India is becoming a hotbed for hyper-local delivery services that are mobile or web-based, serving millions of users like never before. This year, many brands including Google launched their own app-based local services platform and the services can range from food delivery, supermarket, logistics services, home services, pharmacy to cashless transactions. The evolution of “Digital India” has only accelerated efforts leading to a more flexible, service-oriented, solution-focused and transparent business model in the web and mobile based e-commerce sector. As they start to grow, they seem to solve more existing local problems. Building trust among customers regarding the delivery segment is one of the biggest challenges driving major players to be active in the market.
With most of the apps in this niche, you can set your product, menus, payment gateway, delivery schedule, and configure the various branding elements like logo, color scheme, etc. You can change the appearance of your store as you like. This allows for more control over your orders, product delivery, and business in general. As store customization is quick and easy, just at the click of a button, it requires no coding skills, developer or programming team from the service provider.
Some apps are loaded with GPS-based optimization and routing, which means you can access them from anywhere and easily create routes and plans. Efficient delivery is supported by automatic order consolidation and driver performance optimization feature in some mobile apps. Most applications offer service companies dedicated end-to-end support and customization.
Any app-based service company looking to integrate delivery services should look to see if they can collect information from their POS/website/app, optimize the delivery system through routing and deployment, one-screen interface, and access to all major delivery companies, interface with CRM through Point and Click type interface and ability to hire and organize/manage staff directly from the platform itself.
Most applications these days use proprietary technology to augment the business end delivery with no capital investment for application installation required by the user, no need to rely on on-demand delivery companies with options to build your own delivery network.
The ability of the hyper-local delivery application to connect with a user’s web POS or CMS is a welcome feature. This means that a company does not have to search for multiple platforms for different functions. The API of the delivery application must be integrated with the main POS systems available in the market. It should be easily customizable with the features of the existing user application to suit the requirements.
