UPS has announced a number of new technology-enabled services and partnerships designed to support customer needs.
The services include new customers for UPS Flight Forward, a new Digital Access Program and the launch of UPS Premier, a technology-enabled supply chain solution for critical shipments.
“UPS is moving quickly to introduce a wide range of innovative services designed to extend our leadership position in developing technology solutions to help e-commerce and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs),” said UPS chairman and chief executive officer David Abney. “We see enormous opportunities and unmet customer needs in several high-growth market segments.”
UPS Flight Forward’s new drone delivery customers include the University of Utah Health, CVS Health, Kaiser Permanente and AmerisourceBergen.
“When we launched UPS Flight Forward, we said we would move quickly to scale this business – now the country’s first and only fully certified drone airline – and that’s exactly what we are doing,” said UPS chief strategy and transformation officer Scott Price. “We started with a hospital campus environment and are now expanding scale and use-cases. UPS Flight Forward will work with new customers in other industries to design additional solutions for a wide array of last-mile and urgent delivery challenges.”
UPS has also revealed its strategy to make its industry-leading e-commerce services more broadly available through a series of strategic alliances and agreements called the UPS Digital Access Program. With the program, UPS is establishing preferred relationships with leading digital platforms to seamlessly offer discounted UPS shipping rates and other shipping and logistics solutions to their merchant customers. The first business to collaborate with UPS on the new program is Stamps.com, which will offer discounted shipping rates to its 740,000 e-commerce customers.
As UPS continues to grow its specialized set of solutions for healthcare and life sciences customers, the company has also announced a new technology-enabled supply-chain solution for critical shipments and an enhanced global quality management system. Using multiple next-generation sensor technologies, UPS Premier will provide a comprehensive priority-handling service for time- and temperature-sensitive packages.