Fast food chain improves delivery speed

The fast-food giant had been relying on a manual last-mile delivery process, which had been hindering the company from scaling its delivery capacity while also compromising the overall delivery process.

Challenge

Our client is one of the top fast-food chains worldwide, delivering over a million orders every week amidst a steady rise of demand for delivery. The fast-food giant had been relying on a manual last-mile delivery process, which had been hindering the company from scaling its delivery capacity while also compromising the overall delivery process.

Firstly, orders had been reaching customers late due to time-leaks in assigning orders to a large fleet, as well as inefficient route planning. Moreover, it was always difficult to assess where delays were originating from – the kitchen’s preparation time, the time taken by drivers to reach the pickup stores, or the delivery time – leaving little possibility for optimization.

The second challenge was the inability to track drivers in real-time and to manage and evaluate their efficiency and general productivity due to the lack of a measurement tool – making it difficult to enhance for better customer service.

Our team was approached to provide a software solution that can manage the client’s end-to-end last mile delivery operations and enhance their visibility on the overall delivery cycle.

Solution

During the first activity, Lyve worked with the customer on defining the following Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and last mile delivery logic that are essential to achieve the required quality and speed of service:

1. Preparation Time: Time required by the kitchen to prepare the order
2. In Store Time: Maximum time between receiving the order by the restaurant and picking it up by the driver
3. Assignment Time: Time frame used to assign orders automatically to the drivers
4. Drive Time: Maximum time for delivering the orders after picking them up by the driver.
5. Automated Dispatching logic: How orders are automatically assigned to drivers based on their capacity (how many orders can a driver carry at once), vehicle type (bike, car, etc.), proximity from store, estimated time of arrival (ETA), and other criteria that were configured based on the customer’s business needs.

After defining the SLAs and delivery logic, we configured Lyve Manage Last Mile Delivery (LMD) software for 6 pilot stores. As they started using the software, they were able to:

• Manage orders from the moment they are received until they get delivered
• Track each action taken during order journey with timestamps
• Live track drivers on a map and access their status, ETAs, and performance metrics
• Access orders’ information easily by using advanced filters and switching between grid and map views
• Override the automated dispatching logic and shift to manual dispatching whenever needed

During the pilot phase, we worked with our customer on monitoring and optimizing their planned SLAs and this is where all the magic happens. This is where our advanced reporting and SLA compliance dashboard add a big value.

Our SLA compliance dashboard shows real-time data about any compliance failures. Our customer was able to see in real time which SLAs were not met due to:

• Delay in the kitchen’s preparation time
• Delay in driver’s arrival to the store
• Delay in driver’s arrival to the customer
• Delay at the customers’ premises
• Delay due to system misuse by the drivers

Results

Acting accordingly, our customer was able to introduce some improvements to their internal last mile operations and they adopted new SLAs. In addition, more guidance and training were given to the drivers to ensure their compliance to the new SLAs and maximize their adoption of the software.

As a result, our customer managed to reduce their (In-Store Time) by 21% and their (Drive Time) by 55% leading to an overall improvement in their Speed of delivery Service (SoS) by 78%. As of now, Lyve Manage powers 600+ of their stores worldwide.

Lyve’s Delivery Management Software is highly configurable and easy to use, designed to help you streamline and optimize the final mile. Its flexibility, variety of configurations and advanced algorithm empowers business to enhance operations while cutting costs.