Our team of consultants started working with Deleezy with a goal to develop scalable tech solutions and processes. Our consultants did a deep dive into Deleezy’s order processing flow and prepared a user journey map. It was important for us to understand the pain points of Deleezy’s customers and drivers before proposing the solution. We ran a design sprint to bundle all the pain points, prioritize the pain points and then work on solutions. At the end of the exercise, we developed a 5 phase plan, with each phase having its defined Objectives and Key Results that we aimed to deliver.

Phase 1 – Develop applications for Deleezy’s stakeholders

As Deleezy was a two-sided marketplace, we had to develop applications for all the stakeholders of Deleezy. Each of them had its own needs but, in the end, had to interact with a central ordering service to ensure data integrity.

Objective – To reduce the time taken to place an order

Key Results – 1.) Users can place an order in just 2 clicks 2.) Admins can view and assign orders using various filters 3.) Drivers can view the orders in their mobile phones

-              Customers

o   Customers of Deleezy had two basic requirements, either they want to get an item delivered from their place to some other place or they want something to be picked up from a store where they had already placed an order.

o   We wanted to make sure that the customers can place an order from anywhere, that’s why we decided to build a web application and a mobile application

o   The mobile application was built using React Native to ensure that we can deploy the application on both Android and iOS using the same codebase.

o   The applications had a very simple interface to enter the order details and make the payment.

o   Once the order was placed user would receive an order number.

-              Merchants

o   Merchants for Deleezy were businesses who were using Deleezy to deliver their items to their customers. So, for Merchants it was important that they can enter just one pickup address (which was their warehouse/store address) and multiple drop off items to different addresses.

o   For Merchants, we created a web application and a mobile application.

o   We developed a simple interface for merchants to place an order in just 2 clicks, similar to that of a customer.

o   Merchants can pay for the order online and receive an order number.

-              Driver

o   Before the drivers could drive for Deleezy, they had to undergo a background check. We created a mobile application for drivers through which they can upload their documents, which then would go to the admin for approval.

o   Once the driver was approved, Drivers can define their shift timings

o   Drivers can then look at the orders assigned to them along with the sequence in which these orders have to be processed.

o   Pickups and drop-offs were separately marked as instructions for the driver.

-              Admin

o   Admin plays a crucial role in managing the operations.

o   They should be able to view all the active drivers.

o   They should see all the orders

o   Assign orders to drivers

o   Track the progress of all the order

o   We developed a web application for the admin to be able to perfom these operations.

-              Ordering service

o   Binding everything together is an ordering service in the backend.

o   The order service would take pickup and drop off locations of an order and give pricing to the users, the price was calculated based on the distance and the number of items in an order.

o   Once the admin has assigned an order, the ordering service will share the sequence in which the orders have to be processed with the drivers.

Phase 2 -Develop custom algorithms

Once we had digitized the operations, the next step was to develop algorithms to optimize the operations and reduce the order head from the admin.

Objective – Reduce the monitoring overhead on the admin

Key Results – Automatic order assignment and tracking

-              Zoning

o   We started by creating zones for order processing.

o   As the company was operational in the lower mainland region of Vancouver city, the admin can define zones in that area. A Zone helps in the assignment of orders, so a driver will get orders in the zone in which they are driving currently.

-              Auto order assignment

o   To eliminate the manual step of order assignment, we created the auto order assignment service.

o   When a user places an order, we would look at the pickup address and then assign a zone number to it based on the zone defined by the admin.

o   Now, all the drivers in that zone will receive a notification of that order

o   Driver can then chose to accept of reject that notification

o   If none of the drivers in that zone would have accepted the order, the order notification will move to the next available driver closest to that zone.

Phase 3 – Setup a communication channel

Objective – Create a communication channel between admin and

Key Result – Detailed insights on usage and customer interaction

-              Notifications

o   We had created a notification service to send bulk notification to customers and merchants

o   This notification service was also used to give updates on the order

-              Marketing Insights

o   We had set up google analytics and pendo to track user behaviour within the application

o   This helped us in understanding how the customers were interacting with the applicaiton

-              Tracking

o   We integrated google maps and tracking for the customers to track their order

o   Admin can now track all their drivers through a web application

-              Marketing coupons

o   Users can now use coupons and other marketing artifacts when placing an order

Phase 4 – Bring Artificial intelligence and machine learning

Objective – Reduce the order processing time

Key Result – Reduce Time taken to process an order by 30%

-              Dynamic routing

o   We created a model to created dynamic routes for the drivers to process an order efficiently and get more orders while on the road

o   We used traffic conditions, order heat map and weather conditions to generate routes

-              Dynamic pricing

o   To ensure that customers are getting their value for money, we developed Dynamic pricing for the customers

o   Depending on the demand, weather, time of day, user profile etc we developed a model to come up with a price for the order

Phase 5 – Optimizing cost

In the last phase, we focused on how to reduce the cost of operation for Deleezy

Objective – Reduce the over head cost

Key Results -

-              Order Bundling

o   If any driver was going in the same direction as any new order, we started bundling the orders together.

o   Now drivers can process more orders and customers will have a reduced deliver time.

-              Auto verification of Drivers

o   We linked driver verification with Trulioo to verify the drivers

o   Now admins don’t have to manually go over all the uploaded documents of a driver before approving them

-              Bulk ordering

o   Merchants were placing the most number of orders and they needed a way to place order with 100-200 items in one go

o   We created a User Interface to simplify putting more than 100 items in one go.

-              Repeated order

o   Merchants and customers were placing same order at a regular frequency.

o   We developed an interface for them to create repeated orders

-              Invoicing for merchants

o   To reduce the cost of processing payments, we gave the options of invoicing for the merchants.

o   Merchants can create orders and then based on the settings by admin, they can pay monthly, bi-weekly or weekly.

-              Open API’s to integrate with partners

o   To increase the horizon and reduce the efforts of creating orders from our e-commerce partners, we create an open API platform.