Design of electronic commerce infrastructure for cross-border postal operations

Abstract

In 2013, as a platform with the 22 largest postal companies in the world, the International Post Corporation has launched the e-Commerce Interconnected Programme (CIP) to setup a new cross-border electronic commerce infrastructure. The CIP aims to help international postal operators to provide more reliable services and operations with respect to more accurately and in-time tracking and tracing postal parcels. This paper investigates the opportunities and comes up with the design of a cross-border parcel handling infrastructure. The low level infrastructure is implemented based on radio frequency identification technology for tracking parcels in international shipments. The high level infrastructure can be achieved via a generic information integration framework. The implementation of the tracking and tracing system shows the increased visibility during international e-commerce activities.