Braze’s recently published 2021 Global Customer Engagement Review is a report worth reading for customer-oriented marketers. Through research and in-depth analysis of customer experience data, Braze has gleaned vital insights into what separates brands that deliver a poor experience with those that excel (Braze titles these the “Ace” brands).

One stat that particularly caught my eye was that Ace brands are 56% more likely to exceed their revenue targets. And this is across all areas of customer activation, conversion, monetization and retention. They are leveraging all the features of Braze’s real-time customer engagement platform to improve the customer’s experience which in turn leads to more customers spending with the brand.

Set out below are the differences between brands delivering legacy customer experiences, and how Braze’s Ace brands are performing. It’s clear that Braze is enabling customer focussed organisations to create experiences and communications that resonate and connect with the recipient.

At CACI we’re helping brands to get the most from Braze. We’re a trusted partner at implementing, optimising, integrating and running Braze for our mutual clients. The work we’re doing with brands who want to be classed as Ace has highlighted five areas where value realisation can be accelerated:

• High quality implementation of Braze – without this there may be challenges accessing or relying on the data that Braze holds
• Real-time data integration – to deliver meaningful in the moment experiences, Braze requires fresh data
• Optimisation not migration – when migrating campaigns from your old platform, take the time to optimise them based on Braze’s capabilities
• Accelerate personalisation and optimisation – change business practices to enable more continual improvements to your campaigns and comms
• Have the right model of expert support – whether it’s for creative assets or execution of CRM activity; you need the right type of agency relationship

CACI has now developed a set of Braze Accelerators designed for CRM teams who need to achieve greater results in a reduced timeframe.

If you’d like to find out more about how we could enable your brand to achieve more with Braze, get in touch and I will send you a copy of the presentation on our accelerators.

To create real marketing magic, you need an extraordinary alchemy of people, process and technology

Agility, flexibility, responsiveness… you’re building them all into your digital marketing strategy right now. Everyone knows how important it is to be ready to react to coming trends and sudden consumer and competitor movements in this unpredictable, digital-first marketplace.

Devising the strategy and maintaining continuous oversight of performance metrics so you know when you need to change, is one thing. Delivering real-time optimisation of your campaigns to fulfil the strategy and respond to trends is quite another.

Your resources aren’t as fickle as your consumers

To get the job done, you depend on your talented people and capable systems. These resources are substantial, not ephemeral. You can’t just ditch and switch them in an instant. Unless you have unlimited budget, you can’t keep adding more people to your team with the exact digital or creative skills you need for a campaign moment. You can’t retrain your people in a snap to meet a sudden spike in demand for certain tasks.

There’s less of an ethical issue with hiring and firing your inanimate technology solutions, but it still costs money to make changes and there’s risk inherent in messing with established connections and procedures. You need to keep your campaigns and customer intelligence current and scaling with demand, but you don’t want to break anything, nor find your campaign delivery capability is compromised during upgrades or development projects.

Outsourcing is not such a dirty word these days

This is why outsourcing has come back into favour as a means of powering the digital marketing function in leading consumer organisations. Before, it was seen as a strength to have all your resources in-house, from IT and systems hardware to expert staff. That way you could be sure of guarding talented people and technology know-how for competitive advantage. But now, the pace of innovation in marketing technology and the accelerated digital-first consumer market together make using on-demand, specialist resources a very attractive solution.

It’s the same argument that’s driving the mass adoption of cloud technology and digital services, as opposed to on-premises hardware and wholly-owned software solutions. By paying for what you need when you need it and dispensing with the burden of long-term ownership, you create freedom to adapt and focus on what you can uniquely deliver for your customers.

But let’s get back to digital customer engagement. Structuring your marketing team, processes, data and technology to meet demand is now the biggest differentiator for digital consumer marketeers. Agility comes from having the specialist expertise you need on tap. Maintain a talented team in-house, with strong core delivery, management and strategic skills. Then supplement them with third party digital marketing experts who have experience and best practice knowledge from across the market. Then you have that magical combination of stability and agility you need to support your campaign delivery.

The dream team and the dream tech are what we call co-managed services

If you choose the right partner, you’ll get to exploit learning from their cross-sector experience. You’ll get leading-edge technology advice and the ability to implant project teams to develop, augment, connect and replace crucial elements of your data and insight ecosystem and martech stack. You’ll get insights into the latest smart approaches to customer insight, customer experience optimisation and creative execution.

You can pull in account managers, marketing and database specialists, SCV optimisers, data planners and campaign managers to step in and deliver whatever you need… and step out when they’re done, with no ongoing overhead. They can upweight your core resources to handle essential management and operations or tackle a specific requirement or project that’s outside the day-to-day.

What’s the downside? You might create a management headache in trying to co-ordinate a myriad of individual or niche contributors to deliver all this specialist input. That’s why we advocate choosing a single, trusted, expert partner with a strong and proven talent bench of experts right across the board, and an obsession with the latest developments in global digital marketing. With a range of clients on board, such a partner can afford to nurture specialist talent in every area and make them immediately available as needed.

Co-managed services for digital customer engagement could be the alchemy you need to deliver exceptional, powerful, customer marketing magic. In a very fast changing environment, it’s a model that works, if you can find the perfect partner.

Of course, you can see where we’re going with this. We’re big believers in co-managed services for digital marketing. And we’ve set ourselves up to offer a unique breadth of vendor-agnostic expertise, from a talented team of leading digital marketers. If you’d like to explore how the CACI team could augment your people, process and digital resource in one or more areas through managed services, please get in touch.

How exactly should you innovate, be super-creative AND maintain quality and consistency, to meet surging consumer expectations?

Orchestrating multi-channel digital campaigns is an intense business. To keep up with consumer expectations for personalisation, you’ll no doubt be working with a range of customer personas across many customer journeys, aiming to deliver the most engaging experiences across all the channels you command.

In practice, that means a very large – and ever-growing – volume of content hitting down every day, landing in inboxes, on social platforms and on websites, through chat and media services. Your campaign deliverables are being viewed, shared and discussed. Consumers are seeing your propositions across multiple channels and pursuing their journeys from one campaign to another.

Creativity and constraint are uneasy bedfellows

With all this activity going on, you need to keep consumers’ attention and interest, but you also need to portray one brand across multiple channels. There’s a fine balance to achieve between creative expression and brand consistency. The same content works differently in different media: optimisation is key to make sure your customers and prospects have a friction-free experience, with no glitches or rough edges that could undermine your brand values.

Our creative optimisation team knows all about staying agile and alert to all the pitfalls and challenges of high-volume, multi-channel, multi-brand campaign design and execution. Achieving flawless delivery for our clients demands a systematic approach, as well as a finger on the pulse of the latest creative trends and smart design. Here’s an example of the details they consider for every variant of every email campaign before it goes out:

• Is it mobile-first?
• Are the fonts optimised?
• Are images formatted in the right resolution?
• Are the images sized to display immediately, without a lag?
• Will the headers avoid spam labelling?
• Is the pre-text correctly formatted?
• Is the call to action in the first screen?
• Does the branding comply with corporate guidelines?
• Is the recipient greeting correctly personalised?
• Are all the legally mandated elements present?

You have to automate for control when there’s so much going on

There’s nothing magical about these criteria – they’re well-known best practice for campaign execution. The challenge here is applying them consistently, across every single item that goes out. Our template management platform, Email Studio, is a crucial tool to make this happen: you need the power of automation for quality control when you’re dealing with such high volumes. Email Studio spots and flags any inconsistencies, missing elements or poorly rendered content so they can be corrected before anything goes out.

Blink and you’ll miss it – the rules and formats keep on changing

When they’re designing individual campaign items from scratch, your formidable creative team will always come up with the goods. Issues tend to creep in when you seek to drive the most value from the content by using it across multiple channels and formats.

It’s just not as simple as sharing a TV ad on YouTube and posting the link on Instagram. Video and sound formats need to be checked and re-optimised for different platforms. Character counts and post formats vary. Distorted images and inappropriately cropped thumbnails are quickly called out by digital audiences used to high standards.

