FedEx CIO Rob Carter Wins the 2019 Forbes CIO Innovation Award With FedEx Onsite

FedEx has long had a digital presence, but as it has grown, the need to add physical stores to accommodate customers has grown with it. Needless to say, this is a costly proposition. Enter FedEx Chief Information Officer Rob Carter and his team, who help design a partnership with third party retailers to be able to receive packages. Though this idea is not completely new, the technology to enable it is. The idea is called FedEx OnSite, and it has expanded FedEx’s reach by 9,000 stores, and enabled the company to receive over ten million packages as a result. On the strength of this idea, Rob Carter has won the 2019 Forbes CIO Innovation Award.

Peter High: Please provide an overview of FedEx OnSite and the role that technology plays in it.

Forbes CIO Innovation Award winner, FedEx CIO Rob Carter

Rob Carter: FedEx OnSite is a retail convenience network that utilizes third party retailers such as pharmacy and grocery to receive and hold packages for FedEx customers. Primary partner is Walgreens nationally with over 7,500 locations. The OnSite channel began as a small pilot in Nov. 2015 and rapidly grew to include over 9,000 locations today.

The idea to collaborate with other retailers wasn’t a new one, however the ability to deploy lightweight, mobile applications directly to participating retailers’ team members was.  The FedEx OnSite app was quickly developed (from concept to initial deployment in less than six month) to meet this need.

Developed using a rich API set that had been purposefully built to serve our POS devices, lockers and other customer interaction points, OnSite was originally built on IOS and deployed on iTouch and iPhone provisioned devices.  Design thinking techniques were used to ensure ease of use and simplicity.  The target of no training required was critical to support retail employees in adoption.

For the first few months, this worked very well, but when the Walgreens alliance was signed it meant the app had to scale massively and quickly to cover the 7,500 store rollout.  In addition, Walgreens was in the process of deploying Android devices to their team members for other store activities and needed OnSite to be part of that ecosystem.

The team, utilizing the existing and durable APIs, was able to quickly create an Android version of the app and have it fit cleanly into their system.  Design and reuse played a vital role in being able to quickly pivot to meet the customer demands.

The rollout commenced and would be accomplished over just a few months, peaking at over 500 stores per week.  Team members at Walgreens found the app intuitive and support demands were very low considering the scale of the rollout.

High: What was the genesis of the idea?

Carter: We were at a competitive disadvantage in the number of retail points of presence we had in the market place.  FedEx Office Print and Ship Centers were excellent locations; there just weren’t enough of them to conveniently serve the market and grow our share of wallet in the lucrative consumer and small business market.  In addition, explosive eCommerce growth was driving new needs for convenient hold locations and returns.

As e-Commerce shipping and customer returns increase, customers demand safe and easy shipping options. Research shows that 75% of consumers are concerned about porch piracy and 37% of consumers have expressed preference for options to hold packages at a convenient retail location. OnSite meets these customer preferences by placing FedEx retail shipping locations within a nine-minute commute for 80% of the US population – up from 41% prior to OnSite!

High: As you mentioned, the general idea is not a new one, but a lot of the technology aspects are. Can you provide more details on how it was designed?

Carter: FedEx OnSite is a retail convenience network that utilizes third party retailers such as pharmacy and grocery to receive and hold packages for FedEx customers.  A lightweight cross-platform mobile application was developed for use by third party retailers. This application has all existing Retail Automation features and facilitates scanning of FedEx shipment barcodes and transmission of the scans to FedEx backend systems. This platform enabled a rapid deployment rate of over 500 locations per week, resulting in enabling 7,500 of the 9,000 new locations to launch within just eight months.

FedEx partnered with Walgreens, Kroger, Albertsons and more, to long-term alliance agreements that will offer convenient access to FedEx drop off and pick-up services at thousands of grocery, pharmacy, and retail locations across the United States. Customers are able to drop off shipments to stores and pick up packages that they direct to their neighborhood stores.

Using FedEx Delivery Manager on their mobile devices, end recipients are able to quickly and easily redirect shipments to these secure and convenient locations with just a few clicks.

High: How much incremental revenue resulted directly from this idea?

Carter: By increasing our network access points by an additional 9,000 locations, it has allowed us to receive over 10 million packages.  By comparison of building new stores, or sacrificing critical market share in the retail, over the counter space, this initiative was very lucrative.

Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. His latest book is Implementing World Class IT Strategy. He is also the author of World Class IT: Why Businesses Succeed When IT Triumphs. Peter moderates the Technovation podcast series. He speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.