Cargo and Logistics Solutions
Client
SM Express logistics was a small cargo company which wanted to enter into a niche of home furnishings logistics. As home furnishings were transforming into a Just in time inventory model, SM understood the importance of quick deliveries and gauged that other players in the market were not flexible enough to cater to the needs of a specific niche. Their operations were all generalized to handle all kinds of cargo and did not understand the specific needs that this industry had.
Industry
Cargo and Logistics Industry
Market
India
Challenges
The challenges were at moving goods quickly from multiple distributors who already had IT systems in place. The goods were packed late into the night and had to move to air connections overnight to reach the big cities across India. Further from these cities the connectivity to last mile stores was critical and necessary. If the supply at retail stores could be made before they open at 11 am then the entire supply chain would be a great success. Apart from that the billing requirements were unique to this industry and so were onward connections which were to be made for each of these parcels, as they sometimes had multiple cities which were connecting the goods.
Solution
A route based software which linked, pick up, transit and delivery on routes helped SM achieve what was considered an ambitious dream back then. The linking of routes made the misrouting of parcels almost negligible while keeping a real time track of the location of the parcel. Each branch had inscanning of material which was made simpler by the use of mobility solutions. Apart from that a detailed customer portal was offered to help customers make their own bookings.
Last but not the least a full set of API’s were prepared which helped capture the sales information from the customers and convert the same into the Airway bill booking information and a real time allocation of Airway bills was given back to the customer. This helped in reducing the time taken for bookings and also reduced a lot of data entry mistakes. The billing accuracy increased tremendously since the data was directly coming from the billing software of the client.