Logistics means managing your goods and services transportation including the processes such as material handling, warehousing, supply chain management etc. If you wish to expand your business you should have highly reliable logistics management. However, logistics is probably the hardest thing to manage amongst all business processes.
There may be situations when the freight brokers spend too much checking the load board, or your truck gets hauled at the mid-way point to a warehouse, on the other side some of your trucks are moving empty; such situations can arise as logistics is highly segmented and comprises of several departments. It requires a 24 x 7 monitoring to track all continuous activities. To all these, mobile application development is the perfect solution. An On-demand logistics management application can work across all departments visible and predictable. In this article, we are going to tell how an on-demand logistics management application is beneficial for you and how to develop it.
Benefits of an on-demand logistics app:
Easy Tracking:
Accurateness plays an important role while deciding the quality of your services. For delivering goods at the right time, geolocation tracking is an essential feature that helps the admin to get the real-time location of the truck. It can also notify the customers as well.
Better Customer Service:
You can provide quality services to your clients or customers through an on-demand logistics app. Through the tracking functionality, a customer can be well aware of his courier’s delivery time. Moreover, if a customer wouldn’t be able to present at his address during the delivery time, then he can contact the team to deliver his product in his neighborhood.
One-click booking:
Through an app, you can book multiple parcels or even a cargo from anywhere within a few minutes. It brings automation to the business. Unlike traditional business, on-demand logistics will eliminate a lot of your paperwork and can save your business from minor errors.
Optimize dispatches & routes:
You can the best possible route for transportation for delivery scheduling; while the built-in databases and barcode scanning features can improve freight dispatching.
Read more: How to create the best business plan for your mobile application success?
Confirmation assurance:
Product delivery assurance is one of the essential reasons for using an on-demand app. It lets the customer, as well as the company, know that product has been successfully delivered to the customer.
Types of logistic mobile applications:
Fleet Management:
A fleet management app keeps the record of data & information related to your vehicles and fleet. These apps help in coordinating and managing your vehicles from a central system for running all your fleet hassle-free. Such apps can reduce costs and boost the performance of your business.
Logistics on-demand:
Applications that fall under this category are all about goods delivery as per the users’ requirements. These apps not only fulfill users’ needs instantly but also help in building connections.
Warehouse mobile apps:
A warehouse mobile app can store a huge amount of data related to your products of the warehouse. It provides you as well as the customer’s easy access to the data and lets you know whenever the items are going out of stock.
Tracking & forwarding applications:
Such apps can give you data about the real-time concerning routes and delivery of the products. It also displays the driver’s location which is obviously a prominent feature.
Read more: Overcoming Delivery and Logistics Challenges in E-commerce
What are the essential features of an on-demand logistics app?
The features of an on-demand logistics app depend on the entity. The common ones are:
For Admin:
- Highly secure login
- To edit, delete and view users
- To edit, delete, and view services
- Providing details of current, pending, and completed services.
- Tracking drivers along with their correspondence orders
- Vehicles management
- Invoice management of pending failed and completed payments
- Trip details such as timing, fuel consumption etc.
- Push notifications
- In-app message call
For Drivers:
- Highly secure registration
- Pending request details
- Request accept
- Complete details with GPS location of delivery
- Details of completed/pending/ongoing trips
- In-app navigation
- Accepting payment & generating an invoice
- Payment status & in-app messages, and call
For Users:
- Highly secure registration
- Credential details like address, payment methods, contact information
- Quotes estimation
- Managing & scheduling bookings
- Notification alerts
- Delivering tracking
- Payments & billings
- Reviews & ratings
- Push notifications
- In-app messages & calls
What advanced features you can include?
Here are some advanced features that you can include on your app to make it stand alone from its competitors:
- Make it on cloud infrastructure
- Provide offline support
- IoT integration
- Multilingual and multi-currency
- Daily log for the drivers
- Fuel expense trackers and route optimization
- Bar-code & QR code scanning for secure delivery
- Discounts, coupons, and promo codes
- Referral policy
Best technologies to deploy for the mobile application:
For SMS, Voice, and Phone Verification: Use Twilio, and Nexmo
Push Notifications: Twilio, and Push.io
Database: There are many options for this such as MongoDB, MailChimp, Postgress etc.
For Cloud Environment: Google, Azure or AWS are best
Payments can be integrated by Paypal, Stripe, Braintree or any other convenient payment method
Frontend development: Use Swift (iOS), Java (Android), CSS, and BootStrap
Backend development: Use JS, AngularJS, Python or Ruby
How we can help you?
We at Amplework, are having a vast experience in developing an on-demand application for different needs. We can provide you with an astonishing on-demand logistics mobile application development services including all essential & advanced features at competitive rates.
