Pivot For The Win: Shyft’s Leap to Last Mile Excellence With the Locus Platform

When Shyft was first launched in the United Arab Emirates as a luggage delivery and airline check-in experiment in 2020, little did the team know that pivoting—a concept soon to be a buzzword—would be the defining moment in their growth journey.

As international travel came to a grinding halt, they faced a harsh truth. Demand for their platform was almost nonexistent for the foreseeable future.

After looking at the market and brainstorming potential opportunities, the team conducted a few growth sprints. It was out of this intense period that Shyft evolved to its current form: a modern logistics company that primarily caters to e-commerce businesses. Shyft has served over 1250+ business customers through its business portal in the UAE, with plans to expand across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

The party has just begun

At that time, the team’s eureka moment gave them the direction sorely needed to pivot. But this was just the beginning. They realized they rapidly needed to build their tech to deliver a superior experience compared to legacy couriers.

Early on, the team noted that managing logistics efficiently was a challenge. Even though they had a temporary solution that helped them monitor and track their tasks, they mostly operated manually.

With increasing volumes, they needed to onboard several technology capabilities to differentiate themselves, and fast. These included: Smart order allocation, order scheduling and assignment, dispatch management, intensive capture of data points, and cash collection management.

Zeroing in on Locus

Right from the beginning, team Shyft was certain they wanted to work with someone on a long-term basis, rather than keep jumping from solution to solution with their planned roadmap.

After a few rounds of discussions with a few vendors, they were yet to find the right fit. Some were quite unresponsive, which gave them an indication of poor post-sales support. Others had too complex a user interface.

Eventually, team Shyft settled down on Locus. Following the completion of its integration in August 2021, they did run into some unforeseeable roadblocks. Team Locus worked round the clock with Shyft’s internal team to get things back on track in three days. A second implementation saw none of the roadblocks previously faced, which for Shyft, spoke volumes about the Locus’ attention to detail.

With the help of the Locus Dispatch Management Software, Shyft was able to:

• Save time by doing away with obsolete manual tasks 
• Automate batch-based assignment, factoring in multiple operational variables
• Enable driver monitoring and management
• Automate zone-based order assignment and scheduling
• Monitor operational performance and make strategic decisions by capturing and analyzing relevant data

Also read: Change is the Only Constant in Last-Mile Delivery

Making life easier for all stakeholders in the last mile

Locus worked with Shyft to build its Order Management System and Warehouse Management Systems modularly so that Shyft could provide its end-users a seamless experience.

It has also led to lower costs per booking as they scaled up their fulfillment operations—a 7x growth in successful deliveries in the last 12 months.

Efficiency at scale also improved with Locus’ solutions. Since onboarding Locus logistics solutions, Shyft’s fulfillment rate has been at 94%, up from 80% earlier. Their rates of on-time deliveries (OTD) have also increased to 95%, up from 70%. Automation has also played a crucial role in this regard. Earlier, planning the day’s deliveries used to take close to 1.5 hours alone. Now they are planning and sorting within the same time frame, even as they deal with their highest dispatch volumes to date.

In Locus, Shyft also found the customer-centricity they wanted in a long-term engagement with a last-mile technology provider. They found that Locus was willing to listen as well as improve on items specific to them in growth. They also had many healthy discussions on how the Locus platform can help them take the next steps.

Ease of use of the Locus platform is also what they feel will help them achieve some key milestones in their growth journey. Shyft believes that with the right technology, APIs, support and processes, they can help the next 100,000 e-commerce businesses in MENA to thrive.

To know how to boost your last-mile excellence with the Locus Dispatch Management platform, schedule a demo with our experts.