And of course, new channels are constantly emerging to form part of your customers’ journeys. You need to disseminate your content into them quickly – with a whole host of new parameters and conventions to apply. You need to know what will work best in each medium, how audiences are engaging with the latest content and what cumulative effect you’re creating from your multi-channel presentation.

Can you supply matching luggage for every single journey?

We often talk about matching luggage – you need strong, consistent branding and intelligent optimisation of your creative content across every item, however differently it might be sized, shaped or used. The goal is that whatever combination of luggage your consumers pick up for their journey, they’ll have a great experience with their own coherent set.

Keeping on top of all this change and variety is intense. You need to be plugged in to rapidly evolving trends and tech. You need to be able to update your campaign templates and executions fast. You need to keep ahead of competitors who are striving just as hard to deliver compelling customer journeys to the same target audience.

You can do it… but you’ll need to be thorough, eagle-eyed and ever vigilant. That’s why many clients choose to use specialist customer engagement campaign automation tools, resources and consultants to support, build, maintain and continuously improve their creative campaign execution operation. At CACI, we’re dedicated digital marketing campaign experts, working every day with leading marketing organisations. It’s our business to know the latest best practices, consumer trends and emerging technologies… and to share them with you. Get in touch if we can help.

It’s time to cast a critical eye over your activities in four key strategy areas, to make sure you’re set up for sustainable success.

Hands up if you’ve heard the phrase “the world has changed” too many times lately for it to mean anything any more. Yep, same. The world is always changing. It’s not the change itself that’s remarkable, it’s the speed of change lately that’s shaken everything up. Consumers have formed and moved on from one preference to another, acquiring skills and forming opinions super-rapidly in challenging times. Innovative technology, apps and platforms have been hurled into the uncharted waters of this urgent demand. As marketers, we’ve all acted and reacted to deliver the best digital experiences we could lay our hands on.

But with the best will in the world, not every decision has been a good or sustainable one. Chances are, your digital marketing has taken some big leaps forward to meet short-term opportunities, but there will have been some misses as well as hits. As consumers begin to resume more recognisably normal lives, now’s the time to regroup.

We’re now working with many clients to take stock of current reality and to help them sense-check and develop their marketing and customer experience strategy for what lies ahead. If you’re ready to do the same, here are the four key strategy areas we recommend you focus on, to maintain and grow your market share by providing valued customer experiences that capture the zeitgeist.

KPIs

Take a good look at your KPIs and consider how you’re identifying success in your channels and marketing mix. Is everything connected or are people creating campaigns in silos, to meet conflicting or separate targets? You need a coherent strategy that embraces all your channels and customer requirements.

Messaging

How much is your messaging driven by a direct understanding of customer needs, as revealed by behavioural, demographic and research data? If you’ve been heavy on batch and push messaging to cover all the bases in a volatile market, it’s time to make a change to a more targeted, responsive and segmented approach.

Customer journeys

From acquisition and engagement to lapsed customers and off-boarding, you need journeys that address every life stage for your brand. We recommend developing a roadmap for each customer journey, working from identified customer requirements to define the technology, data structures and skills you need to create and deliver the right experiences.

Contact strategy

Take a look at how you’re using channels and your range of content. Make sure you’re engaging with customers at each stage of their journeys on key dates and at key points, providing relevant, personalised experiences, across all channels they engage with, when they engage with them.

Resetting your strategy now is vital: just look around at what competitors are doing. Everyone’s sharpening up their act, but budgets are tighter for most brands and businesses. Taking risks is not high on the boardroom agenda in a period of economic uncertainty. But ROI and growth are still top of the agenda, as markets emerge from survival mode and leaders adopt a competitive approach to recovery.

Digital marketers need to use assets and resources as effectively as they can. There’s a great opportunity in a more digital-first consumer market, but everyone is chasing their share of it. Trying to get back on track by resuming your pre-2020 plans won’t work. That’s why a strategy review is key – to make sure your next tranche of digital marketing campaigns and tactics are well-conceived and executed, to meet current customer needs in these interesting times.

If you’d like to move quickly and decisively with a strategy review and update, our customer engagement strategy and consulting team is here to help. We have 25+ years’ experience working with leading consumer marketing brands. We know the markets, the data, the tools and the tech – we can help you recalibrate with confidence and make changes rapidly and effectively to level up your customer experiences.

JUST LIKE NEXT DAY SERVICE WITH THE PROCESS SPEEDED UP? THINK AGAIN!

The demand for fast response in urban deliveries has never been higher. Under the restrictions of Covid-19 lockdown, consumers have had to find new ways to access products they need fast.

Retailers are keen to meet this latent demand – to maintain sales, show their agility and to retain and acquire customers and advocates. But there are significant barriers to entry for retailers and distributors keen to seize the immediate and longer-term market opportunities.

Amazon’s consumer and business shoppers may have the impression that same day doorstep delivery is old hat – it has been available on selected Amazon products in densely populated UK areas since 2015.

CAN ANYONE KEEP UP WITH AMAZON?

With Amazon’s vast network of distribution centres, blanket national coverage and sheer number of delivery journeys, coupled with a huge volume of data and processing power, the firm is uniquely equipped for same day fulfilment.

Most retailers and distributors – even major multiples – have nothing approaching these resources or scale.

Courier and haulage firms can provide same day delivery because they have flexible capacity to make vehicles or bikes available. They can meet demand profitably by charging a premium rate. Other UK retailers have recognised growing customer demand for same day delivery and launched limited services. For example, Ocado, Sainsbury’s and Tesco can deliver same-day within certain urban catchments.

THE PROBLEM OF COST AND ROI FOR SAME-DAY DELIVERY

If national same day delivery was easy to provide profitably, many more retailers would be offering it to consumers. But a big investment in technology, warehousing and stockholding is needed to operate a same day delivery process economically. This currently makes the cost prohibitive in most cases, particularly with a relatively high risk inherent in launching a complex process with many unpredictable variables.

Here’s why. Let’s say a company has a warehouse and drivers and vehicles ready, and a website to take orders. They receive a steady flow of online orders throughout the day. The service manager need to make a judgement about when to send the order to be picked – do they collate them every half hour? Or send each one immediately? They must maintain the warehouse picking team’s efficiency to keep costs down and prevent adverse impact on the fulfilment of other less urgent orders.

Having picked a number of orders, at what point does the company collate and load them onto a delivery vehicles? If most of the orders can be delivered using a relatively efficient route, how long can the service manager hold back an outlying order that would require a long detour, in anticipation of other local orders coming in that would create a viable delivery route?

IT’S HARD TO BE EFFICIENT WHEN YOU’RE MAKING COMPLEX DECISIONS AGAINST THE CLOCK. NEXT DAY DELIVERY IS FAR EASIER TO OPTIMISE

It’s hard to assess with any degree of certainty when you have met the economic criteria, working in real-time. You don’t know the route beforehand – you are creating routes on the fly. You have to decide how full each vehicle should be before it sets out. The clock is ticking from the moment the order was received: you may have to break protocols to meet a one, two or four hour window. It’s an extremely dynamic and sensitive process.

This is completely different from operating a next day delivery service, where you can cut off orders at a certain time then work with a complete picture of the day’s orders to allocate orders and plan efficient delivery routes throughout the following day. When you are planning to meet a four hour (or less) delivery window, all you ever have to work with is a rolling snapshot of orders. You can only optimise within this, so there’s far less scope for efficiency.

IS THE INVESTMENT IN SAME-DAY DELIVERY EVER WORTH IT?

For some retailers, same day delivery may be a competitive differentiator that makes it worth running at a loss or compromising efficiency. But how much can you afford to compromise? How do you measure the overall business gain? Efficiency may be less important than meeting customer requirements in some cases, but companies need to have enough orders coming in to make the operation worthwhile.

Based on experience to date, it’s our view that to make same-day delivery economically viable, firms need high and consistent volumes of daily orders in the catchment of their distribution hub. This could mean hundreds or thousands – there are many variables in terms of the type of goods, the value of orders and the ease of delivery.

THERE IS HOPE: NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND APPROACHES ARE ON THEIR WAY

The type of delivery vehicles available will also influence the efficiency and viability of same day deliveries. Cargobikes and short range electric vehicles could improve efficiency and lower costs. Local hub consolidation could also help, using a last mile delivery service to optimise efficiency. But for most retailers, all these are untried or experimental approaches: few have the confidence to invest heavily without better evidence of value and profitability.

