During the International City Logistics Conference, 2019 Hans Quak (TNO NL) presented his research on lessons learned of 10 years of Binnenstadservice. In the Netherlands, Binnenstadservice (BSS) runs UCCs and UCC services for over a decade now. The research discusses the development and the experiences of running a UCC in practice in the form of lessons learned.
The lessons are:
- Subsidy mystifies the real added values. It is difficult to let people pay for something they received for free earlier.
- Search for real added values: the need for a launching customer and value-added services.
- Change of client perspective during the 10 years of existence: which stakeholders are willing to pay for the UCC services?
- Perception management and finding the right partners.
- Triple cross-dock: link physical, financial and information flows.
- Choose the right scaling strategy.
These practical lessons do not only apply to the Dutch context but can are useful everywhere where UCC concepts are developed.
Future focus
Eco2city was the founder of the company Binnenstadservice. Since January 2013 Binnenstadservice is a Dutch commercial network company. Eco2city is building on the GoodHubs 500 cooperation amongst Europe. This cooperation will lead to consolidated and zero emission flows of goods in the connected cities by 2025. Eco2city has been working in this field since the foundation in 2008. Eco2city is the driving force behind the Citylogisticsnetwork.eu, is a consultancy NGO for several European cities and acts as a partner in research and operational projects.