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Inside FedEx QuickShip

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About 18 months ago, FedEx stood onstage with Bill Gates, as they launched FedEx QuickShip. John Mullinax (DPE), Chris Bryant (Microsft GPM, Office), and I teamed up on the evangelism effort, with help from a lot of folks – including some great people at FedEx. FedEx QuickShip is a Outlook 2003/2007 add-on that allows a FedEx customer to interact with FedEx services in the familiar experience of Outlook.

A couple of months ago, I heard that FedEx was doing a video about QuickShip. Two of our FedEx friends are stars of the show. Ben Baker is a FedEx architect who is a up-and-coming IT star in the Memphis area, and was involved in the early thinking and prototypes of QuickShip. Matt Howell, Senior Marketing Specialist, in FedEx Services is a another FedEx star. He’s a smart marketing person who understands how to apply technology for company innovation. Two good guys to know in the IT world. I’m ecstatic that they were chosen for this video.

 

 

Case Studies

Last year, Microsoft published a related case study, FedEx Enhances Access for Customers with Software-plus-Services Approach which talks about FedEx QuickShip. There are some excellent points and quotes, including one of my favorites:

“Taking a software-plus-services approach is far more effective than building a solution around a Web browser because we want people to do everything from their centers of productivity,” says Matt Ceniceros, Senior Communication Specialist for FedEx.

FedEx QuickShip has been so successful, Microsoft was not finished yet promoting this story. This past August, we published FedEx Extends Access to Shipping Services for Increased Customer Productivity and Loyalty. Another good description of FedEx QuickShip, including quotes and perspective from a FedEx customer, as well as from Tom Wicinski, Vice President of Digital Access Marketing, FedEx.

“Accessibility is a key tenet for FedEx,” adds Wicinski. “For us, designing an application to live inside a software program that is so widely used made good business sense. Microsoft Office Outlook has strong market penetration—it’s probably used by hundreds of millions of people—and we have a lot of customers who are part of that user base. Building a plug-in application for Office Outlook 2007 makes it easy for us to get our product in front of customers quickly and make their lives better.”