TRANSFORMING SUPPLY-CHAIN
The ‘last mile’ challenge
Our client is one of America's largest manufacturers and distributors of commercial hardware products with 40+ distribution and corporate facilities across the nation. Besides, they are growing and expanding through multiple focused acquisitions.
With thousands of deliveries each day, the client had the challenge of tracking and sorting physical copies of delivery documents from the delivery, quality assurance, and production units. The process involved storing, processing, and forwarding many physical documents such as waybills and delivery receipts across all decentralized locations. Relying on their complex paper-based process, particularly when the key documents become misplaced, overlooked, or lost due to manual work, resulted in a bad customer experience, higher costs of delivery, and sometimes loss of revenue.
Digitizing the delivery experience
To improve customer experiences and optimize delivery costs, the client recognized the need to rethink their entire doorstep delivery process. They also needed to reshape the way dispatching, proof-of-delivery, delivery rescheduling, and product returns are handled. They partnered with Rapidops to transform and digitize the end-to-end last-mile delivery operations, including loading, dispatch planning, fleet management, real-time monitoring, and proof of delivery.
Reshaping the future of last-mile ecosystem
Together with the client, we performed a detailed baseline assessment of their current operations. We interviewed their delivery managers to identify the key challenges, overheads, bottlenecks, and customer expectations. After thorough research, our team mapped out both current and next-gen processes and prepared a transformation roadmap for the most advanced and paperless last-mile delivery platform, which automated manual work, boosted margins, and improved delivery experience.
Next, our product team designed, developed, and delivered an end-to-end platform in just 90 days.
DELIVERY APP
The automated last-mile delivery platform
The new platform automated shipment planning, dispatching, fleet assignment, route management, real-time monitoring across all locations, and much more. The following suite of features enabled delivery staff to provide an excellent customer experience and gain operational efficiency:
Order & Shipment Planning
Plan and prepare shipments for all customer orders based on accurate location, products, shipping SLAs, and available fleet.
Dispatch Management
Pick the right shipping channels and vehicles, and enable warehouse teams to verify, load, and dispatch the shipments with automated features.
Real-time Notifications
Real-time notifications for each shipment - at each step from order to delivery - enables managers to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.
Multiple Shipping Methods
Automatically optimizes the delivery costs, time, and customer experiences with built-in integrations with third-party shipping partners such as FedEx and USPS.
Rescheduling Support
Enable customers to reschedule their deliveries and quickly reschedule the deliveries to address delays and unexpected events in real-time.
Enterprise Security
Secured with role-based access controls, encryption, audit trails, single-sign-on, and many more enterprise security standards to enable safe and secure operations.
Omnichannel
The platform offers a seamless experience for every stakeholder - managers, warehouse staff, drivers, and customers with mobile and web apps.
Real-time Visibility
Know where each truck and shipments are in real-time using GPS IoT devices and maps to precisely predict the delivery times and monitor all operations.
THE IMPACT
Delivering ROI and gearing up for growth
By automating the entire last-mile delivery process, including proof of delivery, the client realized a significant boost in logistics operational efficiency while enhancing flexibility and interoperability. The increased on-time deliveries and the significant decrease in delivery delays and failures resulted in a higher customer satisfaction rate and a consolidated delivery efficiency improvement.
With a streamlined process, reduced paperwork, and better access to information, the client achieved a decline in invoicing errors, improved productivity, and business profitability. With a streamlined process, reduced paperwork, and better access.