Online shopping is already a common practice in the digital age, meaning the last mile logistics is now a market and a lucrative business too. However, given the diffusion of parcel distribution and thus the increase of points of destinations, number of transactions, trucks and drivers, it is not easy for delivery companies to adapt and administer the explosion of logistics procedures, causing the long period of ‘pending’ or ‘delay’ status in customers’ shopping accounts.
The birth of DRun, a real-time interface designated for delivery business, is to change the once uncontrollable and uncertain into manageable and data-based procedures - to keep goods in the eyes of bosses or managers of delivery companies.
Cashless settlement
Cash transaction used to dominate the delivery business. Drivers would carry petty cash, either by themselves or the accounting department, for charges when customers receive the parcel and pay the order. However, manual processing of cash payment and settlement often leads to mis-calculation and finally discrepancies between the should-be and practical amount received.
If a delivery company has 20 drivers and each of them is assigned to carry 15 orders per day, in a five-day working week, still USD 7500 would turn to be sunk cost if the average amount of is just USD 5. Including the required bank deposit cost, the necessary human resources spent on tracking the missing amount, and time cost, the item of settlement cost would possess a big portion in the expenditure pie chart.
DRun supports QR-code based cashless mobile payment system AlipayHK. Every screen of QR-code would become black-and-white transaction record in point-of-sale machines and so the error of manual cash exchanging and transferring procedures would be diminished. Together with the well-known feature of short settlement period and low administration cost, now the delivery companies could save the once unavoidable sunk cost and grasp the general picture of daily transaction with graphs and figures.
Fleet tracking
The rise of ecommerce raises the expectation of customers of receiving what they have ordered on time and in their preferred locations, but it is often a challenge for delivery companies to monitor the fleet in every second given their limited resources.
DRun includes a dashboard that shows the details of each order. In addition, it allows bosses or managers to locate the real-time locations of drivers through the in-plugged Google Map function. While the drivers’ mobile devices have installed DRun, their exact locations would be shown by GPS, which allows bosses or managers to be notified the updated operations, without endless calling or checking for confirmation.
Validation and optimisation
Customers often provide unofficial or mistakenly written addresses. In the past, drivers themselves would take time to manually confirm each address.
After entering the customer-provided addresses, the address validation function of DRun would show computer-readable addresses, i.e. recognised by Google Map, in seconds. Afterwards, based on the validated addresses, DRun’s build-in route automation would provide suggested route(s) on the screens of drivers’ mobile devices. The route(s) are the synchronised traffic maps informing the shortest and most time-saving ways drivers could go from their starting points to destinations.
Contract-based communication on mobile chatbox
The delay of particular orders may not be caused by wrong addresses/delivery routes or by underperformance of drivers, but by the unavoidable traffic jams or accidents on the roads.
To allow drivers communicate with customers along the way, DRun is equipped with mobile chatbox letting drivers reporting the latest road status to customers without revealing the drivers’ mobile or WhatsApp numbers. The non-disclosure chatbox aims to ensure that drivers could keep contact with customers without phone-calling disruption. Bosses or managers may even join particular conversations to form 3-party chats in the non-disclosure chatbox to help drivers explain the delivery policies or on-site difficulties. Whenever facing such abrupt or unexpected incidents, it is important for delivery companies to response the customers’ enquiries in seconds and manage their expectation.
Objective performance management
In DRun company accounts, besides sorting by orders, bosses or managers could review the daily operation by the names of drivers, i.e. trace the drivers’ performance based on the amount and number of delivery orders they complete every day and their on-time rate. The order-based chatbox communication between drivers and customers is also an important reference to reflect how customers feel and react the delivery services. It would be a useful tool for companies to formulate business strategies and adjust human resources policies with the reference of objective data.
About William Hung
In the past decade, William has been participating in the business development of advanced analytics, big data and artificial intelligence in the Greater China region. He recently joins DataTech, a spin-off camp of Payment Asia for new technology development, to serve as Business Development Director.
About Payment Asia
Established in 1999 and based in Hong Kong, Payment Asia is a leading ePayment and ecommerce company across Asia, providing most secure and innovative technology for the online and mobile payment solutions to local and global businesses. Our omnichannel payment solutions provide broad range of payment methods including credit card, debit card, China Union Pay and eWallet which comprising the elements of digital marketing and artificial intelligence.
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