Automating Delivery Service for a Supermarket linked with Tuk-Drivers from a Finance Company with Minimum Effort
Inspiration
Nowadays Every Supermarket / Grocery Store is struggling to deliver their food or groceries to the people who has been locked-down for their own safety due to COVID-19 outbreak.
A Finance Company made a partnership with a Supermarket Company, which they could connect their existing Tuk and Mini Lorry drivers as the people who do the deliveries of the Supermarket.
Problem
As for connecting the drivers, at the first glance you’ll get the idea that this needs to be done by a Mobile Application where the Supermarket can notify the drivers to pickup the orders and deliver it to consumers. As we should take time criticality into great consideration, this application need to be done as very soon as possible. But, will it be possible to make a mobile application within two to three days ?
Pain
Even if the mobile app is developed, training the local people who are not very much familiar with technical devices to use the app will be a hectic task. Also, most of them does not know how to use or does not even have any smart phones. They do have a vehicle and they also need the money but there is no possible way to go on hires for them.
Solution
We as a technological company who provides CRM solutions for the Finance Company, introduced an effective and an efficient way to answer this problem.
With Google App Scripts, SMS Gateway and CRM APIs we managed to come up with a solution works as shown below.
And also, we made a rewards awarding mechanism for the riders. Once a Rider completes a Delivery they are getting rewards and rewards are mapped through the Leads in CRM solution.
Also made the entire process easier for the Drivers, as we made the application in a way where the Supermarket does not need to call the drivers and assign deliveries for them. The entire Solution is handled via SMS messages, no smartphones involved/required at all for the riders.
Technicality
The Supermarket updates their orders from consumers and hand it over to the Finance Company. Then there will be a specific member from the Finance Company who assigns the order deliveries to their customers (drivers).
1/ Setting up the Order Form in an User friendly way.
2/ If the requirements occur, you can add below options and many more features that google sheets support
- Drop downs
- Date Pickers
- Auto-filling Drop downs
- Check Boxes
3/ Assigning orders will be done entirely via SMS Medium for both the Driver and the Customer. And here is where the Google Scripts takes it’s part. You can Use the “URLFetchApp” to call the APIs for SMS Gateway.
- You can find the <> Script Editor in Tools Menu bar
4/ Now that you are connected with the SMS gateway, when the Agent select a Driver from the Drop-down list, an Automated SMS will be triggered to Driver and Customer.
5/ Vola ! Now it’s all good and done, almost. Then after the Delivery has been made, Rider should reply the order number to the Finance Company and SMS Listener will read it and Change the Delviery Status, automatically to complete the process.
#Deliveries #Simplified #Automated