There’s no getting away from the fact that customer expectations continue to mount in the area of same day deliveries. At the moment, to meet the need and desire for rapid fulfilment, many consumers and businesses turn to Amazon. Other retailers and distributors are hungry for solutions that will enable them to reclaim market share profitably.

The good news is that solutions are beginning to emerge. We are currently evaluating a promising same day delivery scheduling and routing tool that could be a game-changer for retailers seeking a competitive edge. Watch this space for more news.

If you’d like to be notified when we have more information about viable same-day routing technologies, please get in touch with one of our logistics consultants.

THE TURNSTILES ARE OPEN: IT’S TIME FOR INTEGRATED CONSUMER DATA INSIGHT TO LEAP JUMP ON BOARD THE RETAIL LOGISTICS MERRY-GO-ROUND, IN SUPPORT OF EVERY FUNCTION

The explosion of e-commerce in the last nine months is putting fulfilment networks under huge strain. The Covid pandemic has accelerated consumer behaviour by five years in just a few months.

Retail and logistics thinking needs to speed up to the same pace. That’s a tall order for systems, processes and strategies that have evolved gradually over a long period in separate business functions.

Because the pressure for change comes from consumers, the key is to apply historic and predictive consumer data to B2B systems. At the moment, that doesn’t happen consistently throughout the retail fulfilment cycle. Until now, comprehensive, integrated consumer and commercial data analytics have not been available for cross-functional use.

WHO OWNS CONSUMER DATA INSIGHT IN YOUR ORGANISATION?

Today, consumer data tends to reside within the retail and marketing team. It isn’t shared with decision-makers in logistics, supply chain and location planning. They plan their provision and services based on historic performance and their own forecasting models.

Traditionally, consumer data is used at the front end of the retail supply chain. Brands and stores analyse consumer needs and channel preferences to determine their ranges, product specification, pricing, channel mix, positioning and advertising messages. Customer data is readily available from epos and e-commerce tracking to inform procurement, product design and marketing.

Most successful retailers have a strong and established capability to use their own data, supplemented with external market research, to predict and meet consumer demand and trends. this means they can consistently source, stock and market the right goods in their physical and virtual shopfronts throughout the year.

That’s a big tick in the box for the retail, marketing, digital and store operations teams. But what happens next? The process of getting the goods to the customer is handled by the logistics and supply chain team. Do they have the same foresight into customer demand in terms of fulfilment, so the whole process is completed seamlessly for customers?

PROFIT IS A COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY

Customer data staying in the retail silo has an impact on profitability. Procurement mark-up netted against retail operations costs may hit the profit target for products, categories and ranges. But fulfilment and logistics can cancel that out if stockholding isn’t optimised in the right locations or the pricing of universal consumer delivery methods is out of kilter with the real cost of supply.

The logistics team is also crucial in delivering an excellent end-to-end customer experience. Their work is often longer-term, because changing warehouse locations and bringing physical stores online is usually slower than specifying and sourcing a new consumer product.

This is an area where costs and efficiency are often harder to measure and understand as they build up across the operation. There’s a big opportunity to save money and improve performance with end-to-end analysis.

Defining consumer demand in different regions and types of logistics catchment is key for location planners to optimise the use of their existing sites and networks and to determine new store and depot locations.

The final mile has long been recognised as the most expensive part of the fulfilment process. But in fact, the final metre is even more critical. Understanding the exact nature of the address you’re delivering to makes a big impact on costs. The difference between a semi-detached house with easy parking on the driveway and a top floor flat on a red route can be ten minutes or more in courier time and efficiency.

UNDERSTANDING REGIONAL DIFFERENCES SUPPORTS FULFILMENT PROFIT AND EFFICIENCY

The same insights should influence the choices of delivery method that retailers offer to e-commerce consumers. Flat fees for postal or courier delivery may be profitable for sending a small item via the Royal Mail, first class. The same fee doesn’t necessarily cover the cost of transporting a bulky item from a warehouse on the southern coast of England to a domestic address in the Scottish Highlands, using a lorry to move it between depots and an overnight courier for the final leg of the journey.

Logistics managers need to understand likely consumer demand at the same time as retail buyers, in order to feed in accurate costs and make provision for responsive fulfilment. And they need to understand it regionally as well as nationally. It’s this information that allows logistics providers and clients alike to manage and measure the effectiveness of their third party logistics (3PL) activity. As client, you can use this data insight to challenge or work with your 3PL to improve efficiency, for everyone’s benefit.

Profitability is everyone’s responsibility in the retail supply process, from marketing right through to end user fulfilment, whether that’s at store or on the doorstep. Strategic and tactical decisions in all these functions need to be informed by the same consumer data insight. It’s a continuous loop of demand and supply that needs data to flow consistently around, reflecting real-time change so that every department can work to the same demand patterns.

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND IS SPINNING: WE CAN HELP YOU JUMP ABOARD

How do you intervene, given the perpetual motion of this carousel of demand and supply? It’s spinning ever faster with the twin pressures of fast-changing consumer habits and fiercer competition. Where can you jump on to the merry-go-round to set the data flow in motion throughout your retail supply process?

At CACI, we have a unique capability to help you jump aboard and infuse consumer data insight into every function in the retail supply continuum. understanding customer behaviour and preferences is crucial at every stage. 

By aggregating small gains throughout the fulfilment process, you stand to make big savings.

We can help you drive value out of data and insight across every business area. From store network strategy to digital channel management, from warehouse optimisation to route planning, we can empower your retail business to deliver goods to consumers rapidly, profitably and competitively across the UK and globally.

We can help make your entire network more efficient and responsive – from stock availability to final metre delivery. Talk to us about driving competitive advantage and supporting sustainable retail growth in the fast-changing world of 2021 and beyond.

Do your delivery drivers still rely on less precise data to find the right destination? Your profits are likely to be taking a hit if so.

In the pandemic and beyond, deliveries and logistics companies have proved how vital they are to keeping consumers and businesses supplied with the goods they need. With demand at an all-time high that’s unlikely to drop, getting deliveries and parcels to their destination on time has never been more important.

The demand means business is booming for logistics – an efficient and profitable operation is crucial for long-term success.

The baseline is getting the consignment into the hands or onto the doorstep of the correct recipient in the agreed delivery window. Logistics operators need to schedule an optimal but achievable number of drops per route to meet customer requirements. Unrealistic scheduling is a big problem when it means deliveries are outstanding at the end of the day. It causes frustration to recipients and stress to drivers and costs money in penalties and customer service administration, as well as the knock-on effect of redelivery costs.

Postcode Level Addressing is not Accurate Enough Today

Why do deliveries take longer than expected? One of the key reasons is insufficiently granular address information. If you’re working with postcodes, the destination shown on the satnav typically encompasses fifteen residences or premises. Your driver arrives at the centre of the postcode destination, then has to look around to find the actual delivery doorstep.

In an ordinary street of houses where it’s easy and lawful to stop on the roadside, the driver’s common sense and familiarity with the area should mean this doesn’t cause much delay. But in an unfamiliar area, in the dark, on a red route or one-way system, or when it’s a multi-occupation building or one set off the road, the seconds and minutes tick by while the driver is searching for the right address and a place to stop their vehicle safely nearby.

In rural areas, postcode sectors can cover a large area – the destination address may not even be within sight. In a block of flats, it takes time to reach a tenth-floor doorstep. If you’re delivering a sofa rather than a small package, delays relating to parking availability and the distance between the vehicle and the household are further amplified.

Pinpoint the Exact Destination With Premise-Level Data

There is a better alternative. If you use information based on specific, address-level data from CACI, your driver can receive directions to the exact household where the delivery needs to go. You can enhance this with information about road networks and conditions, parking rules and the nature of the access to the building. They’ll know if the address is on a red route with no stopping allowed, where the nearest legal parking is, what storey the delivery address is on. Your schedule can allow time for all these, and even account for the likely traffic conditions in the area at that time, which might affect the ability to find a stopping space on-street.

