Pallets are an important commodity within the transportation and logistics business. It is important to keep track of ones pallets, but equally important to streamline how they get from A to B and back again.
A company offering logistics solutions contacted us for help with creating two web based portals; one for creating an overview of the pallets, and one for managing transport bookings and pricing. We created the user interfaces as well as parts of the backend system which with the portals communicate. The backend system was already partially in place when we were brought into the project. Since different users are going to be using the system for different tasks, a lot of thought and developing went into defining and implementing a system for user rights and role management.
– Before I joined this project, I didn't have any experience of the transportation and logistics business. Now however, I have realised how exciting this business is, and how there are great possibilities for optimising and streamlining with thought-through IT-solutions in all parts of the chain, says developer Martin Haggren.
Pallets - an important commodity
It might be difficult for a layman to see how pallets can be a problem. Three lost pallets is not a big deal, but within the transportation and logistics business, the amount of lost pallets can quickly rise.
The purpose of one of the portals was to provide an easy overview of how many pallets each retailer owed, like a sort of pallet account. The stock take was preciously done through paperwork and an Excel file. The purpose of the digitalisation was to give more people access, and also for the web portal to be available to the various suppliers.
What is to be transported, and where?
Our client transports everything from furniture to vegetables, and needed a tool where their administrators could plan routes and make pricing estimates. This was a core function for the second portal we created. In order to easily fetch client and supplier data, the portal was also integrated with the client's business system. All work and information saved in the portal is now sent back to the business system.
Edumentors involved
Martin Haggren
Hampus Nilsson