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
DELIVERY MANAGER & CONTROL TOWER
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:
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.
Real-time planning and monitoring of all deliveries
All stakeholders and, most importantly, the drivers must always be updated and guided with the information and changing conditions at every step of the delivery process, including the route plans, customer availabilities, traffic, and next deliveries.
With customer addresses, warehouses, and fleet’s geo-coded data, the shipping managers can quickly devise the most efficient delivery methods and trips in minutes. With fleet and shipment tracking features on the web app, the managers can monitor the live location of each order on the live map view. They can immediately respond to exceptions such as rescheduling, returns, and route changes.
WAREHOUSE EXPERIENCE
Dispatch & Loading
The warehouse staff had to decide which and how many products to load manually, in which trucks, in which order, and track it all with a paper-based process. We saved the client hundreds of hours of manpower at each warehouse by digitizing and automating these manual and repetitive processes with an intuitive mobile app for warehouse staff.
Driver Experience
As the last stretch of the delivery process, drivers need to have the most up-to-date information during delivery trips.
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.
Over the last 20 years, I've worked with many firms, onshore and offshore, and the team at Rapidops is the best that I have ever worked with.