Time Savings Add Up Quickly Across Your Delivery Network

How much time can premise-level geocoding save? CACI’s recent research shows that if a driver can proceed straight to the correct location rather than having to hunt for the house in a wider area, it’s likely to save an average of at least 30 seconds and 110 metres per delivery. This may not sound much, but try factoring it up for the number of deliveries per vehicle, per day and the number of vehicles you’re operating, locally or nationally. For instance, in a year, a fleet of 500 vehicles, each making ten daily drops, could save over £140,000 in time and over £30,000 in mileage.

In some areas, whether rural or densely packed with warren-like housing estates and complex road systems, the time per drop using postcode level addressing only can increase by three and half minutes. We found examples of this due to one-way systems, remote country addresses and suburban destinations where the postcode covers an elongated area.

Beyond Efficiency: Customer Satisfaction and Driver Wellbeing

The efficiency and profitability of your delivery operation is a top priority, but there are other benefits of pinpointing delivery addresses accurately. Accurate and realistic scheduling improves drivers’ experience, reducing stress, increasing job satisfaction, creating less driver turnover and enhancing your ability to attract the best candidates. Customer satisfaction will be higher and your teams will spend less time resolving problems and scheduling redeliveries. Clear information about where to stop for a delivery means safer driving and less frustration to neighbours and other drivers, if vehicles can come to a halt confidently and legally. That helps with brand perceptions and PR for your organisation.

Datasets and Tools Are Available Now to Give You Accurate Insight

The benefits of premise level geocoding are so strong that we believe every home delivery organisation should adopt it as soon as possible, for efficiency, competitiveness and to improve driver and customer satisfaction. At CACI, we have a range of affordable off-the-shelf products and solutions that will deliver results for logistics operations of all sizes.

It makes clear financial sense to work out the ROI for your organisation – what would regaining 30 seconds per delivery mean in profit and additional capacity for your business? Get in touch if you would like to find out.

The simplest of logistics setups is challenging enough, with so many things to take into account, including but not limited to vehicle capacities and constraints, driver hours, delivery time windows, traffic, legal and physical road constraints, wages, fuel costs, locations of delivery points… the list goes on and on. A logistics manager trying to strike the right balance of meeting customer expectations, staying legal whilst turning in a profit is a valuable asset.

However, delivering to homes as opposed to business addresses typically throws up additional layers of complexity, which must be overcome. One way of overcoming them is by ensuring that the right data is used for the specific logistics home delivery setup.

Here are five examples of how the right data can help facilitate a smooth cost-effective operation, whilst using the wrong data can be frustrating, inefficient, and costly.

1 – Residential

Firstly, residential. The spread of residential addresses typically occupies smaller footprints than businesses and the precise location is less easy to pin down. A warehouse, business park or office block may have its own postcode, whereas one residential or rural postcode has on average 17 addresses – the maximum being 100. Many companies try to deliver to a customers’ postcode, which is an area, not a precise point. This can cause confusion, unnecessary time spent by the driver finding the desired address, longer routes and result in unnecessary costs. If ‘premise level’ data is used to plan routes, they will be more precise, resulting is less frustration and lower costs. This is a detailed subject and CACI will be publishing a more detailed article shortly which takes a deeper dive into the science of ‘premise level geocoding’ – watch this space.

2 – Building Type

Secondly, the drivers may need to spend a differing amount of time at each customer address. For example once parked, taking five bags of groceries to a customer that lives on a terrace of houses with parking outside the front door may take 3 minutes, as opposed 15 minutes to a customer that wants the same groceries but lives on the top of a 20 story block of flats. A plan that takes these nuances into account by using data on the type of building, for example, will be more efficient and cheaper to run than a plan that doesn’t.

3 – Road Type

Thirdly, to get to customers’ homes, delivery vehicles are likely to need to travel on the most minor of roads, navigate narrow country lanes and travel to the ends of cul-de-sacs. This may sound obvious, but the level of mapping data needed to underpin such an operation cannot be taken for granted. Often mapping data doesn’t include these minor roads and drivers can find themselves high and dry, needing to ask a friendly local to find the right place.

4 – Vehicle Type

Fourthly, home delivery vehicles are typically not cars and range from small vans up to medium sized trucks. All roads cannot accommodate all vehicles, as for example tall vehicles cannot go under low bridges, wide vehicles can’t get down narrow lanes, heavy trucks can’t go over weak bridges, and long vehicles need a large turning circle. There are also legal restrictions to consider, such as one-way streets, lanes reserved for public transport and banned right turns.

Many mapping solutions, including Google, are designed for cars and so this data doesn’t cater for any of these restrictions.

5 – Road Speeds

Fifthly, commercial vehicles typically drive at different speeds to cars, road speeds are affected by the time of day and speeds differ depending on the location of the road (in fact every road has unique traffic patterns). Planning routes without an understanding of the speeds that can be expected for roads that are required to drive down, the vehicles being used, at the right time of day can result in vehicles getting snarled up a traffic jams and late customer deliveries at worst, but will almost definitely result in less efficient routes which will cost more money to fulfil.

For More Information

All companies have different requirements and require solutions that are right for their setup. CACI logistics has worked for over 30 years in this field, developing solutions to address all of these problems (and many more).

We love nothing more than discussing which data products are most suitable to resolve our customers’ problems. Please contact us for more information.

Trespassing on railway tracks has always been, and to some extent always will be, an issue for train operating companies, British Transport Police and Network Rail. Recent data from British Transport Police and Network Rail shows a five-year high in trespassing incidents in 2020, with September seeing 1,239 incidents reported – the worst month over that period. Furthermore, trespass costs the railway network £50m every year, with the overall cost to the UK economy standing at £800m per year. What can TOCs and Network Rail do to address the situation?

Network Rail and British Transport Police have really ramped up awareness of the dangers of trespassing over the past couple of years, with social media campaigns targeted at a younger audience which have included aspects such as football club Twitter accounts promoting awareness of the issue in order to help reach a younger audience. Increases in trespassing incidents usually coincide with school holidays, so reaching school children with the messaging has been the main priority.

It’s not just children, however, who are trespassing on the lines. Trespassing on the tracks became a national story in October when a couple in Whitby were caught having their wedding photos taken on railway tracks.

The cost of trespassing to the rail industry is vast, running into the hundreds of millions of pounds every year. Where trespassers are spotted, trains must stop or run at reduced speeds, causing knock-on effects to the smooth running of the network. Then there’s the cost to the public of any police enforcement that requires conducting to end incidents. This can then result in the added cost of administering fines and court appearances and, in some severe cases, jail terms.

A Data Driven Approach

There’s only so much TOCs, Network Rail and British Transport Police can do to stop trespassing. Data suggests that their social media campaigns have had a largely positive impact, with incidents involving children decreasing. British Transport Police report that taking a short cut is the primary motivation for trespass, followed by thrill seeking. Such temptations will always remain.

CACI can help. Utilising Internet of Things (IoT), sensors and smart video cameras mounted inside the train’s driving cabs, CACI‘s real-time trespass solution is capable of capturing foreign objects on the rail network and enabling real-time video playback of an incident to Operational Control Centres. This enables TOC staff to quickly assess the problem and alert Network Rail and British Transport Police to rapidly deploy staff to site.

Not only does this help to pinpoint the location of a live incident, and help to reduce the impact and the delays each incident causes, but it also provides intelligence on trespass locations to help determine trespass hotspots across the network.

Regular inspections of these hotspots can make a difference, but it’s impossible to police every inch of the railway network. This is where data gathering enables efficient targeting of hot spots in the battle to reduce incidents.

With key areas identified, it then makes the task of trying to decrease trespassing incidents a bit easier. Using a robust data framework, sites can be inspected regularly to ensure that everything is in place to deter trespassers, from ensuring that trackside fencing is repaired to putting up clear signage that highlights the dangers of trespassing.

Inspectors can be scheduled to ensure that sites are visited on a regular basis, with the inspectors using real-time reporting mechanisms to report back with any defects they spot onsite immediately. This can then automatically trigger a workflow to ensure that appropriate remedial work is scheduled and conducted in a timely fashion.

