Creating a platform that aims at revolutionizing the food tech industry is quite challenging but exciting. To become a leader in such a competitive market one must think outside the box to create a brand-new vision for how the restaurant and food delivery business shall work. Despite having flawless operations, an organization shall focus on developing an IT environment to simplify the management process and improve communication and information exchange inside of the organization. In the article, we are sharing our experience of developing and enhancing a system that will help boost sales, attract new clients and optimize the overall operations of our client’s business.
Major tasks and challenges
Our client had multiple issues with their website that plays a pivotal role in their business operations. The core request to fix and improve the platform consisted of the following:
- Communication among the services and their synchronization within the system was failing.
- Website content support had multiple issues to the extent it wouldn’t allow adding any new content or updating the existing one.
- The website’s speed of response was poor, especially on the days of special prices or discounts. When they had over 150 users simultaneously visiting the website, it wouldn’t respond.
- The design was not user-friendly or adapted to modern mobile devices/tablets.
- The website didn’t have an established SEO strategy; therefore, it didn’t help to promote business.
- Tracking a delivery option wasn’t available although it existed on t the website.
- Constant disruptions of delivery time due to multiple issues and inability to inform the customer of the delay.
- No unified CRM system to manage the entire platform with all its 30+microservice components.
- No data analytics was available to monitor the sales or other business progress.
- The client’s hosting was located in different systems like Google, Heroku, and Hetzner that didn’t have proper communication set up.
Based on the existing issues, our client encountered significant financial expenses and slow business growth. The Agiliway team performed business analysis and marketing research to come up with the most appropriate solution to boost the client’s operations and automate ordering and communication processes between them and their customers. Following this, the software development team analyzed the IT issues to help advance the website and its architecture as well as optimize the overall functionality of the client’s system.
What we did for our client
This is an ongoing project, and our development team is currently working on implementations that will cover the needs of our client’s business. Moreover, the focus shifted toward developing a food tech direction rather than actual restaurants. Such an idea is supported by the trend that’s been elaborating since COVID-19 when a huge number of customers switched to food delivery services when eating out was not an option. Therefore, following this business owners were seeking ways to return to work amidst the pandemic and they needed something that will help them stand out among their competitors.
Due to the website malfunctioning, our client’s call center struggled with call overload. Since it was challenging and oftentimes impossible to place an order online, they were trying to reach out via call center. Therefore, fixing all bugs and issues on the website and the system became a vital component for rebuilding the platform. Before getting down to developing new features for the client’s service, the Agiliway development team performed the following:
- We created new and user-friendly designs.
- The website’s speed of response increased significantly from 150 to 2000 users simultaneously browsing through the website or making orders.
- The clients get informed regarding the delivery time more precisely.
- The workload of the call center reduced almost immediately after the first changes were introduced, which led to saving both time and money for the client and their customers.
- Online payment for orders became available through Google Pay or Apple Pay, as before users had to add their payment details manually each time, they placed an order.
- Customers now choose whether they need a call-back from the call center to confirm the order or not. However, we added a mandatory call to the client if they hadn’t received their order on time.
- A tracker was added that allows tracking of the order from the time it was sent to a restaurant till the moment a customer receives it.
- A solution for the Admin panel was implemented as a separate module which is also one of the first modules to the united CRM system along with the delivery time module.
The major issues regarding the poor performance of the platform were that the modules were added to the system one by one, therefore, they would operate well separately, but they were unable to operate together. Much time and effort were put to make even the slightest changes. That is why the Agiliway engineers spend a lot of time building the architecture that allows incorporating the existing modules and adding new ones without wasting too much time or costs.
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Another challenge was the absence of documentation on the platform from previous development teams as well as an incomplete understanding of how the entire system operates and why it fails. This led to a lot of research from our side to find where exactly the problem was and how to fix it without rebuilding everything.
Our current focus is on creating a solution that will satisfy the needs of all departments like Marketing, Sales, Call center, etc., and bring maximum benefit to the business.
Summary
Initially, the Agiliway team got to fix the current system for our client. However, at the analytical stage, we revealed multiple weak spots in the system, which negatively impacted and led to financial losses. Many solutions were implemented to fix the existing issues; but we also added many new ones that became crucial and solved key problems for both the website and call center, as well as for multiple departments like Sales or Marketing. The customers also experienced positive alterations to the system and now they can track their order, perform online payments without manually adding their payment details, etc. And more updates are still under development.
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