Courier services are essential to businesses of all sizes. Until recently the process of shipping a package to shoppers, documents to other businesses or other branches of the same organisation has been widely viewed as somewhat effective, but also costly.

Traditional courier services were the only way for small businesses without the internal infrastructure needed to ship or transport items. On top of this, the emergence of on-demand services such as Uber and Deliveroo have drawn public attention to the inefficiencies of traditional logistics services. Since consumers are used to convenience in other areas of their lives - why not provide them with such choice and flexibility when it comes to deliveries?

How do small businesses fit into this model?

Currently, small businesses wanting to offer bespoke delivery have little choice but to pay for a costly service that not only lacks flexibility but also fails to meet the growing trend for green initiatives in businesses striving to reduce their carbon footprint.

As e-commerce provides small businesses with a greater market opportunity , their demand for courier services will also increase. Small businesses require a flexible, cost-effective option for sending items. For those shipping directly to shoppers, there are growing expectations over the precision of the service that must be considered. For businesses supplying other businesses (like the delivery of bespoke, artisanal jams to a local hotel in time for breakfast service), delivery times have always been a major factor on which traditional courier services have been unable to provide any guarantee.

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Timely fulfilment is at the core of many small businesses offerings: delivering goods to department stores before they open, sending important documentation to another branch in time for a meeting, or sample products that could secure a business deal. A crowdsourced solution would not only enable a faster, more precise service for B2B and B2C, but would also enable retailers to operate more efficient internal operations such as stock rotation between stores.

Brisqq’s crowdsourced solution utilises simple, user-friendly plug-and-play technology to connect small businesses with a pool of freelance couriers enabling delivery within specific time-slots chosen by the user. Underpinned by smart technology, Brisqq’s intuitive platform, accessible on any device with a web browser or available as a plug-in for popular e-commerce platforms, makes deliveries and returns simple.

While the readily available freelance resource pool provides the flexibility that traditional courier services lack, smart technologies such as routing and allocation algorithms, ensuring each delivery is allocated to the best possible courier based on proximity, while looking at other jobs in their queue and shuffling them to form a logical, achievable and environmentally-friendly route, ensuring each drop-off is completed within the specified time-slot.

Most importantly for small businesses, this solution is scalable. As the business grows, you simply use more of the service. This is ideal for seasonal business, with the peaks and troughs that traditional operators often struggle to service optimally.