About LetMeShip:
In 2009, company ITA Consulting GmbH from Hamburg,
Germany had a very simple startup application LetMeShip for
multi-carrier parcel logistics in B2B sector where many things
were done manually, especially shipment handling. We were asked
to implement completely new version of the system with extended
functionality - public Frontend application, BackOffice web
application and public API for 3rd party integration. The new
version was successfully launched in September 2011 and it
allowed the product to become the biggest in Europe in the field.
Main challenges:
- efficient automatic processing of big carrier data
(product prices, pickup and delivery zones and areas, delivery
times)
- shipment handling - automatic order process including
pickup order, error handling, tracking
- price calculation and corrections across different
price models in history
- unification across all carriers
Success
in numbers:
| Year |
2011 |
2020 |
| Number of parcel shipments per year |
~50.000 |
~700.000 in 7 countries |
| Number of employees in LetMeShip team |
11 |
>100 |
| Country coverage |
2 (DE, CH) |
7 (DE, CH, AT, FR, NL, BE, ES) |
| Supported languages |
1 |
4 |
| Full customizations for big corporations |
0 |
4 |
| Public applications |
1 (Website) |
3 (Website, BI and API) |
Client's Goals
- improving and unifying the booking process for
different shipping providers
- SaaS solution for customers with carriers under own
contract
- fully customized solution for big corporate customers
with shared platform basis
- expansion to other European countries
- reducing maintenance costs
- performance increase
Our Implementation
The most important was to analyze the parcel handling
part that needed to be improved and sped up, as a lot of tasks
were still done manually by people from the support team.
Furthermore, we collected requirements and insights from
representatives of all departments and based on these
requirements we modelled the basic parts of the system. We
divided the whole system into two basic parts, the BackOffice
application as the core of the system operated by the customer
support team, and the FrontEnd application as the interface for
the end customer. Both are fully localizable web applications.
For development we used the open source web framework Apache
Wicket, the ORM framework Hibernate and Spring. The data was
stored in a MySQL relational database. For efficient full-text
search in large data structures we integrated the Apache Lucene
high performance text search engine into both applications. Due
to the large amount of data we used Pentaho Business Intelligence
platform for report generation and data analysis. Public API for
3rd party integration was developed in 2016.
Major issues we had to solve
- easy application scaling
- no downtime at least in open hours (08:00-20:00), later
operation 24/7
- localization & internationalization across whole system
- easy customization of the applications for big
corporate customers like Daimler, General Electric, Stihl and
custom integration with their IT systems
- creation of Business Intelligence for board members and
BigData solutions
- huge extension of system functionality - except of
parcel shipment handling we implemented completely new modules
like invoicing, tracking, CRM, analysis & reports, integration
of tens of carriers including special services like pallet,
oversize and dangerous goods shipping
- managing multiple business domains within one
environment (countries and fully customized solutions)
- solving organizational structures of customers
- data security according to user roles
THE SUCCESS STORY IN DETAIL
First, we offered the client a simple prototype
application based on widgets. This flexible solution allows users
to configure the application themselves (displaying only the
necessary widgets) to get to the information they need as quickly
and efficiently as possible. After the prototype was approved, we
started implementing individual modules, which were later
extended with additional functionality. The main modules are:
- user rights module (allowing to define user groups and
to specify read, write and edit rights for individual widgets)
- shipment handling module (including the implementation
of web services of individual carriers, support for solving
problems during the booking of shipments, definition of carriers
and contractual carriers and their products)
- sales module (sales support, contact monitoring,
customer definition, customer group rate definition)
- claim module
- marketing module (support for sending out newsletters,
definition of customer cooperations)
- billing module (invoicing individual customers, checking
customer payment morality, connection to client's accounting
system, dunning management)
- management module (data reports)
This application is intended for the end customer. Its
main purpose is quick comparison of all carriers' services &
costs and automatic order of parcel, pallet or document shipping.
For the possibility of changing the content directly by our
client's employees, the CMS function is implemented on all pages.
It is optimized for internet search engines (SEO). The main parts
are:
- quick shipment cost calculator
- shipment booking with using address book and parcel
manager
- proactive tracking
- shipping archive with possibility to download all
transport documents as pickup order, awb label, proof of
delivery and entry certificate documents
- invoice archive
- administration part - account and invoicing data
management, employees and suppliers management
BI application contains reports for all business
domains for sales, customer service, controlling departments and
management dashboards. The end customer can analyze data based on
carrier, service type, area of origin and area of destination and
filter data for any requested period.
