Client
YSDS
Services
About the project
The transport of sensitive and/or highly valuable goods adds whole new layers of complexity to an already intricate system that is the global transport industry. YSDS (Your Special Delivery Service) specializes in delivering valuable and sensitive cargo, working primarily with art galleries, laboratories, and other life science institutions, coordinating a broad global network of collaborator services. Transporting special cargo comes with a great variety of unique requirements such as speed of delivery, temperature, additional protection, etc.
HTEC Group has worked with YSDS to digitalize and streamline its main operations across four key verticals: ordering, quoting, tracking, and reporting, as well as optimize and automate a variety of manual and repetitive work.
Challenge
Due to the complex nature of the client’s work, not only with different divisions operating independently, but also different national units across the globe, we were tasked with creating a digital platform that would streamline and unify different processes across all divisions.
In order to achieve this, we first needed to understand the company’s inner workings and ways of operating. The first step in our collaboration was the creation of a service blueprint of the company’s internal processes to enable the subsequent digitalization.
Stemming from this, we needed to develop a digital platform that would unite and streamline the processes across all divisions, enable simple and effective ordering, quoting, and tracking processes on both the client and user sides, as well as client’s internal reporting practices.
The solution needed to be scalable to allow for business growth, reliable due to the value and the sensitivity of the transported goods, and it also needed to simplify the client’s operational functioning.
The most interesting aspect of our work with YSDS, to me, was the fact that we had the opportunity to map out the client’s existing processes, then align and optimize them, and then engineer the software that would digitalize their operations. We had a cross-functional end-to-end team responsible for product development, design, engineering, and infrastructure. We owned the entire process, starting from the discovery phase of mapping out and creating a service blueprint, and all the way to the solution’s deployment. I feel that the work that went into developing this solution truly demonstrates the breadth of our expertise and our ability to gain intimate knowledge of our clients’ work, find ways to provide impactful value, and execute through all the stages of product development.
– Dejan Pokrajac
Director of Business Development at HTEC Group
Solution
The scope of our work incorporated the digitalization of industrial processes, connectivity strategy and implementation, and personalized dashboard analytics for consumers.
The most challenging part of the work was not in its technical aspects, but from the product perspective. We needed to take a multitude of complex internal processes, as well as countless shipping variables, and translate it into a comprehensive, easy-to-use digital platform facing both the client’s internal team and external users.
In collaboration with the client team, we created a quotation system where a user enters a variety of information related to shipment requirements, and the system processes the information and provides a quotation for the shipment. The solution is an API, a rule engine that, based on entered parameters, calculates a number as its output. It introduces a number of improvements and innovations to this niche of transport and logistics, such as the multi-piece ordering functionality, allowing users to get a single quote for the shipping of multiple items. The solution was developed using .NET and React, while its UI was also designed by an HTEC team. The entire system infrastructure was placed on AWS, utilizing the Kubernetes as a Service model.
Success
The modernized platform helped the client reduce internal expenses, optimized its internal processes and the execution of its services, as well as simplified the quoting process for a variety of specific scenarios in the art and life science domains. Thanks to the solution, YSDS was able to open new revenue streams, optimize its internal operational costs, increase its visibility in the market, and introduce a greatly improved user experience.
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