Transparency18 sponsored article
We’ve all had it happen. We order something online – maybe it’s something we really want or something we really need. We track it diligently. We anticipate its arrival. We race to the door the day it was noted as “delivered” only to find it’s not there. You look around your porch, your neighbors’ porches, you check tracking again to see it was indeed delivered. And it was. But now it’s gone.
This has happened to more than 30% of us who order stuff for home or business delivery. And the problem is escalating even faster and likely to touch more than half of us who get packages delivered to our homes or offices, which means we’re all racking up significant increases in lost goods, dollars and freight expenses as well as customer service time, energy and effort. And that’s not factoring in the disappointment or even crippling fear when something we want or really, really need, such as life-saving medicine, is stolen in the last mile of delivery.
Americans – and largely the rest of the world – are embracing home delivery now more than ever and that trajectory is aggressively on the rise. With that growing demand generated a need to keep what we order safe until it’s physically in our hands. That’s where BoxLock comes in — a smart padlock designed to protect deliveries from porch pirates and package thieves.
BoxLock was designed with both the courier and the customer in mind. Using a built-in barcode reader, BoxLock enables existing barcodes on packages or freight documentation to be scanned, validated real-time and used as the key to the lock without the need for any additional service hardware, software, labeling or codes. In mere seconds, BoxLock connects to the internet to confirm access should be granted, creating real-time access logs that can be integrated into existing systems to provide even more detail about delivery location at every step. This means the courier can simply have BoxLock read the existing shipping label or bill of lading to open it at the delivery site. The recipient can open the Boxlock with the iOS or Android app or by scanning a secure barcode on their phone.
Critical to the success and adaptation of BoxLock is the support of the couriers. BoxLock worked with many executives at all major couriers to get support for the products, but also integrated their feedback into the product design and usability. Hans Hickler, the former CEO of DHL USA says that “BoxLock is going to make last mile delivery security more accessible, universal, effective and seamless than it’s ever been before.” Couriers 1, porch pirates 0.
In addition to courier feedback and support, BoxLock has recently joined the Blockchain in Transport Alliance to help ensure that the necessary specifications are in place for BoxLock to add additional blocks to the chain that represent secure pickups and secure deliveries when BoxLock’s are used in transport. BoxLock also hopes to leverage the blockchain for guidance to whom it should provide access and when.
Looking into the future and how BoxLock can serve business clients, BoxLock will offer its Pro subscription, which has a range of solutions in the works that give businesses the ability to manage multiple BoxLocks, large numbers of users and more advanced barcode management. Their BoxLock Logistics solution will make it possible for last mile delivery companies to secure their pickups and deliveries to locations with a BoxLock. And BoxLock Enterprise industrial padlocks and services are designed for large-scale custom deployments of BoxLock with advanced integration capabilities. BoxLock Enterprise will be ideal for a wide range of applications from protecting commercial deliveries, job sites, large distributed asset deployments and freight. Finally, to serve industrial clients, BoxLock is planning to launch ruggedized LTE-M versions of their locking solution along with a modular locking system designed for large distributed asset deployments such as energy, oil fields and cell phone towers.
Learn more about how BoxLock can change the industry by attending Transparency18, where representatives from BoxLock will be one of the many organizations showing off their new, innovative products.
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