Tesco.com mulls 'where's my order?' van-tracking

Tesco is considering introducing a service allowing customers to track the geographical location of the van delivering their online shopping, following the successful rollout of a new satellite navigation system.

Tesco IT director John Higgins told silicon.com the supermarket giant has equipped 50 of its drivers with ALK's CoPilot sat-nav following the opening of a new store in south London.

The deliveries are on time and the drivers don't get lost - they don't need an A to Z in their cab. It's cheaper for Tesco and it's more efficient for the workforce.

Higgins said Tesco decided to roll out the sat-nav system as the new store has a greater delivery area than others in the region, meaning some drivers would not be as familiar with their locale.

He said: "The deliveries are on time and the drivers don't get lost - they don't need an A to Z in their cab. It's cheaper for Tesco and it's more efficient for the workforce."

The supermarket chain, which announced this week it had hit almost £1bn in web sales, is now considering using the CoPilot system to give more information to customers waiting for their tesco.com deliveries.

Higgins said: "Going forward, we'd like to give our customers a better idea of when their delivery will arrive." The idea would be to tap the GPS functionality that the CoPilot system employs.

According to Dean Bubley, analyst at Disruptive Analysis, the falling prices and increasing functionality of GPS units could lead to more deployments of applications and services linked into satellite navigation.

Bubley said: "People like geographic stuff - think of how many people have fiddled with Google Earth just because it's cool. The actual technology is a subsidiary to the way [an application] is presented though - if it's clunky, people won't use it."

While Tesco mulls its GPS options, use of the CoPilot system at the far-reaching retailer may soon be extended. Higgins said: "[Tesco] is quite keen to do trials in other stores." However, for areas where drivers have good local knowledge, using sat-nav in the cabs would be "overkill", he told silicon.com.

Tesco chose CoPilot as it integrates with the Intermec Pocket PCs used by drivers to capture signatures, schedule deliveries and process refunds.