New platform helps companies to manage their end-to-end logistics chain during the pandemic
Elly Yates-Roberts |
When the Covid-19 pandemic began affecting countries across the world earlier this year, many people suddenly started buying an increasing volume of food, beverages, medication and other basic essentials. While many companies quickly began manufacturing more of these products to meet demand, Last Mile Team was shocked to see that even those with established supply chains and crisis managers faced a scarcity of transport and delivery options. It was particularly shocking because there was also a pool of untapped human and vehicle resources available from both volunteers and industries that had been forced to temporarily shut down their operations.
To solve this problem, Last Mile Team used a simplified data model to build a platform with all the capabilities organisations need to easily and cost-effectively manage their logistics operations. The solution, which is hosted in Microsoft Azure, enables companies to quickly create short-term, ad-hoc collaborative transport networks where they can access a pool of driver and vehicle resources to improve their delivery services and cater for any increases in demand.
Another challenge brought by the pandemic was the sudden need to eliminate physical interactions between drivers and the people at the distribution and delivery locations to enable them to abide by social distancing restrictions and prevent the spread of the virus. We developed a solution that enables everyone in the logistics chain to receive advanced arrival notifications and confirm the collection or receipt of goods via their own smart device. The solution seamlessly integrates into our platform workflow, which means that no one has to download anything or log into an account, expediting the process.
We were able to develop those solutions quickly by building a mobile-first web application that allows the user to send and make calls to the REST API in the back-end of our platform with the minimal amount of data. This has enabled us to continue innovating to help our customers, even during the three months of lockdown.
Angel Batalla is founder and CEO of Last Mile Team
