Logistics CRM

The customer has requested to develop a core platform which would include a  rich set of CRM and ERP features. Using such a platform, the customer would outsource its services to other small group of clients.

The system to be developed should be transparently integrated into the existing APIs and tracking / shipment boards offered by the US data providers. The scope of the core platform functionality and codebase of the core framework was very large and covered lots of business processes related to product management, pricing and ordering areas.

The technical challenges in this case were:

• Necessity to understand and drastically improve the details of complex various business processes related to order management, order handling workflow, service management and integration with other old technologies
• Diverse set of technologies used internally (including several custom ones developed by the core customer’ development team)
• Necessity to ensure the scalability of the system developed, as well as its proper operation under very high workload conditions on production stage
• Necessity to perform integration with diverse set of external subsystems used for performing payments, inventory management, sales management, calculation of shipping costs, invoice generation, IP phone communication, etc.

After analyzing specific requirements and skills level, LightClix introduced developers for the dedicated team cooperation model. The initial team of several specialists was selected by our recruitment department and consisted of 1 Architect, 1 Senior Quality Assurance specialist, 2 Senior .NET Developers, 1 Senior React Developer, and a Project Manager. The team was rather multi-cultured and versatile (consisted of employees from Canada, Ukraine, Poland and Portugal).

One of the most important factors of project success was well established communication and knowledge sharing process. The challenge was the efficiency of communication between the offshore team and the in-house staff, which the team members had to contact directly. In order to establish the overall communication team and gather all the participants into collaborative team, best practices and approaches were recommended by LightClix based on previous experience of providing dedicated teams services.

Transparent communication during the system developed was achieved by:

• Interactive iterations planning
• Regularly scheduled Skype / Hangout meetings with the customer
• Daily chats using instant messaging and voice conferences via Skype as well as email based communication
• Ongoing status and progress reporting
• Usage of collaboration tools for efficient knowledge sharing, communication and tasks management

The resulting system was fully integrated into the platform provided by the customer and included the following functionality:

• X10 times faster shipment management and tracking while also using integration with the old system
• ‘Planning Module’ that sets sales plans for all agents in the company and calculates salary based on those plans
• Flexible pricing management engine & support for various delivery methods
• Multiple payment options with Real-time alerts and notifications system
• Integration with external boards, leads generation and data processing systems

To handle complete tracking workflow, the system includes integration with third-party systems using several EDI-based communication channels.

In general,

• The client’s revenue has increased by 22% over the span of 2 years.
• The number of new clients has grown by 294%
• Satisfaction feedback went up from 3 stars to 4.7 stars
• Invoice generation time and overall response time has been reduced from 5 min to less than 10 sec
• Employee’s overall job satisfaction has increased by 35%