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Automating alcohol delivery supply chain

BeerRun was stuck in a time where they were getting alcohol delivery requests on calls, text messages, and Excel was their primary order management platform. We helped them automate their end-to-end supply chain process.

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Problem statement

A rapidly growing company struggling to keep up with demand

BeerRun Chicago was a fast-growing alcohol delivery company that outgrew its manual ordering and logistics solutions. The company wanted to automate its supply chain process from inventory, vendor assignment to order and delivery. The core outcome is an intuitive way for customers to place orders in-app instead of through text messages like they currently were.

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BeerRun approached us with a bittersweet dilemma. They were growing users faster than they could keep up using their current workflow. In the current process, they were tracking everything manually with spreadsheets and text messages, calls, which was getting out of hand to manage. Our goal was to thoroughly research the supply chain process that Beer Run had in place to identify inefficiencies and see where we could leverage new technology to improve user experience.

Project scoping

Playing out the current order journey
to define the best plan of action

We played out the current ordering and supply chain process to scope out the optimal user flow for the new application. Our team quickly found the area we wanted to automate to reduce friction in the ordering and fulfillment processes. 

The apparent target was the ordering process. Currently, customers would text or call in their orders, which was extremely tedious and challenging to keep track of. We scoped out an eCommerce solution to allow users to order and pay within the app. The next area of focus was order fulfillment. Keeping track of who, what, and where of vendors and drivers was an immensely inefficient process. We planned a solution to automate picking vendors and drivers, notify them of the incoming order, and allow them to fulfill it quickly.  

Bringing it together would give us an end-to-end order placement, tracking, and fulfillment solution.

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Putting digitalization into timelines

With the primary purpose and end goal established, we planned the design and development efforts, which were then translated into week-wise trackable milestone plans for the team to align their deliverables.

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Color & Typography

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Design concept

Sketching a digital-only order and shipment journey

The biggest problem for BeerRun was to digitalize the users placing orders through calls or text messages. We created a design system that would make it easy for the users to find, place orders, and follow it through with a streamlined order delivery process. Besides making the journey easy, we also kept the user flow intuitive with the help of industry-accepted elements, content, and icons, since both eCommerce and on-demand users are habitual to a specific in-app movement and outcome.

Development objective

3 App versions. 1 Agenda.
Supply chain automation

The team worked on Beer Run for over one year with an Agile development approach, enabling us to deliver a high-quality product in a rapidly moving space iteratively. The agenda was straightforward: make alcohol ordering and delivery a digital-first experience by providing every stakeholder with a dedicated native iOS application.

We built an advanced order pipeline that gave admins powerful insights into orders coming in, allowing them to route them as needed quickly. 

Drivers were given an intuitive UI to choose jobs and quickly pick up and drop off orders with in-built mapping. 

Customers were provided with a fantastic experience that focuses on simplicity, with a beautiful eCommerce storefront and order pipeline.

The application underwent intensive scalability testing to ensure it can stand up to thousands of orders and still be intuitive to admins and drivers. We iterated countless times to perfect the user journey.

Team Structure

Frontend Developer
Backend Developer
Project Manager
DevOps Engineer
Quality Analyst
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Tech Stack

swift
node
google-cloud
cloud-firestore

Third Party Integration

moltin
stripe
alamofiae
google-place-api
google-map
Executing solutions

Perfecting the core of on-demand
delivery - order tracking

BeerRun wanted a way for users to intuitively track the status of their deliveries within the app, as well as an intuitive solution for drivers to be able to plan their routes. 

We built an advanced order tracking system that live-tracks the driver once they have confirmed they are on the pickup or delivery route. The application was engineered to intelligently put the driver on an efficient route for pickup and delivery. On the other hand, the customers could track where the driver is and see their order status on an in-app map. 

The results

Post the iOS launch, we are delighted to hear the positive feedback we were receiving from customers who are using the app. We continue to help our clients maintain the app and add features to it, and we have started working with them to create an Android version.

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Our automation efforts helped Beer Run increase its order capacity by 50%

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