Top 10 Transport Management Solution Providers - 2018

GetSwift: Struggling with Last Mile Delivery Pains? GetSwift Did Too - Until It Created This Solution

Bane Hunter, CEO and Joel Macdonald, President

When it comes to the last mile, real-time tracking and on-time delivery is the final frontier, equally relevant to vendors large and small. Optimizing the supply chain, particularly in the last mile, is a global problem across geographies. The search for a solution – a tool to remove the proverbial stone in the shoe – inspired the conception of the GetSwift platform. “GetSwift is a cloud-based solution that solves the major pain points in the last mile of delivery,” says Daniel W. Lawrence, Chief Financial Officer.

GetSwift provides operational tools that deliver shippers real-time visibility and complete control over the last mile of their supply chain. The history of the company begins with its President and Founder, Joel Macdonald, who started it as a liquor distribution business in Australia. Soon, Macdonald noticed that many of his peers shared the same problems with last mile delivery, so he linked up with GetSwift’s current Chief Executive Officer Bane Hunter and a team of technologists to analyze the problem. Together, they narrowed the challenges down to lack of visibility in delivery, expensive and inefficient dispatching and routing, and a lack of efficiency in tracking—problems that yearned for a real and affordable fix. GetSwift’s initial solution offered better visibility, dispatching, routing, and tracking in operations, all optimized in real time to give clients the quickest and most efficient route. What’s more, the solution played a key role in minimizing fuel consumption and driving hours while maximizing utilization of the fleet. To hone tracking on the customer side, the GetSwift platform brought total visibility into the “what and where” of the delivery process, along with estimated delivery times – all automated through their app.

Today, an evolved version of the platform goes above and beyond solutions to the preliminary challenges that Macdonald observed, attracting repeat customers who enjoy a superior user experience through their unique Software as a Service (SaaS)-based portal. “GetSwift’s portal allows clients to gain control of the last mile to improve speed to market, dramatically improving customer satisfaction, while doing away with the supply chains of yesterday which relied on the disparate legacy technologies of multiple carriers and fleets,” says Lawrence. Starting from the point of assigning the closest driver to produce a reliable ETA for the delivery, an entirely stable ecosystem is rendered in real time. From the dispatching perspective, the company’s solution reduces the need for call center assistance, clunky two-way radios, or constant calls and SMSs – all of which waste time and cost. The entire process is automated through the GetSwift solution, which provides a dispatching screen at the merchants’ as well as the delivery person’s application side.

Most of GetSwift’s solution is out of the box, with the rest being configurable for enterprise clients, where it makes customizations to solve pain points and address specific needs.

“At Craveable brands, we have always focused on being the leader in our field across product, service, and quality for our customers. Partnering with GetSwift to deploy their platform across our restaurants has been transformative. We are now consistently in the top performers in the industry with respect to last-mile logistics and actionable business intelligence,” says Brett Houldin, Chief Executive Officer of Craveable Brands, which operates over 570 restaurants in Australia across three iconic brands. While selecting the quickest and the most efficient routes, the cost performance, real-time tracking, and visibility improve both the employee and customer experience. GetSwift’s real-time visibility makes the difference between being proactive versus reactive with services issues. It is an easy-to-use software designed with the needs of delivery drivers and merchants in mind, all packaged in a simple interface that anyone in the organization can use. The solution can be completely white-labeled, allowing clients to customize the technology based on their branding needs.

GetSwift’s portal allows clients to gain control of the last mile to improve speed to market, dramatically improving customer satisfaction, while doing away with the cumbersome supply chains of yesterday that relied on disparate legacy technologies of multiple carriers and fleets

Development of such a versatile solution ref lects the very culture at GetSwift. The company’s team is very collegial and comprises a diverse workforce from varied backgrounds that drives innovation. For example, relative to other tech companies and startups, the company has a significant female workforce. With offices in the U.S. and Australia, GetSwift takes pride in employing a selective recruiting process, wherein it looks to hire the best and the brightest professionals who make it through a rigorous but fair recruiting process. Executive management is based at its New York headquarters. GetSwift has also recently added seasoned logistics sales professionals to gain a deeper understanding of the last mile pains experienced in the small, mid-sized, and enterprise markets. With an extensive history and long track record of working with clients in this area, the GetSwift team now looks to develop long-standing relationships with them over time.

While human capital is GetSwift’s most significant investment, it also understands the need to continue investing in new technologies, particularly algorithms and machine learning tools. The company has demonstrated the ability to integrate easily with strategic and commercial partners, and its platform is technology agnostic, a system that can work with both cutting-edge cloud software as well as older legacy systems. The company is in the phase of implementing business intelligence, algorithms, and machine learning to arrive at a more valuable product solution for clients. To give clients even more assurance, GetSwift continues to build great technologies that anticipate and prevent last mile delivery issues before they even arise - and have solutions already in place.