Digital transformation in last mile logistics — keep it people-centric

Don’t be distracted by the lofty goals of digitalization, says Vivien Mai, head of the User Success Team at Bettermile. It’s really just about improving each user’s working day.

The consultancy BCG reckons that easily two thirds of “digital transformations” do not achieve their goals. Such a staggering proportion of (part-)failure suggests there’s something wrong with the way we approach the task . When they coined the term in 2011, the MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting, for example, defined it as “the use of technology to radically improve performance or reach of enterprises.” This tells us in a lofty way what the ultimate aim of the exercise is — but not what digital transformation involves in any practical way.

Motivating people to use your digital products — that’s how we think of digital transformation in last mile logistics. The route planning app Better Route is meant to ease the difficulties delivery drivers encounter on the last mile of parcel logistics — traffic jams, roadworks, a maze of possible routes. We sell our product to logistics companies so they can radically improve their performance and reach. But we also know that each of these customers will only be digitally transformed if its delivery drivers use our digital technology as a matter of course.

For us, transformation involves technology and people — and making sure both get along.

Albert Einstein is meant to have said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” At Bettermile, we understand digital transformation well enough to explain it in seven words — and we can even do so in graphic form: we plot the number of app-loaded devices we have shipped to our customers against how many devices are actually being used. Every time a batch of new devices goes out, adoption naturally lags way behind potential. But the better we are at transformation, getting people to use digital products, the more quickly we can raise the former curve to bring it into line with the latter one.

Putting things as simply as that shows us exactly where we still have to apply ourselves. Invariably, that means going to the front lines, into the hectic parcel delivery centers. Every morning, drivers here pack their trucks and plan their routes, before heading out into the frenetic traffic and a day of stopping and starting. We show non-users the driver app Better Route, explain how it can save them stress and time by doing their route planning. We listen to the input of users, helping them if they’re having difficulty, taking up suggestions for changes or new features.

Digital transformation is about people — and is people-intensive as a result.

I built Bettermile’s User Success Team. We could have called it the Digital Transformation Taskforce, but we wanted everyone to understand exactly what we’re there for. Twelve people out of Bettermile’s total workforce of 80 do nothing but look out for our users’ successful interaction with our products. That’s every seventh person in the company, a proportion that speaks volumes about the importance of people in this digital age. We have wonderfully clever designers and programmers and charming sales people. But their work would be wasted if our apps weren’t continually being used by more and more people.

Media reports about digitalization of logistics have over the past years featured a slew of experiments with drones, autonomous vehicles and even 3D-printing. But the reality of the sector’s digital transformation is much more mundane, at least at present. Parcels are still delivered by a driver and their van — hundreds of parcels, using busy streets, often under time pressure. Using technology to reinvent the wheel doesn’t help drivers as quickly and much as using it to make their jobs a little easier — recommending a more efficient route, circumventing a crash, together saving a few seconds here, a few kilometers there.

Digital transformation is not about one Big Bang. It’s about step-by-step improvements that improve the (working) life of the user — benefits the user has to understand and want to profit from. Digital transformation works only if product and user both work together — and this will only happen if you concentrate on user success. McKinsey this summer published a survey showing that digitally transforming companies on average realized only 31% of targeted revenue gains. Perhaps their goals were unrealistically high. But I suspect their way of tackling the task wasn’t simple and people-centric enough.