X

Food delivery businesses face several challenges including cost control, customer service, logistics, staffing, and unpredictable spikes in order volume. These issues are compounded when processing and delivering food orders. Delivery speed is the number one factor in customer satisfaction, with 60% of customers across all markets citing it as a key factor. The quality of perishable items is significantly affected by an increase in travel time, even if only a few minutes difference. While speed is a vital component, it is also essential to ensure the safety of delivery people on the road. Additionally, companies must ensure that they are equipped to deal with spikes in order volume, which may be predictable or unpredictable. Finally, manually planning routes is inefficient and costly.

John Lewis, one of the UK's largest omnichannel retailers, aimed to seamlessly link online shopping with the traditional shop experience while still providing exceptional service to customers. The company pioneered its first click and collect service in 2008, enabling shoppers to choose from over 200,000 products on johnlewis.com for free delivery to local John Lewis or Waitrose shops. However, the company faced challenges in improving the cross-channel shopping experience, enabling click and collect ordering, streamlining the delivery of large products to customer addresses, and providing detailed tracking information.

Polybags Ltd, a leading UK site for sourcing polythene bags and film, was using an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system provided by Kerridge Commercial Systems (KCS). The ERP system was directly integrated through a bespoke piece of software with a single carrier. However, when that carrier ceased to exist, Polybags faced a serious dilemma. The company needed a solution that would protect against overreliance on a single carrier and provide options to easily bring on more carriers without having to develop their own bespoke link.

brands4friends, Germany’s first and largest shopping club for fashion & lifestyle products, was looking to optimize its shipping processes to aid international expansion. The company was using seven shipping modules from various providers, which was time-consuming and inefficient for the logistics department. The company also wanted to increase transparency in the supply chain, monitor shipping companies, and improve the shipping experience for customers.

River Island, a global leader in stylish, affordable fashion, was facing challenges with its carrier management system. The system was manually intensive, requiring personnel to assign each parcel to a carrier on an individual basis when processing an order. Moreover, the system wasn’t aligned with physical stores, and it couldn’t handle carrier automation or package assignment. The retailer was looking for a more efficient approach to meet the demands of shifting consumer behaviour, especially across borders.

Gorgeous Shop, a luxury haircare and beauty retailer, was facing challenges with its logistics operations. The company was relying on a process of manual address data entry, which required order information to be imported into bespoke systems that varied from one courier to another. This led to picking errors, addressing errors, and manifesting issues. The company was seeking to minimize these inefficiencies and free up resources that would be better spent on sales and marketing efforts. Additionally, the company was looking to drive customer retention and loyalty by providing consistent, reliable, and cost-effective delivery options.

Halfords, a company offering 30,000 product lines related to automobiles, leisure, cycling, and more, wanted to keep up with the changing consumer behaviors as online shopping becomes more prevalent. The company aimed to launch a service that allows consumers to order goods online and collect them from a local store at no extra delivery cost. This was in response to the changing shopping habits of their customers who increasingly move between Halfords stores and the brand’s website. The challenge was to implement this without incurring any additional implementation, resource, or cost requirements.

figleaves.com, a luxury lingerie and clothing retailer, was facing challenges in improving customer satisfaction and expanding its range of delivery options. The company's in-house warehouse management system was integrated with two carriers, both offering next-day service and a more economical three- to five-day delivery option. However, customer feedback revealed that users wanted a wider range of delivery options, as well as improved online tracking. Introducing extra services would mean that each new carrier would need to be integrated separately into both the figleaves.com front end and the company’s back office system, which would incur significant costs and have an impact on time and resource. The company's goal was to find a way to introduce a greater choice of delivery options with minimal administrative burden.

