Toronto, Ontario, Canada, November 16, 2016 -- Canadian company Snaile Inc. (pronounced “Snail.ee”, www.snaile.com), has won the prestigious Digital Innovation of the Year award - part of the 2016 Postal Technology International Awards. A judging panel of world postal services awarded the prize to the company for its “smart” mail notification technology that makes first and last mile postal boxes able to detect whether or not they have letter mail or parcels.
Snaile’s technology triumphed over other shortlisted technologies including those from United States Postal Service’s (USPS) Informed Delivery, TrackerSense and Siemens’ Production, Planning and Control system (PPC). The judging panel was comprised of internationally recognized postal organizations including: Canada Post Corporation, La Poste, Deutsche Post DHL, SingPost, An Post, Romanian Post, Universal Postal Union, Jersey Post, Malta Post, Qatar Postal Services Company, International Post Corporation, Emirates Post, Slovenska Post, Pakistan Post, PostEurop, and Postea.
The CEO of Snaile Inc., Patrick Armstrong, said his company is honoured to receive the recognition considering the caliber of past winners and nominees in the category.
“We are very pleased to receive this honour following SingPost’s 2015 award for its ezyCommerce innovation in the same category,” he said. “We are also humbled to share this select space with the many leading postal operators and companies that have been nominated or received these awards in the past.”
Snaile’s breakthrough innovation is a patent pending device, based on Internet of Things (IoT) technology. Inserted in first mile street letter boxes, the invention turns postal boxes from dumb recipients of mail into “smart” devices. These smart boxes are able to monitor usage, which then allows Snaile Cloud to notify the Postal Operator which boxes need to be emptied.
The device can also be used to measure usage and make network & fleet optimization decisions, such as reducing the number of letter boxes as mail volumes drop. With less trips being made to empty the boxes and with smaller fleet sizes, operational savings will also be observed.
Snaile devices can also be placed in last mile applications for consumers that use community mailboxes, P.O. Boxes or Cluster Boxes. The technology can detect the presence of mail within these types of boxes and alert the consumer via SMS, email or app upon mail or parcel arrival. As well as offering convenience, particularly to those with mobility issues, this consumer application may be used by Post Offices as a new, beneficial service to help keep letter mail more relevant and potentially create new service revenues. It will also help drive more traffic to post offices. This in turn may increase Point of Sale (POS) revenue.
“There is also an important environmental factor”, said Mr. Armstrong.
”Some operators can have a 10 percent empty box rate on any given day. This highlights a very real environmental issue: one of the US’s largest courier networks has on average 4000 boxes that will be checked and found to be empty daily. With a Snaile smart technology device though, 4000 less box checks can be saved each day by a box network operator, reducing their emissions, carbon footprint and ultimately operational costs.”
Armstrong added that Snaile first mile devices are not limited to the postal industry. They can also monitor other storage box facilities which currently get checked whether empty or not.
The postal technology also has law enforcement capabilities.
The device, inserted in parcel lockers, will alert if a parcel locker is actually empty as opposed to assumptions based on current door open/door close technology, the method most parcel lockers use today. This has practical implications for effective policing.
For example, consider a would-be terrorist who purchases an article online with a stolen credit card and then legitimately gains access to a parcel locker in a train station. Efficient monitoring of the parcel locker using Snaile’s device would help law enforcement officials be aware of whether the suspect has placed an article in the locker, possibly helping them foil a serious crime.
Snaile will be speaking further about their technology and its applications at PostEurop’s 2016 Innovation Forum. The conference is titled Smart Cities and Internet of Things (IoT) and is to be hosted by the Cyprus Post in Larnaca, Cyprus on November 24th, 2016.
For More Information Contact:
PR Department
Snaile Inc.
PO Box 5333
Huntsville ON P1H2K7 Canada
(705) 242-4808
info@snaile.com
