Quickmail: Cloud product design & development

The Client

A massive growth in business means a massive change in processes.

At least it did for Quickmail, a family-owned and operated West Australian business, specialists in fulfilment, distribution, warehousing and now their new Third Party Logistics (3PL) services.

Operating for over 28 years, Quickmail has helped small businesses, corporate, government, e-commerce and charity organisations with print, mail, warehousing, storage, order fulfilment and packaging.

Quickmail has seen continual growth through investment in new technologies, new areas of opportunity and development of their staff, ensuring the highest quality products and services.

The Challenge

A need for modernisation and scale.

When COVID hit in 2020, people stayed indoors, online shopping became part of the new normal and e-commerce accelerated nationwide.

As a result, Quickmail’s 3PL service experienced unprecedented growth.

The warehouse team found themselves struggling to fulfil orders and pushed through inefficiencies in their workflow processes. All aspects of their business, from operations to billings, strained to keep up with the exponential demand.

The COVID experience crystalised two things for Quickmail: the exciting opportunity for growth and the need to improve the system to enable it.

Quickmail identified that in order to meet their business goals, satisfy their customers’ needs and pursue opportunities to expand, their digital system needed to be modernised and scaled.

The Quickmail warehouse team strained to keep up with the exponential demand of their growing third party logistics service,

The Approach

Customer-centricity is the key to problem solving.

Quickmail engaged software product partner and cloud specialists Mechanical Rock, to kick-start their journey into the cloud and deliver a modern solution that would support their business and operational growth. Assessing the digital systems and workflow journey required a human-centred approach to understand the people, problems and how best to design and deliver maximum value and impact.

This meant co-designing the solution with the people who actually used it - the warehouse team, with the following approach:

1. Focus on the people, their needs and goals.
2. Consider the whole system and larger context.
3. Understand and address the core problems.
4. Prototype. Test. Iterate

Discovery and Problem Framing

Stepping into the shoes of the customers and conducting contextual field studies allowed a rich discovery of Quickmail’s workflow process, their pain points, opportunities and how to help them meet their goals.

Co-Design and Validation

The team worked alongside customers and stakeholders to prioritise opportunities and to ideate impactful solutions. Rapid prototypes were created to validate ideas through user testing, gathering immediate feedback, enabling design iterations, and refining an outstanding customer experience.

"They showed us the first iteration of the solution and they nailed 90% of what we wanted... [They] helped us understand what we wanted and helped us think beyond that too."

Sophie Stott
MD Quickmail

The Solution

New platform. New application. And a new way of working.

AWS Cloud Infrastructure

Mechanical Rock delivered a new software platform on AWS infrastructure, which significantly improved system scalability, flexibility, total cost optimisation, reliability, monitoring and security. The platform allows Quickmail to quickly roll out custom-designed, light-weight applications that solve both user and customer problems, bringing immediate value to the business.

A New Approach to Software Development

Quickmail was introduced to a new way of working. End-user feedback drove features, changes and improvements, which were designed and delivered fast - within minutes/hours not days/weeks. This agility and speed to market enabled a culture of innovation and growth that Quickmail aspired for.

QM Receivables Application

In 3 months, Mechanical Rock delivered the first of many applications QM Receivables, to replaced their manual, paper-based system. The application digitises the workflow process and seamlessly integrates the flow of information and data into their software platform.

The Quickmail warehouse team can now:

• Work while on the move (designed for mobility).
• Approve delivery status.
• Capture quantity, time, location and info necessary for billing.
• Photograph damaged goods directly from the device.
• Initiate automated communications with clients.
• Sign in with secure authentication.

The Benefits

A true catalyst for change.

The platform and application was a true catalyst for change, which fundamentally evolved the way Quickmail operated, helping them accelerate revenue growth and market share.

The solution provided Quickmail team with the following benefits:

• Faster processing time, normally consumed by manual processes, data entry errors, slow paper-based system and lengthy phone calls.
• Increased revenue, by scaling their workflow processes and allowing for more vendors to use their system and services.
• Effective scaling, with a positive impact to performance. The team can now get through double the amount of incoming orders in a single day.
• Reduced risk and lost revenue, by capturing critical data related to billing for unaccounted effort, damaged goods and unforeseen packaging.
• Improved efficiency, productivity and data accuracy, by integrating the flow of new information and data into their existing system.
• A better experience for end customers, by helping them keep track and manage their deliveries.

"In a single day, Quickmail experienced an increase in orders of over 300% from average shopping days, with no impact on performance and processing."

Sophie Stott
MD Quickmail