Service Point System ( SPS)

[Gold Fox]

How do you getting on with this new system in your Callers Office? has your life been made easier ? do you like it ? Can you improve it bit more ?

[Ahebban]

Not in our office yet, but it has been discussed and will happen irrespective. The guys in the Caller's Office are not looking forward to it as the present system works really well, so why change it!

[Sir Henry]

Our lot in the room of doom hate it. It's a right fanny on compared to the old system and for all intents and purposes it's one guy doing most of the work.

[Gold Fox]

Its coming to our office soon.... they way we understand , booking in required too many details ( surname, post code, house name or number ,sort of item , kind of item , bar code if any ) system finds street name automatically ... but easy and quickly to find item when customer calls. If customer has lost red card or wrong date on card it would make no difference as long as post code known. ..... so this system has cons and more pros..... well... we shall see soon ....!!
Two or three days training provided and if you are typist ... it helps.

[speckledtangerine]

It's a load of pish. It doesn't work properly. You'll be referring constantly to cleo printouts, track and trace and bits of paper as although you must input information into sps like for example, where RTS items went back to or which post office a local collect was sent to, you can't access this information on the SPS system. It just disappears into the ether.

Correctly booked in items often disappear completely off the system. You can't find them using any search criteria other than the number allocated (which you won't have from the shut notice) and have to manually search for that day. Then, it suddenly reappears using the allocated number. Whit?

The system crashes, freezes and locks you out after about five seconds and it takes an age to log stuff in at any reasonably sized office. That is to say if you are one that turfs locker staff on delivery and leaves some sucker to run the whole place on their own.

I gave our planner a list of bugs, faults and issues as long as your arm. It's been trialled at some piddling office with loads of staff and that was good enough for a roll out imo. A very poor and incomplete system.

[Gold Fox]

OMG .... then this SPS sucks .... our present system works 99.99% ....soon we are going to have SPS... our DO has been chosen to have SPS .... can we refuse ??

[Elwoodium]

Can anyone tell me how to get news about the SPS software updates?

[Spy]

It's a load of pish. It doesn't work properly. You'll be referring constantly to cleo printouts, track and trace and bits of paper as although you must input information into sps like for example, where RTS items went back to or which post office a local collect was sent to, you can't access this information on the SPS system. It just disappears into the ether.

Correctly booked in items often disappear completely off the system. You can't find them using any search criteria other than the number allocated (which you won't have from the shut notice) and have to manually search for that day. Then, it suddenly reappears using the allocated number. Whit?

The system crashes, freezes and locks you out after about five seconds and it takes an age to log stuff in at any reasonably sized office. That is to say if you are one that turfs locker staff on delivery and leaves some sucker to run the whole place on their own.

I gave our planner a list of bugs, faults and issues as long as your arm. It's been trialled at some piddling office with loads of staff and that was good enough for a roll out imo. A very poor and incomplete system.

We went live this week. And instead of having 1 person for the majority of the day we now have an indoor assist who has spent 3-4 hours daily in there, failing his other tasks. All it has done is created work. So not a bad thing. But the poor person who works in there as a job is stressing out quite badly.

[Fletch692]

Hi all, I've just joined Royal Mail Chat tonight in the hope there might be some info about SPS on here. We have had SPS installed at our office this week.

So far it's been a bit of a nightmare! I notice someone on here was given 2-3 days training. Myself and my colleagues have been given more like 2-3 hours training!
This is not the fault of the trainers (who are both nice guys) but it seems to be down to management not putting in enough hours for us to receive proper training.

My finish time is 1.15 when working in the Callers Office and this week so far I've not got away before 4pm and my other colleague was working until 6pm on Mon,Tues when she was supposed to have gone home around the same time as myself (1.15).

So far the system seems good for finding items for customers more quickly but the time it takes to 'book in' everything is a nightmare.

I was given 20 minutes training on Redeliveries and Deads today and they expect you to remember how to do it all on this new system. Then they tell you that you still have to do it the old way too as the systems won't be linked until around Christmas!

I can just see this being a bit of a nightmare although hopefully over time the system will bed in and we'll all get use to it.

I just wondered if there'd be any helpful tips or discussions on here to refer to. Anyone know where you can get further help with it once the training guys have disappeared? We were left with their phone numbers today, so I guess at least we have them?

Good luck to all of you to go through this!!

[Mezza]

Had SPS about 3 weeks now.
I find it's better in many ways -
Easier to find items - it's simple if it isn't on the system then you don't have it.
The To Do List makes life a bit easier - but it seems like a more long winded way of doing kill offs and redeliveries.

Like you have already said - booking in items is a more time consuming process - the 2D barcodes can help, but there is no consistency in what the 2D barcodes contain. Some input nearly everything and today we were getting loads that it simply said weren't compatible.

Obviously with more and more practice booking in becomes a bit faster - but it needs to be done accurately. We had people booking in 2 items as just a single item - despite different names for example - you simply cannot do that.

By far the worse thing about it is managements reluctance to put in any additional time to cope with it all. We have had a good few days already when the callers has opened in the morning with loads of items still to be booked in from the day before.
We are a medium sized DO with roughly 50 delivery duties and get about 250 items back a day and we are really struggling with the booking in at times. we've managed to get the callers and DOM assist to start an hour earlier on the busy days, but on a Saturday when we are open from 07.00 - 14.00 they won't change the time for the callers duty which is 06.45 - 14.18. Meaning they have 15 mins to book in anything left from Friday. Last Saturday we had 2 staff in the callers for most of the day and they didn't have time to book a single item in, they were so busy. Normally there is just the one duty in the callers, with the RLE assisting for the last 90 mins per day.
Management have decided the best way to cope with the Saturday issue is to bring in someone on SA for 30 mins at 05.30, then put someone else in there while the office is on IPS. I can safely say they have no chance of booking everything in before the 07.00 opening time.

The daily shuffling of items along the shelves can be a real challenge some days :-)
In terms of general help there is a user guide and a more recent guide to the update that was rolled out last weekend - your DOM should have emails with these in them or they can certainly download them.

I think the system will work in the long term, but management need to realise that it's far too much for a single duty in most offices. Our SPS trainer said he had been all over the country and every office he had been in had 2 people in the callers to deal with the extra work involved. Our office just has the 1 person and she is of retirement age and finding it very stressful.

[answer=42]

Simple solution. Deliver to Neighbour.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Getting this a lot now, only not quite so polite.