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NZ Post delivers richer data insights with the Elastic Stack

09 May 2025, 2:40 PM

NZ Post partnered with Catalyst to optimise and future-proof its data processes with the Elastic Stack.

Background

New Zealand Post (NZ Post) is the largest courier company in New Zealand, delivering millions of parcels a year. As a state-owned enterprise since 1987, NZ Post has grown as a staple service in Aotearoa New Zealand, delivering most postal services in the country. NZ Post wanted to understand how it could better utilise the vast volume of data it processes annually to create more efficiencies and growth while continuing the safe delivery of services to its customers long-term.

Opportunity

In the 24 financial year, NZ Post sent 84 million parcels and 187 million letters, and managing a large amount of data is critical to its operations. To help make sense of this information and make more data-driven decisions, NZ Post uses the Elastic Stack, a software enabling it to ingest, query, and visualise data. NZ Post had implemented the system but lacked the resources to optimise the Elastic Stack, which could better enable their decision-making, processes, and future-proof its data processing.

NZ Post needed a technical partner with experience using the Elastic Stack to help the organisation achieve its data storytelling goals and maximise the benefits the Elastic Stack could provide it. Additionally, the solution needed to be easy to use by someone without a technical background.

NZ Post sought a partnership that would enable the organisation to: 

  • Build a strong foundation: Configuring the Elastic Stack for long-term resilience and performance.
  • Adopt best practices: Managing data effectively with the right structures and processes.
  • Streamline operations: Reduce manual and time-consuming repetitive tasks and minimise human error.
nz post trucks
nz post consumer delivery 5
  • Make data accessible: Ensure insights are clear and easy to understand, and create actionable outputs.
  • Create a scalable solution: NZ Post wanted the ability to scale as needed to meet market demand.

Since 2022, NZ Post has had a strong working relationship with Catalyst. With the Catalyst team having over a decade of experience with the Elastic Stack, it was a natural fit to partner for this project.

Solution

NZ Post initially built a proof of concept, testing ways to improve data processes as demand grew. When Catalyst joined the project, the two teams collaborated to implement a fully supported, long-term solution.

Catalyst worked with NZ Post to understand its data formats, what information the team need from the data, and to identify their search workflows. From here, the Catalyst technical team:

  • Rewrote the data processing pipelines for incoming data to extract and enrich relevant information. For example, putting the data into a visual perspective, utilising the map feature in the Elastic Stack.
  • Restructured stored data to reduce system overhead, optimise resources, and improve query performance.
  • Created responsive dashboards enabling NZ Post to explore their data and the opportunities within it efficiently.
  • Provided ongoing guidance and advice on how to maintain best practices and gain better quality results, faster.

A nice link around small investments we are making, which are having a huge impact on real-world scenarios.

- Brad Sloan, the acting General Manager of Cloud and Operations, NZ Post

NZ Post has enhanced the overall experience with data using the Elastic Stack:

  • A secure and scalable foundation: The foundation sets a new baseline for new or modified the Elastic Search Ingest pipelines that can be deployed for future data sets.
  • Best practices with data structure: NZ Post is aligned with the Elastic Stack best practices for storing and managing its data correctly.
  • Fewer manual tasks: Queries can now be saved and easily reused, freeing up the team’s time to focus on other tasks.
Processing line for parcels
courier delivering package
  • Data visualisation: Staff can easily visualise and scan data at a glance on customisable dashboards and responsive visualisations to explore their data. For instance, staff members can set up their commonly used searches and easily identify outliers in data.
  • More user-friendly results: Technical data is presented in clear, easy-to-read formats and represented visually.
  • A scalable solution: NZ Post can easily handle the scope of its data as it grows by increasing the size of the Elastic Stack to parse and enrich the data. NZ Post also receive ongoing maintenance and support from Catalyst.

Looking ahead

Making sense of data through visualisation and reports can help you make faster, data-driven decisions. We’re proud to have supported NZ Post to optimise how they make sense of and manage their data, setting them up for the long term.

With over 10 years of experience in the Elastic Stack and over 25 years of improving infrastructure across sectors, our team can help you to optimise your tools and get the most out of your data. Contact us today for infrastructure support. 

Services provided

  • Solution design
  • Information architecture
  • Technical specialist with experience with the Elastic Stack
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