The Indian broadcast satellite service provider was facing major issues with managing appointment bookings and the fleet of service agents. They did not receive real-time updates of booked appointments, agents’ whereabouts, delivery of service, and customer feedback. The lack of an automated system was causing delays in their daily business operations and was affecting their efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Papa Gino's Pizzeria was facing several challenges with its delivery system. The customer experience was compromised due to lack of visibility and consistency around delivery times. The company was struggling with forecasting driver requirements accurately and managing driver retention. They were eager to prioritize self-delivery to maintain a relationship with their customers. However, manual intervention when dispatching to various delivery partners was slow and laborious. They were unable to achieve the desired unit economies for profitable delivery. They had limited metrics to optimize fleet performance. A significant increase in delivery volume was having a detrimental effect on delivery success rates. Too many real-time decisions had to be made by the in-house operations team.

DeliverThat was ready to increase its delivery success rate and onboard new partners, but its past software providers limited its growth capacity. The company needed to find a logistics management system to free their tech team and the CEO from manual, tedious and time-consuming data entry. The current software system provided no transparency and nonexistent customer support. The company was also facing high development costs, advertising costs, human resources challenges, and issues with sources of capital.

The Fortune 50 general retailer, with nearly 50 supply chain facilities and 2,000 stores across the United States, was facing challenges in optimizing and innovating their freight operations across vendor to distribution center routes. The retailer was experiencing waves of canceled shipments due to a spike in freight demand in 2021. Many carriers were unable to fulfill the increasing volumes well above committed contract volumes, leading to increased volume hitting the spot market. This resulted in underperforming lanes that remained business critical, but drove up operating costs. Reliable capacity was needed to support peak retail seasons.

The metal and glass manufacturer, with operations across nearly 90 facilities in over 22 countries, was facing frequent and costly repricing due to shifting market conditions and expiring contracts. Rates were climbing and so were RFP administration costs. Within six months, teams faced four repricing exercises that tripled costs. The need to transport products—often with less than 24 hours notice—remained. While longer-term contracts were being negotiated, the manufacturer turned to the spot market for last-minute coverage. Shipping costs quickly added up and service quality started to slide.

A multinational industrial goods company faced challenges in delivering supply chain products to their customers, often within 24 hours’ notice. The volume, timing, and destination of these products were often unpredictable. The company also had to retrieve the products from their customers’ locations and then dynamically route them to servicing centers, stocking locations, or other customers’ operations. Traditional RFPs were not suitable for their operations due to the unpredictable volume requirements and lane pairings. Turning to the spot market for thousands of loads was unsustainable in the long run, requiring immense administrative effort and cost.

H2rOse, a fast-growing beverage company based in Los Angeles, was facing challenges with their logistics and supply chain management. The company relies on key distributor and retail partners to deliver their products nationwide. One of the main performance metrics that suppliers must adhere to with these channel partners is on-time product delivery to distribution centers. However, with traditional LTL and PTL providers, delivery dates and times have low adherence rates or are simply not provided at the time of scheduling shipments. This situation left H2rOse dealing with a lot of uncertainties and gray areas in their operations where transparency, time specifications, and guarantees for delivery could make or break a relationship with channel partners. Delays or missed shipments would lead to hefty fees that could take weeks to resolve with many hours of manpower tied up in calls and emails working toward a resolution. With so much tied to specified delivery dates and on-time delivery, H2rOse was constantly balancing premium delivery costs with required shipment time frames.

Spill Tackle, a manufacturer of industrial-grade absorbents, faced a significant challenge in their sales process due to the lack of upfront knowledge of shipping costs. The company's business model is based on moving products from manufacturing sites to distribution and customer sites. However, managing freight became a point of friction rather than a revenue driver. To close deals instantly, Spill Tackle’s inside sales team needed to know the cost of shipping upfront. With most of their shipments being six pallets or more, getting shipment quotes for Partial Truckload (PTL) was a cumbersome process involving multiple calls and emails, often taking up to two hours. This delay could potentially lead to lost sales.

Ergomotion was single sourcing their parcel shipping service with UPS. They used UPS’ powerful on-premise solution, UPS Worldship, to process orders as they were created and synchronized from their ERP. While this enabled Ergomotion to grow and scale their parcel operation, it also limited their productivity and ability to drive down costs. They were limited to only using UPS, regardless of how their customer concentration and order processing need changed over time. Ergomotion sought out a platform to reduce costs, increase efficiency and offer the flexibility they needed to support a growing, thriving operation.

