2014
In 2014 we were approached by a small furniture courier in the UK. It was a friend of mine who founded his small enterprise and was looking for a way to organize the business processes and put them in the cloud. Back then, logistics terminology and procedures were something new to us, so the Client had to give us a comprehensive briefing on how things work.
After we got the grasp of it, we did some research and came up with a decent hosted CRM solution that would fit the budget and get the job done. We integrated it quite fast, and Client was quite happy as his immediate needs were met.
2015
After a while, as often happens with hosted out-of-the-box solutions, the Client's business grew the need for bespoke features and functionalities not available on that particular CRM platform. He wanted delivery order tracking, van tracing, automated schedule confirmation by customers, complex workflow rules and many more.
So the Client approached us for a second time to set these up for him. We started integrating them one by one, utilizing what was available on his CRM platform, and doing as external standalone modules & scripts what was not.
But his requests did not end up there. He was keen on digitalizing more and more processes and at the same time, optimize the ones that were already in the cloud. So from there on, we started providing service regularly to the company that was just named XPERT Delivery.
2017
Up until recently one of XPERT Delivery's main revenue sources was online delivery marketplaces such as Shiply, AnyVan and uShip. The company had a team dedicated to bidding for delivery jobs on all of those platforms. This of course required a lot of effort, as every jobs had to manually be evaluated considering collection & delivery locations, item size and weight, time-frame requested by customer, what is the lowest price that we can offer, what is the best price to offer so we can win the job and many more.
In one of our regular work meetups, the Client asked: "Can we build a tool, that can do the bidding job". We were reluctant at first, as we were aware that this would be an AI project in its core and a lot of those end up in the bin but decided to give it a go.
It was a tough ride, but we did complete this project in 6 months, and it seems worked out fine. The new tool that we developed for XPERT Delivery could identify 50% of the items with AI & ML and could do the whole bidding process on its own, right until it wins the job.
As for the dedicated team, the Client didn't release any of them but instead managed to get much more leads processed while being able to apply price and bidding policy changes much faster and effective than before. In the end, he was getting twice more business with the same team, so this tool is now an integral part of the company.
2018
With all the tools, modules, features and services we integrated, the Client's software stack grew significantly. We advised XPERT Delivery's Managing Director, that the best course of action from here on would be to invest in their own bespoke enterprise app that will replace the hosted CRM and put together all those extra tools they are using in one place.
We won the deal and got to work. After eight months, we delivered the MVP we named it XPERT Delivery Cloud and started integrating it in XPERT Delivery's workflow. Only orders from some sources were processed by the new system initially so that we can get feedback early on, but after some more months - all of the company's orders were forwarded to the new system. This effectively replaced the hosted CRM solution.
Since XPERT Delivery Cloud is a tailor-made software - it works much more robust and provides functionalities specific to the particular business needs it was developed for. From this point onwards, we managed to digitalize even more business processes, and we are now in the makings of an automated schedule building module that is to improve Client operations & profits significantly.
2019
XPERT Delivery grew up significantly from its first days, so they decided that it's time for the company to focus on offering their delivery service to businesses and end customers directly. They needed a website with order booking process developed and tightly coupled with their ERP.
We were lucky enough to get this deal as well. We worked out together what was needed and delivered the website along with the delivery booking process in early 2020.
Site orders doubled, and two new business contracts were signed in a matter of weeks from launch, so Client is now looking at extending their website marketing efforts.
XPERT Delivery's success story is one that we are particularly proud of as it highlights our constant focus on delivering value to Clients with our work. As of today, XPERT Delivery is tenfold larger than what it was six years ago when we got our first contract with them. We are not giving all of it to our work of course, but merely stating that we helped. XPERT Delivery team is outstanding, and when it comes to IT and digitalization, they followed most of our advice. We are grateful for having the chance to work with them!