Postal delivery services will be digitised by June, but using drones would be a step too far.
For now, Croatian Post does not have any plans to use drones to make deliveries, it was announced on Tuesday in Zagreb, during the Jump IT Forum 2018, by the company’s managing director Ivan Čulo, reports Poslovni.hr on April 11, 2018.
He stressed that no post office in Europe was doing anything operational with drones, and recently his counterpart from Ukraine shut down such a project in his company. "The colleague who took over the control of the post office in Ukraine immediately terminated the project with the drones at the beginning of his term in office, after discovering that it was a public relations stunt. He found out that the former management had tied a drone and packages to a crane and simulated that they had a drone which could perform the delivery services,” said Čulo.
He added that Croatian Post would certainly not start using drones until someone demonstrates that there is a model which can safely deliver packages to Croatian islands while the bura wind is blowing. He said that he would either have to see a drone which can withstand gusts of 200 kilometre-per-hour wind or Amazon would have to prove it that it is operationally feasible to use drones.
This prompted a reaction from Hrvoje Benčić, the director of services and digital operations of Ericsson Nikola Tesla. He pointed out that, with the introduction of the 5G technology, drones that can withstand gusts of wind will get the technical preconditions to be used in such demanding weather conditions. “Due to its technical capabilities, 5G will enable us to use such drones as well. It is expected that 5G will become widely used around the year of 2020,” Benčić said.
Čulo added that Croatian Post had a number of projects which should be realised before 2020. The company will digitise its delivery services by this June, while by the end of the year the whole company should be digitally transformed to a significant extent. The digitalisation project is worth around 7.5 million kuna, and it was launched by the company last year when it ordered 2,500 smartphones and 2,200 wireless printers.
“In the last year and a half, we have focused on our digital transformation, so that Croatian Post could become a digital company. By the end of this year and in the first quarter of next year, our customers will be able to see and feel substantial improvements in our business operations,” said Čulo.
Translated from Poslovni.hr.
