In the CAPE Group's online customer portal, your customers have direct access to all relevant information, including transport information.
Challenge
The logistics sector faces many challenges. Including, among other things, raw material shortages, congestion of traffic networks and extreme diesel prices. Due to these challenges, the focus is currently not on outbound logistics. Surprising. Because on the other hand there is a growing pressure to deliver goods faster with a great need for good information facilities. The expectations of this information are increasing, because we are becoming more and more accustomed to the track-and-trace service of companies such as bol.com, Amazon or flash delivery companies such as Gorillas. Communicating real-time information is increasingly becoming the norm rather than a unique selling point.
A challenge that led Mammoet Road Cargo, among others, to decide to develop an online Customer Portal together with the consultants from CAPE Group, which gives customers direct access to all relevant transport information.
Solution
In the collaboration, CAPE Groep and Mammoet Road Cargo form a close-knit team that looks for solutions and possibilities together. At the start of the project, there was still a lack of clarity about which information is relevant to customers and how we should display this information. After a number of roadmap sessions about the details of the portal, a good picture of the product has been created. From the first version of the product to the market until its long-term development. During the first quarter of 2022, a first version of the customer portal was created, which enabled us to switch quickly thanks to the low-code development. The first version of the portal is now live and we have evaluated how the first phase went, so that we can continue to develop the team and the collaboration in the future.
The customer portal is connected to the existing Transport Management System (TMS), which has all data relevant to the customer to keep track of the status of the order. The development of the customer portal was tackled using the scrum method, in which further development of the TMS has not stood still and users have not been hindered by the development of the portal.
Result
To onboard the first major customer, we visited the head office in Italy. There, we worked a day with the system, together with the logistics team, to master all the ins and outs. This also generated a lot of valuable feedback that we could immediately process to make the system even more user-friendly. Nowadays, full use is made of the customer portal MRC-Connect daily, and the benefits are already very noticeable. We will devote the upcoming weeks connecting our top 75 relations to the platform.
Future: further development
After connecting the largest accounts, the further development of the customer portal will start. A number of modules will be added in steps. Of which order enrichment will now be the first. In this module, customers will be given the opportunity to add information to transport orders. For example, additional address information or loading and unloading instructions. In addition, we can issue tasks to our customers via a to-do list when we miss something, such as an unloading reference.
After that, we will also start developing the charter module. This means that not only customers, but also suppliers will soon be able to use the customer portal. We then have the option of sending transport orders via the portal and digitally sharing relevant transport information with each other. The direct link to our TMS will enable us to get information to the right places faster with less communication
Why Mammoet Road Cargo chose CAPE Group
During the preparation phase, we spoke with two other parties. One quickly fell off, so we compared CAPE's offering and approach with one other party.
We chose CAPE based on our excellent experiences and because we could create the most suitable solution together. Due to advancing insights, this approach could initially cost more time and money during development. However, it would provide us with a better fit and the most desirable solutions. This will reduce the time that has to be spent on maintenance and the necessary adjustments in the future.
That adjustment has certainly happened in the development of the MVP solution. In order to be able to properly serve the different types of customers and users, we added several scenarios that the customer portal had to provide. This has resulted in a somewhat broader set-up with fewer functionalities (not yet the entire process) in the first release. This has affected the costs, but this certainly outweighs the benefits of using the customer portal. No process goes smoothly, which is why periodic evaluations are valuable to further sharpen the knives and take the team spirit to an even higher level.
