You probably don’t remember when the milkman from the local dairy delivered bottles of fresh cold milk to your front porch at dawn. Snug in bed, you could hear the glass bottles clinking in those old wire milk baskets as he replaced your empties with full ones. You could count on it like birdsong. Since then, much has changed, but the last-mile delivery KPI remains: “deliver on expectations.”
Have you ever wondered when a package will arrive and hope you’ll be home when it gets there? Or, why it didn’t arrive at all?
Most likely, it’s because last-mile logistics and delivery have not kept up with the growth of ecommerce channels that exploded during the pandemic. When retailers jumped on the trend, offering in-store and digital buying experiences, they struggled to deliver the frictionless and secure omnichannel journey that consumers expect from purchase to doorstep. Without it, customer loyalty wanes. It’s a problem for the digital supply chain.
“Born as a home delivery carrier, we experienced firsthand the challenges of an industry that relies on complex fulfillment networks supported by disjointed digital systems,” says Antonio Perini, CEO, Milkman Technologies. “Overcoming these silos and inefficiencies became our goal. We became a technology provider to enable transparency, efficiency, and a superior buyer experience.”
Post-pandemic online buying patterns favor lean, green shopping
Consumer expectations of online shopping continue to grow as everything goes digital. When you consider sustainable delivery practices (all those trucks and packaging), most delivery carriers and local distributors in retailers’ digital supply chains fall far behind. Many offer green options as an “extra” instead of by “default,” which pushes the responsibility to the customer and misses an opportunity to delight.
Concerned about their carbon footprint and inflation, consumers look for retailers who offer sustainable delivery options and transparency at a price that doesn’t force them to “abandon cart!” Plus, they expect options to reschedule or re-route their orders when the unforeseen happens.
Milkman Technologies addressed these challenges with a last-mile delivery solution that enables retailers and logistics providers to offer sustainable and convenient delivery options The close integration with SAP Transportation Management and SAP Commerce Cloud enables the Milkman Last Mile Platform to deliver real-time delivery updates to recipients and efficient last-mile rescheduling options in the digital supply chain.
Going the last mile with recipient-centric home delivery
The Milkman Last Mile Platform gives organizations more accurate knowledge of customer data and better control of the delivery execution process. And multiple delivery options to prevent overbooking, with green choices, a fully branded tracking page, and feedback collection—make for much happier customers. Plus, customer service can help customers better using interactive communication flows with full transparency over the order delivery process. This has created a 40% drop in “where is my order?” calls.
Sustainability is served with cutting-edge route optimization algorithms to maximize successful first-delivery attempts for better-distributed fleet saturation, volumes, and routes, with less mileage waste and vehicle impact on CO2 emissions and traffic congestion.
“We are at the very intersection of a sustainable consumer experience and the digital supply chain,” Perini says. “Taming the complexity of today’s fulfilment networks for omnichannel is the most exciting challenge ever.”
Moreover, Milkman Technologies’ ability to address both the B2B and B2C markets through a single cloud platform for first and last-mile logistics bridges the gap between two previously separated ends of the digital supply chain. This greatly increases operational efficiencies while lowering costs. As a result, retailers have experienced:
- 5%+ delivery success on the first attempt
- 80% higher customer satisfaction rate
- 40% fewer end-customer query calls per order
- 20% lower operational costs
- 11% fewer kilometers driven
A winner of the SAP Innovation Awards for 2023
From order promise to physical delivery, the Milkman Last Mile Platform offers customers choices, control, and convenience while exceeding their expectations with reliability and trust. Automation and a quick and easy implementation boost economies of scale across the digital supply chain.
“The Milkman Delivery Dashboard was the optimum tailor-made solution to create additional capacity to satisfy high consumer demand,” explains Olaf van den Brink, chief operating officer, Public Group. “Along with its suite of mobile apps that were used to manage drivers (Milkman Driver App) and our fulfillment locations, it took less than two weeks to get the entire operating model up and running.”
For their accomplishments, Milkman Technologies is a travel and transportation industry winner in the 2023 SAP Innovation Awards Program. Download the pitch deck to see how its interactive last-mile delivery platform integrates the digital supply chain for ecommerce and last-mile delivery operations with green choices to delight customers with precise appointments at low cost.
Milkman Technolgies
