, this was a proud moment for us as a company headquartered in Singapore to be part of such a grand nationwide initiative.

Several Government initiatives to further prepare Singapore for a digital economy were announced.

Some of these initiatives include:

• Scaling up of the SMEs Go Digital Programme to enhance training and development efforts of professionals, managers, and executives to train them on digitalization efforts.

• An Open Innovation Platform to allow firms to crowdsource for solutions online to be introduced next month

• A nationwide e-invoicing system based on the Pan European Public Procurement Online (PEPPOL) system to help businesses to speed up transactions and reduce invoicing errors.

Speaking at the event, Guest Of Honour S Iswaran, Minister for Information and Communications also officially launched the Federated Lockers and Collection Points Programme where we were appointed by IMDA to develop and operate the Interoperability Platform for the Programme.

Our Favourite Project - Federated Lockers

Under the pilot programme slated to begin in the 4th quarter of 2018, IMDA plans to roll out the Federated Lockers to Bukit Panjang and Punggol with 23 sites in the former and 39 in the latter.

With the Federated Lockers easily located near residential areas, commuters can easily pick up parcels and delivery workers can save time and effort by depositing parcels in the lockers instead of wasting trips to and fro the collection center when the recipient was not at home.

Furthermore, SMEs can also easily enter the parcel locker network business and deliver improved logistics services to B2C markets.

A Common Standard For All

Speaking at the official launch of the TR 61: 2018 - a common set of Technical References standards and technical language to be used across all stakeholders in the last mile delivery ecosystem, our CEO Arne Jeroschewski further expanded on the benefits of the Federated Lockers initiative and how our Interoperability Platform facilitates parcel movement across delivery partners, merchants, and consumers.

• The Interoperability Platform is core to the development of the open-access locker and collection points eco-system in Singapore and beyond.

• Some use cases include supporting parcel delivery and redeliveries to a locker for consumers to pick up from.

• Consumers can also return goods to a locker for logistics service providers to pick up from and return back to the merchant.

Imagine the possibilities of such an infrastructure - customers, merchants, and delivery partners all gain from this arrangement.

Customers can easily pick up their deliveries from convenient locations; merchants can deliver to or collect returns from a specified locker, delivery providers waste less time and effort delivering (and re-delivering) to customers who aren’t home.

What a win for customer experience this would be for everyone involved!

Our team members were also at the Logistics area of the event answering numerous questions about the initiative from curious booth visitors.

These initiatives from the Singapore Government form a strong backdrop for our core mission - to help retailers deliver an outstanding customer experience for their customers.

We are excited to be part of such a large nationwide programme and am excited to am looking forward to the partnership with IMDA and logistics providers Singapore Post and bluPort to make this happen! Look forward to more digital initiatives spearheaded by IMDA in the coming months to further develop Singapore’s digital economy.

Missed the event? Not to worry, check out some of the interesting things we saw and learned about on our Twitter and LinkedIn pages!

Interested parties to join the Federated Locker project i.e. Singapore based marketplaces, merchants, brand owners, retailers and logistics service providers are encouraged to reach out to IMDA or Perform.AI directly.