By automating sections of the administrative process involved in scheduling, recording and actioning work, it saves rail companies time in carrying out inspections and ensures that they are conducted with appropriate regularity. This gives you peace of mind that hotspots are being regularly checked, in real time, and that appropriate signage is in place to help prevent and deter trespassing at identified hot spots.

A Safer Rail Network

Such technology can be used beyond trespassing, too, to ensure that appropriate safety precautions, such as up to date signage, are in place across the rail network, both onboard and outside train carriages, to help reduce the number of incidents. With real-time information being recorded by inspectors out in the field, follow-up work can also be auto scheduled to ensure that the right steps have been taken and that no jobs get missed.

This frees up the time of administrators to work on identifying areas for improvement across the network, helping to run a safer rail network.

Find out how Cygnum can support your scheduling, inspections, data recording and workforce management.

Find out how Radar can help you gather real-time information on the status of your network.

CACI and Snowflake hosted a webinar on the benefits of marketers getting involved in Snowflake’s Data Cloud. Whilst real-time data infrastructure may sound like the focus of the techies, this webinar sets out the why and how of playing an active part in your data infrastructure.

I was fortunate as webinar host to be joined by Paul Coward of the RAC and Jon Ede who leads CACI’s Snowflake practice. As Strategy & Insight Director at the RAC, Paul has been heavily involved in their implementation of Snowflake to drive real-time marketing and insight capabilities. Jon has a wealth of experience in building customer and marketing data platforms, and was an early adopter of Snowflake’s technology.

Five takeaways on snowflake’s data cloud

1. Failure to engage on data infrastructure may leave marketers with something that is not fit for use.
2. Data provides an edge for marketers who are seeking to continually optimise marketing activities.
3. Snowflake enables marketers and IT teams to quickly deliver high value insights.
4. Optimised marketing comes from a continual cycle of using data to hypothesise, test, measure, learn and improve.
5. The frictionless data infrastructure that Snowflake delivers connects all the data in your organisation straight to the customer.

Enabling your marketing data transformation

CACI is here to help marketers do amazing things with data. Whether that’s building a Single Customer View, creating clean data feeds for your marketing technology, or augmenting your customer data with demographics and lifestyle variables. There’s a host of technology, consulting and data science work that we can do to improve your marketing results.

If you’d like to see a recording of the event please get in touch!

We will soon be releasing the CMO’s Playbook for Snowflake, if you’d like to register for a copy of that in advance, please contact me with your details!

As a philosophical question, you probably have a fairly good grasp of the answer when it comes to your own life.

However, the way businesses see us is patchy at best. Duplicated, incomplete, inaccurate data that is spread around systems creates an issue when it comes to generating an accurate profile of who an individual customer is.

When I consider my own data, I use multiple email addresses, have seen my surname spelt multiple ways, and use Dave and David interchangeably. My postal address can be written in endless ways depending on the input form used. It’s messy data.

Businesses will store this data across finance, operational, CRM and sales systems. You may notice this when you phone a call centre and are asked for policy numbers, order tracking codes, or some other identifier. It becomes more transparent that your records are split across systems and teams when that request is followed by “ah, I’ll need to transfer you to another team in that case…”.

It’s not just the data I provide either. Brands are tracking website visits, the content we consume, our social media interactions, and how we use their mobile apps. This tracking information can then be combined with my first-party data. This opens up further insight into my interests and intentions.

For example, if I’ve just purchased a product and start reading the returns policy on the company’s website, it should be obvious that I’m not happy and considering a refund. Brands that can use this data will retain customers, reduce services costs, and ultimately win share of wallet.

For customer focussed brands, Identity Resolution unlocks real benefits:

• Advanced Personalisation: Utilising the full 360-degree view of customer data to serve personalised messaging across channels
• Compliance: Ability to gather all PII data from across systems on the individual and to ensure responsible marketing in regulated industries
• Improved Service: Less “screen switching” during customer interactions and the ability to pre-empt service problems
• Accurate Analytics: Taking account of full customer data set to accurately measure loyalty or predict propensity to take certain action

Failure to get the full picture of who your customer is will lead to issues in making better business decisions that reach a customer. As the old-adage goes, garbage in, garbage out. We can’t expect our marketing to be optimal if it’s only utilising a small percentage of the data available.

To find out more information on Getting Started with Identity Resolution.

If you’d like to find out more about CACI’s real-time ResolvID service for identity resolution, get in touch.

CACI is focussed on doing amazing things with data. For that reason, I’m really pleased to announce that through certifications and client case studies, we’ve achieved an official Select Partnership level with Snowflake.

Our clients have always relied on CACI to combine complex and large data sets to improve their business. Whether we’re bringing together data from across multiple brands and systems to build a 360-degree view of customer data, or analysing anonymous data from the UK’s major banks and lenders, we have expertise that brands can trust.

Snowflake is a cloud-based data platform that is gaining significant traction with CTOs. Snowflake is also one the fastest growing tech companies in the world and recently went public with a $60bn valuation.

Through its unique technology, Snowflake can power critical real-time use cases for CMOs and achieve improved time to value. Jon Ede who leads CACI’s Snowflake practice said:

“I’ve built more SCVS and CDPS in my career than I wish to count. A lot of the functionality that a modern platform needs to deliver is out the box with snowflake, allowing for a CMO to cut down on the upfront implementation time and deliver value sooner. As a technologist who has spent most of their career working in marketing, I see immediate benefits of snowflake to a CMO.“

CACI and Snowflake for CMOs

CACI and Snowflake combined bring together a cutting-edge data platform with expertise in delivering customer marketing solutions.

As already demonstrated with our real-time Customer Personalisation Platform architecture that is built on Snowflake, CACI is developing answers for real CMO needs.

CACI has also integrated our identity resolution services into Snowflake, enabling marketers to bring together multiple data sets and, in real-time, combine duplicates. Improving the accuracy of reporting, attribution, and campaign selection.

Get in touch

Should you need help with your customer and marketing needs, get in touch with us.

System downtimes and outages are very costly for businesses of all sizes. Of course, the bigger companies suffer eyewatering costs when they experience system outages: in 2019 a 14-hour system outage cost Facebook $90m and in 2016 a five-hour system outage cost Delta Airlines $150m with 2,000 flights cancelled. With the business costs of system outages potentially being so high, it is worth carefully considering the impact that any system outage may cause you.

How does your organisation organise its IT infrastructure? Some outages are seen as inevitable, for example where your system and software need upgrading, but with careful planning the impact of such downtime can be minimised. Planned downtime will be made clear in your service level agreement with your hardware or software provider. Non-planned outages are mitigated via the disaster recovery plans for the respective system.

Minimise Disruption

Business continuity (BC) ensures that aspects such as backups are in place, that data is backed up at regular, logical points and even that backup, physical locations are designed in such a way to mirror the current working environment. Disaster recovery (DR) is scoped to cover unforeseen scenarios ranging from loss of power (at the level of a single server to a complete datacentre), hardware damage or loss through fire or theft, to prolonged system failure. Every organisation has such disaster recovery scenarios covered via its business continuity planning.

Aligning your software solution(s) to your BCDR (business continuity and disaster recovery) plan minimises disruption by ensuring minimal changes to your existing tried and tested disaster recovery processes.

This is where recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs) are factored into the BCDR and high availability equations.

RTO is the acceptable time limit after an incident in which your system can be recovered and restored. This interlinks with the RPO, which defines the maximum time period it is tolerable for data to be lost. For example, if your system, with an RTO of three hours goes down, this means that the maximum period of time your organisation should expect to be down is three hours. If the RPO is also three hours, then when the system is back up the maximum amount of data that could be unavailable is three hours prior to the incident occurring.

Keeping Your Business Running

The shorter the time frames for RTOs and RPOs, the higher the associated costs. Having an RTO and RPO close to zero (i.e. no down time and zero data loss) would require, effectively, ‘real-time backup’ with transactions replicated to an offsite system.

The same is true of high availability. Organisations require high availability in order that system outages are kept to an absolute minimum. For certain public bodies, organisations and institutions, such as those in the public sector including transport operators, healthcare, care service providers and hospitals, as well as private enterprise companies specialising in data, high availability is imperative. The higher the availability, however, the higher the cost, so it is important to consider all factors when implementing such measures.

