Mobile Systems for Deutsche Post

Printer-friendly version

Deutsche Post Philatelie is a Deutsche Post AG division with more than a million customers, and is the largest stamp collecting, or philately, business operating anywhere in the world today. The division has more than 500 employees in Germany, of whom 50 work in a total of nine mobile sales teams. The mobile sales teams are exceptionally popular with collectors, and event organizers can book the teams to sell at club meetings, exchange days, trade shows, etc.

Of the 15,000 articles marketed by Deutsche Post Philatelie, the mobile sales teams typically offer up to 2,000 products on site.  Stefan Friedl, who heads Deutsche Post Philatelie’s branch in Weiden, said: “We needed to give our sales people as much time as possible for customer consultations and sales and we wanted to coordinate inventory management and billing more efficiently through mobile POS systems, so we decided in early 2004 to call for bids for more advanced cash register systems.”
 
The decision to contract AWEK to supply the 30 mobile cash register systems that Deutsche Post Philatelie needed came in May 2005, immediately after completion of the bid process. A key point in AWEK’s favour was that their cash register had two separate scanners - a crucial feature, given the conditions in which the mobile sales teams work. With Deutsche Post Philatelie planning to roll out the new equipment in September 2005, AWEK’s developers had less than three months to implement the solution. A team of seven people from AWEK, partner company AddiPOS, and Deutsche Post Philatelie rose to the challenge of completing this ambitious project in the small amount of time available.
 
The physical setup was quickly taken care of: a fanless PT5500 cash register system was fitted with tailored foam cushions and installed in a robust aluminum case. To keep within the specified weight limits, the cash drawers were put in separate cases, keeping the case weight down to around 13kg for the cash register and 7kg for the cash drawers.

First Class
 
Setting up the new data communication infrastructure needed to integrate the mobile cash registers, and ensuring the reliable transportation of data onto the company network proved a much greater challenge. DPP chose a solution that provided security without sacrificing speed - all of the data transported by a mobile cash register on a GPRS link is first accumulated on an external AWEK server, then transferred to a server in Deutsche Post’s internal SAP inventory management system. The data is then verified and passed through Deutsche Post’s firewall.
 
With the new cash register systems, the administrative effort has been substantially reduced for the mobile sales teams. Salespeople log into the cash registers at a touchscreen and authenticate themselves with a password and an ID number. All of the cash registers are equipped with two scanners, enabling them to be used by two team members at once, and the registers can also be upgraded to support between three and five scanners, as necessary.
 
Once a link has been set up to the central computer on GPRS, the software version currently installed is verified and the inventory levels, new article numbers and prices are all updated and loaded onto the cash register. With 55 new stamps and numerous new sets and accessories issued each year, the automated updates make life a lot easier for the teams and save considerable time. Team members can now also verify article availability through the cash register while working at remote locations. If articles are in stock, customers can order them either immediately or online. This greatly eases the selling process, as each salesperson scans the article the customer wants without occupying the cash register. Once the purchase has been completed, the data is transferred to the cash register so that the payment transaction can begin.
 
During 2006, mobile sales teams will also be able to accept payments by EC card, credit card and PostCard.