April/May 2007

Delivering instant gourmet meals around London is becoming a high-tech occupation where mobile computing is coming into its own

Take-away food might not seem a fertile area for mobile computing, but if you thought that you reckoned without Deliverance, a name which (in London at least) is rapidly becoming a byword for high-quality delivered meals.

The company uses a fleet of motorbikes and scooters to deliver across most of the central area and inner suburbs, offering a range of freshly-prepared meals from a selection of regional menus. In an average evening it delivers 800 orders - a figure that rises to over 1,200 orders on its busiest nights. Each delivery rider takes a maximum of three orders per journey, depending on order size.

Deliverance already had a bespoke order management system in place, networked to each of four service sites across London, and this was able to track orders from point of receipt at its call centre and Web site through the kitchen to the point of despatch. However, it is now on the growth path, and felt it needed to take this approach further.

 

The expansion is being funded by private investment company APEQ (Active Private Equity Advisory), and one of the team there, Lillie Potter, explains the thinking. 'We realised that the business needed to measure and manage the delivery element of its service,' she says, 'and provide customers with information about their orders in real time.'

That meant mobile computing, and for this the company has turned to DA Systems, whose NX Mobile Data and NX Tracking solutions will initially be used to manage despatch operations for the hundred scooters in the company's City-based fleet.

Each of the scooter riders is being issued with the latest O2 XDA Orbit PDA/phone device with GPS location capability. Using these, the NX Mobile Data system will enable Deliverance to capture proof of delivery data in real time. It will also provide operational metrics such delivery times, journey length and duration and choice of route.

The NX Tracking component will provide comprehensive mapping functionality, and give the company instant, on-demand visibility of the location of all riders and delivery addresses. So despatch staff will be able to help riders pinpoint the exact location of each delivery, be it a business site or a flat in an apartment complex.

Moreover, if drivers get lost on the way to a delivery point they can quickly contact base via NX messaging, so the controllers can pinpoint their location and provide directions.

'We chose NX Mobile Data and NX Tracking because the information and insight it provides will empower us to manage the business better,' Lillie Potter says. 'We were also attracted to the solution because it offered an element of bespoke tailoring to meet our specific needs, on top of what is effectively a tried and tested out-of-the-box solution.

'This meant that we could achieve everything we wanted, with significantly less up-front cost and in a shorter timescale than any of the other solutions we considered.'