Availability is measured in nines, from one nine, or 90%, to nine nines, or 99.9999999%. One nine equates to 35.53 days of downtime per year; nine nines equates to 31.56 milliseconds. What sort of availability your organisation requires is based upon what is tolerable to your organisation in terms of downtime, and the impact of this down time to your operations. With the possibility of conducting planned and scheduled upgrade works over weekends, many firms can accept a lower level of availability in return for reduced costs, keeping any disruption away from most of the workforce.

Therefore, it is important for software and service providers to engage with your overall BCDR strategy. For example, for companies that we supply our Cygnum software to, we understand that we’re only one component of their overall BCDR equation. It is, therefore, vital that we engage with the customer to understand their BCDR processes so that we can dovetail our solution and service level agreements to align with this. If their BCDR processes are not aligned across their technology solutions, then in the event where disaster recovery is required, inconsistent RPOs and RTOs will result in an inconsistent resumption of business as usual.

What’s Right for your Business?

We have seen an increase in demand across our customer base for highly available solutions recently. Those operating in care and transport, for example, require higher availability than those operating in less sensitive areas. Cygnum 2020 can now be installed with real-time site-to-site transaction processing implemented to give a true highly available solution.

It’s all about striking a balance and finding what is required in your business. Would losing an hour’s worth of data be acceptable? Would losing three? Or five? Similarly, does your system need to be fully functional all the time, or can you work around planned and scheduled downtime?

Working with you we can propose the best solution as regards implementing, maintaining and upgrading Cygnum in line with your technology stack, your BCDR processes and how you run your business. As our high availability and hosting solutions have evolved in line with client demand, our solutions have become more adaptable and scalable, meaning that higher availability solutions are more readily and affordably available than they have been in the past.

Depending on your needs, we can work with you to ensure that our service level agreement fits your requirements and budget.

For more information on Cygnum, please click here.

PERSONALISATION IS A CHALLENGING TOPIC

Some organisations just don’t get it. How do you change things at your company?

Almost two thirds of consumers expect to receive personalised offers as standard and 63% of consumers would stop using companies who provide poor personalisation. Effective personalisation presents a huge opportunity for marketers who can master it. The rewards are potentially great. But so are the risks of delivering it badly.

Marketers are finding it harder than ever to reach and convert consumers across channels. So smarter targeted messaging is an absolute must to connect with customers.

Working with clients in a wide range of sectors, we’ve been helping marketers crack the conundrum. The most successful organisations are combining a range of technologies and expertise in data, campaign management and channels to achieve impactful results.

Typically, we find there are five main challenges to overcome in creating an effective and sustainable personalisation model that can continually adapt to changing customer needs.

1. MULTIPLE VIEWS OF THE CUSTOMERCustomer data is typically acquired over time and is kept in different repositories and formats. Multi-channel personalisation requires a complete and accurate 360 degree view of every customer. Identifying, matching, cleaning and integrating diverse records and information is a complex challenge.
2. SEPARATE TOOLS AND CHANNELSEnterprise businesses currently use up to 91 different marketing cloud services. Marketing technology (even when it comes from a single vendor) is hard to connect, because different tools have their own unique data models and capabilities. To provide a personalised, seamless, omnichannel experience, tools need to work in harmony.
3. DISCONNECTED DATAMany customers are willing to provide more data, if they can see that it’s being used to their advantage to provide more relevant communication. Around the organisation, there’s demand for different insights at different times, so teams collect new data from a range of sources to meet a particular need. It’s hard to funnel this relentless deluge of new data into the mix and making it accessible immediately, to match current behaviour and preferences.
4. SILOED DECISIONSCommunication decisions may be made by a number of different teams – from customer services, marketing and sales to IT and operations. Customers receive communications from several platforms – they can be contradictory and repetitive. This undermines the whole purpose of personalisation, creating an impression that your organisation doesn’t understand the customer and places little value on quality. To compound the problem, feedback from different campaigns isn’t built back into a central knowledge base. Effective personalisation strategies avoid this by using automation to combine technology and decision-making.
5. OPERATIONAL INEFFICIENCYCollectively, customer engagement teams aren’t productive because they’re underusing the technology in the business. That’s typically either because of its inherent complexity or a lack of training. Through a single personalisation platform, you can integrate all your campaign and communications systems into a single marketing stack that gives more power and insight to everyone.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

We’ve partnered with Braze, Tealium and Snowflake to combine world-class technologies that create a powerful, user-friendly platform capable of high-volume delivery of sophisticated, personalised campaigns.

CACI’s Customer Personalisation Platform empowers marketers to model and deliver incisive and high-impact personalised campaigns. Our experts help clients customise and deploy it to start delivering ROI quickly.

The HS2 project has been subjected to much public wrangling, but whatever your view on the project, it is planned to be delivered and it is, therefore, prudent for transport operators and haulage firms to start considering the benefits that they may be able to derive from it. Away from the opinion pieces, there are efficiencies that can be unlocked and emissions that can be reduced at the individual firm level.

According to a Department for Transport Rail Freight Strategy, when HS2 opens, it will allow an extra 144 freight trains per day to be deployed across the rail network, carrying over 2.5 million lorries worth of goods every year. Transporting freight by rail, rather than road, reduces CO2 emissions by some 76%.

Put simply, HS2 will mean rail will need to be considered by all when moving their goods up and down the country. It will enable more firms to manoeuvre more goods at quicker speeds. The attraction is obvious.

Managing Demands

With many eyes already cast on HS2, the smooth running of the service will be essential. Rail operators are already well versed in managing the twin demands of passenger and freight services. When it comes to HS2, ensuring the correct scheduling and workforce management solutions are in place will be essential, on the part of the rail operator and the firms transporting their goods on the line.

Staff management will play a vital role in ensuring that firms and operators get the most from HS2. Understanding staff working patterns and ensuring that the appropriate people are in the right places will underpin the successful delivery of the service. For those using HS2 to transport their freight around, ensuring that their own logistics are in place to make the right deliveries and collections to and from the service will inform their understanding of the benefits of utilising HS2.

Environmental Impact

If HS2 will save 2.5 million lorry journeys per year, what are the benefits of this to individual firms? Knowing how many lorry journeys it will save your firm, for example, will help to promote your green credentials and monitor the environmental impact of adjusting the journey your freight goes on.

This is all about improving scheduling of staff and resources. If a lorry is being taken off one leg of a journey, how can it be recommissioned to improve capacity and turnaround times? With more goods being transported in and out of two major hubs, where will your staff resources need reallocating to?

Whilst HS2 is a long way off, the ability to gain better insight, scheduling and data analytics about your staff and network exists now, meaning that you can be better prepared to take advantage of future infrastructure improvements when they are presented.

Getting Ahead

Alongside the topic of improvements, advancements in engine technologies will result in greater fuel efficiencies going forward, with the introduction of hybrid and electric vehicles gaining speed. If firms are to utilise infrastructure such as HS2, this will result in shorter journeys for road transportation, bringing the prospect of using different vehicles into the equation. Elements such as knowing how long each journey is, in terms of time and distance, as well as understanding fuel consumption, will make analysing such decisions more straightforward.

Transport and haulage operators can gain oversight and develop analysis into their operations now. By operating scheduling, competency management and staff management from a central system, it is possible to develop such insight and make informed decisions in the face of future developments.

Third-party cookies have been a fundamental part of the online marketing mix; an essential tool that allows brands to capture data on their audience, deliver targeted advertising and build customer profiles. In particular, cookies are at the core of programmatic advertising, which accounts for 90% of the total UK digital display ad spend of £5.81bn in 2019.

But, the cookie in its current form is not long for this world.

With the ongoing focus on customer data privacy, following the implementation of GDPR, there are growing concerns around third-party cookies and how they are collected, leading to three of the biggest web browsers on the Internet taking steps to block or phase out tracking cookies; Safari and Firefox blocked third-party cookies by default in 2019, whilst Google is planning to phase out the third-party cookie on Chrome, the most popular browser with a market share of over 60%, by 2022.

When combined with the fact that the ICO guidance explicitly states that the way many websites go about obtaining consent for third-party cookies is not compliant, it’s clear that things are going to have to change!

WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES TO TRADITIONAL COOKIES FOR PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING?

Without the third-party cookie, the digital marketing landscape is going to need to evolve. Various methods to allow for tracking of customers and customer behaviour are already being discussed and developed as alternatives in this possible new cookie-less world.

For example, the IAB has grand plans for a standardised unique ID across the internet that would be an “improved mechanism for audience recognition and personalisation”. However, it sounds as if it will still be based on cookies and will need a lot of collaboration requiring a complex accountability system. If this proposed solution does happen, it will not be quick.

Numerous ad tech and analytics vendors are developing solutions for tracking that don’t rely on third-party cookies. Cookies have never been effective for mobiles, hence the mobile ad/device ID such as Apple’s IDFA or Google’s GAID. Whilst these systems still present privacy issues, companies like Apple and Google may be willing to work with advertisers to find a compliant method.

In addition, being able to effectively capture customer or prospect data to accurately identify, target and activate across multiple devices requires good technology. Managing campaigns across multiple marketing channels needs marketing automation, hence the rise of tools such as Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).

Digital fingerprinting – that is, using seemingly insignificant information like device used and browser plug-ins, in order to identify an individual – had emerged within the advertising industry in part to tackle cross device tracking issues which are inherent with ad IDs. However, Google, Apple and Firefox have already taken steps to implement anti-fingerprinting measures in order to deter advertisers from moving to this method in place of the cookie, making it unlikely to be a viable alternative.

WHAT’S THE RIGHT SOLUTION?

The truth is, there is no obvious alternative to the cookie just now.

It is likely the death of the cookie will benefit the large players, particularly Google and Facebook, as advertisers will be forced to use their first party data in walled gardens, meaning we could be moving to a blunter approach, returning to last click attribution.

To find out more about the impact of the loss of the third-party cookie on digital marketing and for further insights on what advertisers can do in the interim, download our guide – The End of the Third-party Cookie?

Operating safety inspections is a vital component of running any public service or infrastructure. Be it checks on personnel, suppliers or rolling stock, understanding the stakeholders involved and the risks associated with them is something that not only keeps the service operating, but instils public faith in it, too. Yet gaining a complete picture is not always as easy as ticking a few boxes – it requires coherence and input from each stakeholder.

A recent case on the UK rail network highlights the confusion that can occur in conducting and completing thorough safety inspections. On 17 October 2019 a passenger train collided with a fallen oak tree at 55mph in Pembrokeshire. The train did not derail, although the driver’s carriage sustained visible damage and the driver was left with a minor injury and a state of shock. Suffice it to say, the incident could have been a lot worse.

You can read the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) report into the incident here. The accident, in short, had been caused by a diseased ash tree falling onto the oak tree, which sent it across the train tracks. As the report notes, all expected safety inspections had been carried out:

• On foot tree inspections are required every 36-44 months
• From train cab inspections every 12-16 months

The area had been inspected on foot on 28 June 2017 and from a train cab the day before the accident, on 16 October 2019. Neither inspection flagged any risk to the railway.

Shortcomings in the Inspection System

This is where the shortcomings of the available information begin to be exposed. Since the trees involved in the incident lay on private land, Network Rail, the owner of the railway infrastructure on this stretch, does not have a legal right to access trees which lie beyond the railway boundary. The oak tree which the train hit was not in a defective state and had been passed as safe by both inspections.

The oak tree itself had been growing 0.8 metres beyond the railway boundary but had been caused to fall by the falling of the diseased ash tree which had been growing 4.4 metres from the railway boundary. Gaining a clear understanding of the risks prior to the accident was incredibly difficult, and Network Rail is hamstrung in some of its inspection endeavours by the law of the land.

To further complicate matters, Network Rail contacted the adjacent landowners, both of whom stated that the land concerned does not belong to them.

This incident falls into a void of unaccountability. The tree which caused the accident had been, quite reasonably, passed as safe. The requisite inspections had been conducted and the tree appears to have been residing in a legal no man’s land. But does this make the incident unavoidable?

Prevention is Better Than the Cure

Had the train’s collision with the tree resulted in far graver consequences than those which occurred, the legal wrangling over the incident would have been far greater and blame would have been attributed somewhere along the line. It’s in no one’s best interests for such incidents to be at risk of being repeated; not for the train operator, Network Rail or the private landowner.

Establishing responsibility before an incident is possible. As part of the fallout from this incident, Network Rail is to publish guidance to landowners on its website. Landowners themselves have a responsibility to inspect any trees which may affect the railway and to take appropriate action to ensure that they do not pose a risk. The railway owner, where reasonable, should know who occupies neighbouring land to the railway and provide information about the potential risks.

By holding such information centrally, railway owners can keep a track of inspections to ensure that they are being conducted with the requisite regularity. Furthermore, they can open their websites up so that neighbouring landowners can report back with their own findings, essentially filing their own inspection reports.

Sharing Information

This information can then be fed into the railway safety inspection routes, whereby if a landowner has raised a concern, the railway owner can involve itself in the process of remedial action to ensure that any work has been undertaken satisfactorily. An automated system could be implemented using workflows to prompt landowners to inspect their adjacent land at the required intervals.

Such as system can also be used to capture the relevant information from the inspection and automatically schedule any remedial action if required. This could make the process far more efficient while improving rail safety.

While such incidents as the one in Pembrokeshire are complicated, by achieving a coherence of effort and understanding, the risk of repeat incidents in future can be greatly reduced.

It sounds like something from an overblown Hollywood blockbuster, two trains hurtling towards each other on one line of track, but this is a scenario that still, occasionally, plays out in real life. Over dramatic? Perhaps. But the risk in such a situation occurring is obvious and the cost, in human and financial terms, is potentially vast.

On 28 August 2019 this scenario was played out. The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) reported an incident at Romney Sands, in Kent, during which two trains were erroneously authorised to use the same single line, despite travelling in opposite directions. The driver of one of the trains realised there was another train coming towards theirs just after leaving Romney Sands station. Their emergency stop message was heard by the other driver via their communication system and the two trains came to a halt 316 metres apart. You can read the full incident report on the RAIB site here.

Effective Systems Reduce Risk

Whilst no one was hurt during the incident, it does highlight the inherent danger in human error. The RAIB notes that the incident shows the importance of, “having systems and processes in place which can provide additional safeguards when safe operations otherwise rely on the actions of people.”

Running on a ticket and tablet system, the single stretch of rail requires a train driver to be in possession of the tablet for that single line of rail. Upon arrival at the next stop, they hand it over to the stationmaster so it can be passed to the next driver. Where two trains are travelling in the same direction on that stretch, the stationmaster can issue a ticket in lieu of the tablet for the train to safely pass.

This incident at Romney Sands occurred because of under-trained staff and confusion brought about by changes to the timetable which perhaps were not communicated as clearly as they could have been. It is strikingly obvious that utilising modern technology solutions would have avoided this incident.

Outdated Methods

So, can train operators afford to continue with such outdated methods, allowing the threat of human error to jeopardise not only the smooth running of their services, but also the lives of their staff and passengers? Nothing serious happened on this occasion, but it’s too close a call to be deemed acceptable.

In its notes, the RAIB offers ‘previous similar occurrences’ to compare an incident to.

Near Abermule, Montgomeryshire (now Powys) on 26 January 1921, there was a head-on collision on a single line between two passenger trains, which resulted in the death of 17 people and serious injuries to 36 others. This disaster occurred because of a chain of errors, misunderstandings and non-compliance with the rules by station staff and train crew. There are clear parallels with the events leading up to the incident at Romney Sands.

More detail on that incident can be found here.

It would seem that some elements of the rail network haven’t made much advancement in the past 98 years, which will be a great concern to passengers using these services. Structuring the scheduling of such services can be done easily – and flexibly – via modern software solutions, which enhance the work of stationmasters and provide a clear overview of which trains are running and where.

MODERN TECHNOLOGY CAN HELP Deploying technology in the process provides schedulers with a single source of truth and an easy means of communicating schedule changes to drivers and stationmasters. Schedulers would be able to approve a train to use a single section of track, with the backup of technology to highlight potential conflict and the further input of the stationmaster on ground. The incident at Romney Sands arose, in part, out of confusion emanating from a change to the timetable which was affected at late notice in order to minimise the impact on the network of an earlier late running train.

