Triton Consulting assist Hermes through critical peak with a fully managed 24/7 Db2 support service
Hermes, the consumer delivery specialist, provides flexible and affordable delivery options that put the customer in control whether sending, receiving or returning parcels to home, work, a neighbour, safe place or a ParcelShop.
These include next day, standard, international and Sunday deliveries as well as ETA time windows for delivery and collection. Hermes has enjoyed double digit growth every year for the last six years, and handled more than 304 million parcels in 2017. 80% of the UK’s top retailers trust Hermes with their parcel deliveries, including Next, ASOS, John Lewis and Arcadia. The company operates a network of over 14,500 self-employed couriers and more than 4,500 ParcelShops nationwide.
The Challenges
The IT systems underpinning the Hermes service are critical and time dependant needing to manage the delivery of up to 2 million parcels per day. This is particularly true during the peak period from Black Friday until January, when peak deliveries are more than double the average day. One of the critical components of the Hermes service is based on Db2, one element of which manages the timely payments of the courier network.
As volumes and the criticality of the service increased, Hermes UK was looking to ensure there was no impact to the availability of the service, and any steps needed were taken to improve performance, particularly during the peak period. Hermes UK also wanted to add further Db2 DBA skills to underpin its 24×7 support requirement.
The Solution/Results
Triton Consulting was engaged to supply two levels of support:
Following successful delivery of the 2017 peak service, Triton Consulting performed a Db2 Review alongside Hermes staff to identify a series of mini-projects that would drive greater reliability and improved performance for the 2018 peak.
24×7 remote support services to respond to and fix any production service outages.
Following successful delivery of the 2017 peak service, Triton Consulting performed a Db2 Review alongside Hermes staff to identify a series of mini-projects that would drive greater reliability and improved performance for the 2018 peak.