The customer, a wholesale distributor and manufacturer of home maintenance products, was using multiple shipping systems, including FedEx Ship Manager, UPS WorldShip, and stamps.com for its high-volume shipping to retailers and professional installation partners across North America. The company aimed to ensure all customers’ orders are shipped out in a timely and accurate fashion, and was looking for a more efficient and streamlined system to consolidate its shipping processes under one solution. With two separate warehouses shipping its product, the company looked for a solution to provide more effective packing solutions and standardized shipping rules to improve accuracy. As the company’s shipments vary in size and weight, it needed a packing solution to automatically identify the most appropriate packing materials for each shipment. Moreover, the solution needed to integrate with NetSuite.

POLYWOOD, a company that manufactures outdoor furniture from recycled materials, was experiencing rapid growth and needed a shipping solution that could scale with its expansion. The company was manually processing every order, which was a barrier to growth. The IT department was spending a significant amount of time supporting the team to ensure labels were printing out at the correct times and that user settings were accurate for the numerous systems they were using. POLYWOOD also needed a shipping solution that would integrate seamlessly with Acumatica, their ERP system, and sync order and shipment fulfillment data.

JL Marine Systems, a designer of industry-leading boat control technology, including the Power-Pole® shallow-water anchors, was facing major packing and shipping headaches that were affecting the company’s bottom line. With a catalog featuring hundreds of diverse products — some oddly shaped and large, some loose, others pre-packed — order shipping costs were often difficult to estimate upfront, which often resulted in dimensional discrepancies and price adjustments from carriers. This meant that JL Marine had to either absorb these costs or rebill their customers - neither a good option. In addition, JL Marine sells both directly to customers and through its network of 3,500 dealers around the world - which means the company receives a constant stream of unique orders — from single-item purchases to bulk orders of large, difficult-to-package items. With the manual processes they were using for packing and shipping, JL Marine was spending too many man-hours fulfilling orders and leaving margin on the table because they lacked the automation tools to accurately estimate costs. They needed an intelligent logistics solution that would provide real-time rates and packing optimization.

Everything But the House (EBTH) was looking to expand from a regional business to national coverage. However, their logistics solution was not equipped to support a national bidder base or the shipping needs of their diverse auction inventory. Their distribution process was manual, with many large auction items marked “local pickup only”. For the few items that could be shipped, EBTH relied on internal employees to call various carriers for quotes, and to pack and send the items themselves. Furthermore, there was no way to provide shoppers with accurate shipping rates during the bidding experience. This process excluded many potential bidders from participating in an auction, in turn limiting auction values and revenue. Scaling with their existing system would be slow and costly: each new market would mean more time on the phone, additional personnel, and uncertain costs.

Viyet was faced with the challenge of closing the gap between the price they quoted their customers for shipping and the amount they were ultimately billed by the provider. The company had no way to accurately pass along the cost of shipping to their customers. The process was very hands-on, manual, and time-consuming. Two team members were dedicated to organizing shipments, calling at least three different providers to ensure competitive pricing, and then handholding the shipment every step of the way. Viyet’s margin suffered on most orders because the company had no way to accurately pass along the cost of shipping to their customers.

Greenlane, a global distributor of accessories for smoke shops, dispensary channels, and wholesale customers, was facing challenges due to its sustained growth both domestically and internationally. The company had outgrown their previous shipping software which was built for small businesses. The software was locally installed and worked with five other locally installed softwares, making it unmanageable for a company of Greenlane's size. The absence of a streamlined shipping software meant spending time on manual steps that were driving up fulfillment times. Many of Greenlane’s products require domestic and Canadian HAZMAT labels, but there was no automated system for label generation. The team was forced to use a connector software to pass order data over to separate carrier platforms, all to generate a label. Scan-scan-print was no different - the team had been forced to jump between multiple systems which resulted in more wasted time. Greenlane needed a shipping solution that would address their expanding market presence, which was restricted due to the limitations of their previous shipping connector.