Such instructions can be easily handled with technology but can lead to confusion in wholly manual processes and, in this case, severe danger. The technology is available to transport networks now. There is no need to keep on repeating mistakes from the 1920s.

On 1 December 2018 a passenger was hit by the branch of a tree whilst leaning out of the window of a train travelling at 75mph. The accident was fatal and was later investigated by the RAIB (Rail Accident Investigation Branch) which identified a string of errors across two operating companies which contributed in their own small ways to the incident occurring, from inadequate signage and inspections, to systems failing to pick up on outstanding work. So, how can these be avoided going forward?

The train was operated by GWR (Great Western Railway) and the infrastructure by Network Rail. Both companies must carry out regular inspections in order to comply with health and safety regulations. Compliance is an issue raised by this case and the consideration of how transport operators can effectively manage and meet their compliance requirements.

Failed Inspections

The RAIB report noted failings on both sides, with inadequate signage on board the train and inadequate trackside inspections of vegetation.

GWR had been due to install enhanced warning signs on the train in May 2018 to better reflect the danger posed by leaning out of the window whilst the train is moving. The enhancement was never made because two staff members had left the company and GWR’s system for tracking such inspections and alterations had failed.

Network Rail had not conducted a tree inspection in the area of the accident since 2009. An arboricultural report, commissioned by Network Rail after the accident, reported that a competent inspection post-2014 would have identified the decay in the tree, rendering it hazardous to the railway line. The tree had been in its hazardous position for at least 22 months prior to the accident.

Regular vegetation checks are required to reduce the risk of accidents and train derailment. Any tree encroaching on to a railway line that is 150mm in diameter or more is a derailment risk. Network Rail has two methods of conducting inspections: vegetation on foot and cab ride. Both inspections are completed by filling out paperwork and submitting a Track Engineering Form. Work, where necessary, is assigned on the back of this. It is a very manual process.

Staff Training

Furthermore, Network Rail’s staff were undertrained to carry out these inspections and their supervisor didn’t realise that the paper forms were being incorrectly submitted. It is also noted by RAIB that he was unaware of the standards which needed to be conformed to.

So, this incident has highlighted a few shortcomings in the way in which Network Rail and train operators remain compliant with standards and regulations. Inadequate signage, a failure in the system to implement agreed enhancements because staff had left and the work went unchecked, led to GWR’s failings. Inadequate rail side vegetation inspections, underqualified inspectors and supervisors unaware that paperwork was being submitted incorrectly caused the Network Rail failings.

Such manual processes for such important work and inspections are outdated and have been exposed in this case. Whilst none of the failures may be directly responsible for the tragic events which occurred, the event does highlight the need for improvements in the processes.

Using technology is the most efficient way of running such processes – by being able to schedule and track work in a single database. This would allow schedulers and supervisors to easily identify where work has not been completed, where it has been completed by underqualified staff and where remedial work has been suggested as part of an inspection.

Automating Workforce Management

The example here, of enhanced signage alerting passengers of the danger of leaning out of the window of a moving train not being implemented, highlights the importance of effectively monitoring agreed work. This would not have happened in an automated system which can alert management to unfulfilled work.

Similarly, with an automated system, rail side inspections can be scheduled to ensure that they are conducted by qualified staff and submitted correctly. The system would flag any incorrect submissions.

Beyond the safety narrative and the events surrounding this incident, technology can deliver a far more efficient and accurate way of complying with regulations. This would not only help to reduce the likelihood of repeat incidents, but also help train operators to have far greater oversight of their operations via a single source of truth. Technology can ensure that inspectors are only allocated jobs if they have relevant experience or qualifications. Automated workflows can also then ensure where issues are identified, rectification work can be allocated to the right teams and monitored to completion.

The technology to make these changes exists today. Transport operators don’t need to operate using analogue methods in a digital age.

Every year CACI release their updated estimates of the income of households across the United Kingdom, with data indicating the average household income for every single one of the 1.7 million residential postcodes in the UK.

With the release of the 2019 data this Spring it provides a great opportunity for us to take stock of the nation’s finances, their disparities and some overarching trends.

Over the next few weeks we’ll highlight some our findings from analysis of the data in a series of blogs under the “Wealth of the Nation” banner, and provide informed opinion pieces on a range of topics including affordability of housing, the behaviour of the nation’s savers and a look at the underbanked, those without access to a full service bank account, and how their needs might be addressed.

These reports are authored by our very own subject matter experts who work directly with many leading organisations and well known brands across finance, local government, property, retail and other sectors.

But we’ll start today with a few headline numbers.

In 2019 the average gross household income in the UK was £39,800, an increase from £39,100 in 2018. Drill down and the differences become apparent. At a Regional level the South East has, not surprisingly, the highest mean figure at £46,400, and Northern Ireland has the lowest at £33,400.

London residents aren’t far behind the south east with a mean gross household income of £44,000.

London residents aren’t far behind the South East with a mean gross household income of £44,000. However, when you look at disposable income, once the cost of mortgage, rents, bills and other essential outgoings are taken into account, Londoners are actually doing worse than the UK average, with a net disposable income of just £13,600 against a UK average of £17,500.

Of course within London itself there is a huge income disparity, with a proportion of households receiving incomes far exceeding the national average.

Drilling further down we’ve identified the top 10 and bottom 10 Postcode Sectors in the UK by Mean Household Income:

Top 10 Postcode Sectors By Mean Annual Household Income:

• EC3N 4 – London – £73,700
• WD3 4 – Loudwater – £73,000
• SE21 7 – London – £72,800
• SW11 6 – London – £71,200
• AL5 3 – Harpenden – £71,100
• AL5 2 – Harpenden – £70,800
• SW1Y 5 – London – £70,700
• N20 8 – London – £70,500
• AL1 4 – St Albans – £69,900
• KT22 0 – Oxshott – £69,700

Bottom 10 Postcode Sectors by Mean Annual Household Income:

• TS1 5 – Middlesbrough – £14,800
• PA15 1 – Greenock – £15,000
• B7 4 – Birmingham – £15,100
• CH41 3 – Birkenhead – £15,100
• B19 3 – Birmingham – £15,600
• BT13 1 – Belfast – £15,900
• L28 7 – Liverpool – £16,000
• L5 0 – Liverpool – £16,100
• L28 5 – Liverpool – £16,200
• L20 8 – Bootle – £16,600

Top 10 Local Authorities by Mean Annual Household Income:

• Elmbridge – £58,300
• Richmond upon Thames – £58,000
• St Albans – £57,500
• Wokingham – £57,200
• Chiltern – £57,100
• Epsom and Ewell – £56,100
• Hart – £55,400
• Surrey Heath – £55,300
• South Bucks – £55,200
• Waverley – £54,900

Bottom 10 Local Authorities by Mean Annual Household Income:

• Blaenau Gwent – £28,000
• Knowsley – £28,200
• Nottingham – £28,600
• Sandwell – £28,900
• Strabane – £29,100
• Stoke-on-Trent – £29,100
• Liverpool – £29,200
• Kingston upon Hull – £29,300
• Belfast – £29,700
• Merthyr Tydfil – £30,400

By aggregating from individual postcodes we can understand and compare average incomes at any geographical level.

We can also do this across different demographic groups. For example, Manchester has the lowest average income for retired households of all Local Authorities at £17,900, whilst other demographic groups have proportionally higher incomes.

That said, retired households will, in general, have significantly lower outgoings, and the disposable income for retired households is often higher than for single and young couples. Equivalised income estimates provide a further means of comparison, taking into account household size.

Manchester has the lowest average income for retired households of all local authorities at £17,900, whilst other demographic groups have proportionally higher incomes

All this information has proved vital time and time again for our clients – decision makers and policy makers from all areas of business and government – to provide a detailed understanding of areas, key to supporting the needs of communities, providing appropriate services and to make sound commercial judgements.

All figures quoted in this article are sourced from CACI’s Paycheck and Paycheck Disposable Income datasets.