Product Case: Reducing the Delivery Time for Dunzo

Published in

Agile Insider

6 min readApr 21, 2022

Source: https://mygate.com/delivery-person-management-software/

Context

We were analyzing the data for the past 6 months of the deliveries in the Tier-1 Cities(Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi-NCR) the analyze the bottlenecks for the 10 mins delivery -

Typical 10 min delivery split

A Typical Split for the Delivery Step

Following Clever Tap Event with a timestamp are present in our current system for the Rider

While analyzing the data for the orders for the Delayed Delivery (more than 10 mins), for these events, we found that most of the time was taken b/w the highlighted events reached_location and delivered. On surveying the reasons for the same, we found the following -

Unable to locate the correct address(both apartment and flat) of the user — 30%
Delay in the approval by the user for door-door delivery — 30%
Delay in Dispatch of the orders from the dark stores — 15%
Other reasons — 25%

On further digging into the details, we found that even for the orders that were delivered on time, a significant delay was introduced due to the delivery executives were not able to reach the customers for the approvals.

Problem

With the larger penetration of the Apartment Management applications like MyGate(MG) and Nobrokerhood(NBH) and stringent approvals required after the Covid restrictions, a lot of the time of the delivery executives is wasted in getting the approvals before making the delivery.

Scope

The scope is limited to the following -

Gated communities are present in tier-1 cities.
Apartments where approval is mandatory before the delivery executive is permitted to enter the premise and make the doorstep delivery.

Note — Out of all the deliveries in the tier-1 cities, we have got the data that around 70% were coming from the apartments which have the approvals in place using — MyGate or NoBrokerHood, or physically using the register (approved by calling the Customer)

Goal

To reduce the average approval time by automating the approvals (both one-time and concurrent). If we do this we can reduce the overall time for the delivery.

Current Process

Currently, our system supports the following types of deliveries -

Contactless Delivery at the doorstep
Normal Delivery at the doorstep

Process for Apartments using MyGate or NoBrokerhood App

For the apartments having MG/NBH, after the delivery executive reaches the destination, he is stopped by the security guards and is allowed to enter only after getting the approvals from the apartment owner on the app.

Process for Apartments using physical verification for delivery

For the apartments not using any application, the typical process is making an entry in the register, followed by calling the apartment owner to authorize the delivery executives for door to door delivery

Stakeholders Involved

Tech & Product Team from NoBrokerhood — We have had a couple of conversations with them and they have both agreed to expose that API for pre-approval for the deliveries at Dunzo.
Tech & Product Team from MyGate — We have had a couple of conversations with them and they have both agreed to expose the APIs for pre-approval for the deliveries at Dunzo.
Design Team — The design team needs to create the new screens for the pre-approval for the required apps, physical approvals
Tech Team — Integration of the MyGate and NoBrokerhood APIs for pre-approvals
BA Team — Business Analytics teams need to capture the new events and gather the information for new delivery metrics
QA Team — Ensuring quality of the product with new features

Proposed Solution

Changes required on the Review Order page

Introduce the options for the user to choose from for the delivery -

Contactless delivery to the security personnel
Contactless delivery at the door

Add Delivery Preferences in the Order Details

Currently, our system has the option for the user to choose from contactless delivery(default). We need to introduce a new option for contact-less delivery with the security guard in the same flow.

The above options should be mapped to each of the user’s delivery preferences.

Changes required for the Auto-approval of Delivery

Post the payment success, we need to ask the consent of the user for auto-approval of the delivery from MG/NBH

The information for the apartment’s association with MG/NBH will be collected by us manually — the data for the apartments will be given by MG/NBH team)
For all other apartments not having the association with MG/NBH, we would be marking it under physical approval by Security Guards.

For auto-approval, both the MyGate and NoBrokerhood team have the protected client APIs available for pre-approval of the delivery executive. The details for the same for MyGate are the following (the tech team would need to validate it and get more details if required)—

API for the Pre-Order Approval for the current order—

API for the Pre-Order Approval in Advance for few days —

Advance Pre-approval for 30 days for MyGate

Proposed Solution for MyGate/NoBrokerhood

Post payment, if the delivery location is identified as one using any MG/NBH app, we would be giving the user the option to pre-approve delivery for his order — the default option would be selected for the user.
We would also be prompting the user for pre-approval for future deliveries (30 days for now)
On the expiry of the future auto-deliveries or not having the auto-approval for the delivery, the user would have to pre-approve the next delivery.

Proposed Solution for Apartments with Physical Approval

For the apartments which require physical approval, the user would be prompted to auto-approve the entry for the security guards — the default option would be selected for the user.

Approval Screen in case of Physical Orders

We would also be prompting the user for pre-approval for future deliveries (30 days for now)
If the user approves, the partner app would have an option to open the screen which shows the flat #, customer’s name, mobile number, and approval for the entry for delivery which can be shared with the security personnel
On the expiry of the future auto-deliveries or not having the auto-approval for the delivery, the user would have to pre-approve the next delivery.

Approval Screen for the Delivery Executive to get faster approval from Security Guards

Success Metrics

Reduce the time between the events reached_location and delivery by about 30–45 seconds.
Track events for how many people change the delivery preferences from the default — deliver_at_doorstep to deliver_to_security

**Metrics to be captured for both physical approval and NBH/MG

Questions to be addressed?

How do you the list of apartments using the MG/NBH app? — For now, get the data from them
What happens if someone else apart from the owner of the house is making the order? How does the physical verification or the NBH/MG verification happen at that time? — Need to check the details with the tech team.

Next Steps

How to automatically map the new apartments with MG/NBH integrations with our system for enabling pre-approval
Automatically send notifications to the user before the expiry of the future pre-approval of deliveries.
Add new events and success metrics for the contactless delivery with security