When We Ate Our Own Dog Food: Innovating with Last Mile Deliveries

For a while now, last-mile deliveries are proving to be a complex puzzle for on-demand enterprises to decipher. With multiple players entering the field, it has become imperative for businesses to get every micro-transaction right. Given the number of atomic transactions which depend upon successful last-mile deliveries, companies are always looking for tools to enhance their delivery process and the pace of their operations. Tookan has been instrumental in helping companies enhance their delivery process through route optimization and automated task assignment.

Users want the deliveries to be made in the given time window, irrespective of the complications that might arise during the process. Anything later than the ETA and it can damage the credibility of the brand’, the marketing head of Tookan, Abhimanyu Vyas says. The challenge is to make Tookan better with the lessons we learn from each new transaction and client, he later adds.

Last-mile deliveries are complicated by the instant hindrances that often arise. Extreme weather conditions and technological barriers lead to delivery personnel and field-force management becoming difficult and cause delays and failed transactions. Collaborating with Jugnoo, Tookan conducted an on-field experiment to decode the aspects they could use to further improve their product. Along with the delivery personnel, Abhimanyu attempted to understand the problems that hindered the last-mile deliveries.

‘You can’t fix a problem unless you don’t get in the center of it and that’s exactly what we did’ Abhimanyu told.

Consumers are not empathetic when it comes to considering the weather conditions outside while they are expecting a delivery. Thus, the promises made by the companies pertaining to ETA’s stand firm even if a storm is raging outside. Tookan aims to inculcate this factor in their automation process, as delay in a single delivery can have an adverse impact on the remaining deliveries to be made.

‘Taking into consideration the weather for different geographical areas, we plan to inculcate it in our delivery process, thus leaving an additional time window for our delivery personnel, and this can help us reduce the frequency of delivery lags,’ Abhimanyu tells.

Technological literacy goes a long way in supporting efficient last-mile deliveries. From using GPS to locate addresses to cost-effective mobile solutions for the field-force, it is important to invest in the training of the personnel essential to the delivery process. ‘While automation can create room for some basic tech training, there is always room for a product extension that can help our clientele train their field-force, and that’s one of our major objectives for companies in South-East Asia and Africa where literacy is still a problem’, he adds.

The question is not only about how deliveries are to be made better but also about how many deliveries can be made. Tookan, through route optimization, has not only enhanced the working capacity of their clientele’s field force but now aims to take another giant leap towards improving the number of deliveries is being made.

‘The loss to a brand from one failed delivery out of ten is greater than the success attained from the successful ones, and with Tookan, we want the companies to aim for a 100% success rate, nothing less’, he emphasized.

Last-mile deliveries have a direct role to play in the micro and macro-economics of a brand, and getting them right is indispensable to the success and the sustainability of any on-demand enterprise. Tookan, across the world, is helping companies attain that success.