Silver Oak Cellars, a California winery, was facing a significant challenge with its outdated freight calculation system. The manual system often resulted in incorrect shipping charges for customers. To maintain a positive customer experience, Silver Oak chose to absorb these incorrect costs, which was negatively impacting their bottom line. The manual calculation was difficult to maintain and the company was not recouping enough freight charges to cover what they were being charged by FedEx. As Silver Oak continued to grow, the lack of an automated API solution for rating was becoming a significant barrier to their ability to scale.

The customer, a government procurement and logistics contractor, was facing a number of challenges as the company was growing. They were unable to accurately assess shipping costs on a per-transaction basis, which was negatively impacting the customer experience due to inefficient tracking capabilities. Mislabeling shipments to military facilities could lead to substantial fines and potentially result in removal from military procurement programs. The absence of effective shipping management was negatively impacting the entire shipping process.

Sotheby’s Home (formerly Viyet) was faced with the challenge of closing the gap between the price they quoted their customers for shipping and the amount they were ultimately billed by the provider. The company had no way to accurately pass along the cost of shipping to their customers. The process was very hands-on, manual, and time-consuming. Two team members were dedicated to organizing shipments, calling at least three different providers to ensure competitive pricing, and handholding the shipment every step of the way. Sotheby’s Home margin suffered on most orders because the company had no way to accurately pass along the cost of shipping to their customers.

Hammer Nutrition, a health supplement provider, experienced a surge in orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Their previous shipping software, NetSuite Shipping, was unable to keep up with the increased demand, limiting the company to shipping only 300-400 orders per day. The company faced several challenges including slow order processing times due to heavy reliance on manual processes, inability to compare shipping rates, slow onboarding time for new workers, and lack of cartonization or packing optimization capabilities. These challenges were preventing the company from getting more orders out of the door quickly and accurately.

Maxima Racing Oils, a renowned brand in the power sports racing industry, was grappling with warehouse management and inventory visibility issues due to its legacy ERP and paper-based spreadsheets. The company's sales surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbating these issues and highlighting the need for more modern ERP and WMS solutions. Maxima's operation was riddled with pain points, including the inability to generate reports without the system freezing, lack of visibility into raw material stock levels, stock committed, and stock allocated, and no live correlation of raw material inventory needed for a work order to produce finished goods. Other issues included the lack of automatic creation of bills of lading (BOLs) and the error-prone, human-based system of cycling through the oldest inventory first for both raw materials and finished goods.

Weisser Distributing was looking for ways to speed up its fulfillment process, automate various manual processes and gain operational efficiencies. The company’s previous shipping software did not provide automated rate shopping and instead, warehouse employees were selecting shipping rates - resulting in unnecessarily high shipping costs. With a product mix of 11,000 SKUs, the company wanted an automated tool to relieve warehouse workers of “shipping fatigue” from having to decide the best shipping option per product/SKU and streamline the entire process. Moreover, the company had specific needs for shipping policies and rules to identify the best carrier to fit specific requirements, such as hazardous material and large, heavy products. Most importantly, Weisser Distributing needed a system that would integrate easily with NetSuite, its ERP solution. As the company operates out of two locations in South Dakota and Nevada, it needed consistent processes and communication channels to conduct fulfillment from multiple warehouses. With such a large product mix it was essential that product details and dimensions were automatically syncing to and from NetSuite.

In 2008, Kalalou, like many wholesale companies at the time, was manually receiving and processing inventory with paper-based systems. It needed a better way to allocate inventory and work with back orders and releases. In addition, the company was looking to improve how it dealt with containers with multiple purchase orders, receiving, and to better manage overall warehouse operations, including cube utilization, efficient rack positioning, stock rotation, and inventory placement. The company has four onsite warehouses and one offsite, and routinely maintains approximately 80 trailers of merchandise onsite. Because it has so many yard-based trailers in addition to its main warehouses, the company faced issues with replenishment to and from offsite facilities and yard-based trailers. Manual cycle counting also affected the accuracy of inventory quantities.