Dispatch management system and a client portal for a building material company

Problem

The client, a representative of an international leader in sustainable construction, produces engineering materials for large infrastructure projects: cements, aggregates, commercial concrete mixes, non-metallic materials. Being a large enterprise with 1,500 staff members, they possess four plants and three quarries where they extract non-metallic materials.

The company asked Geoservice, the Wialon partner from Central Asia, for solving the following challenges. These requirements were aimed at automating routine tasks, saving time of the employees, conducting the dispatching activities more efficiently, and providing better service to the clients. The project would take their performance on a new level of quality and efficiency:

• Complicated dispatching activities: before, the employees had to switch between programs, and process information manually, there was no delivery management platform in place. It took a lot of time, effort and offered space for human errors, all this taking resources from the team and not contributing to process improvements. Human errors may have caused additional issues with orders and clients’ dissatisfaction. 

• Hectic communication with customers: dispatchers had to consult customers by phone, information about orders was stored in several resources. The labor costs for this process were very high. Customers were very unhappy when they received orders late.

Solution

Geoservice planned and executed a project for a customer’s fleet of more than 800 vehicles. 

Hardware

Each vehicle is equipped with GPS devices that transmit data about its location and tens of other parameters. Geoservice uses flespi to consolidate telemetry data, calculate key metrics, and transfer everything to the delivery management platform. The system is 100% device-agnostic: any equipment from any manufacturer can be used within the project, which is important for a company who employs tens, if not hundreds of carriers, who, in their turn, offer vehicles of various models, ages, sizes, and manufacturers.

Software

The delivery management platform unites data from several sources:

• Wialon Hosting (via Wialon API);
• flespi;
• Geoservice’s own app;
• customer's logistics system;
• database with information on orders.

The consolidated data is displayed in a custom part of the project developed for the client – represented by a dispatcher and a client portal. It’s the part of the solution the staff members are now using every day to perform their tasks.

The dispatcher portal

The portal is a single-interface dispatch management system used by the staff to have all the order-related information in front of them and make data-based decisions. Geoservice built it, collecting the data from several platforms and showing it in a single tool. Now it’s convenient for dispatchers to find the information about orders and delivery, monitor the changes and make decisions to keep the flow of deliveries in order. Here are some of the portal’s features:

• receive reports to evaluate the carrier;
• quickly add new carriers and vehicles, one-by-one or en masse;
• use multi-level search filters to quickly find information on a certain order;
• check the history of all orders;
• set up notifications to track the order’s status;
• get push notifications about critical events, for example, for communication loss with the tracked unit, violation of the planned loading/unloading time;
• receive reports on the quality of driving, timeliness of operations, etc.

All the processes are automated and exclude manual data processing and human error. All the information per order is collected in a concise and easy-to-read form and acts as a real-time vehicle tracking system with a hyperlink to a vehicle on the map.

The client portal

The client portal has a similar functionality to the dispatch management system. The portal also provides every customer with a personal account where they track their deliveries online.

Logic for calculating the planned arrival time, taking into account the traffic situation, was added so that the client can plan their activities as well. Here are some of the client’s portal features:

• display of unloading points on the map;
• automatic order closure according to the received data;
• an adapted mobile version to access information on construction sites;
• a Telegram bot for dispatchers and clients;
• instructions for clients in their personal account.