Outstanding efficiency savings

The Aim

Delifresh needed to improve the efficiency of their order management process to keep pace with the growth they were experiencing.

Delifresh were using an outdated, inefficient order process, with customers placing orders via email and leaving voicemails.

Orders are often placed by chefs and can be received by Delifresh at any time of day. 

It’s crucial that Delifresh react promptly, as some orders are for high volumes of produce and require a quick turnaround — in some cases as quickly as three hours for drivers to deliver fresh food a host of other kitchen essentials to clients.

Email orders were being received through traditional email providers such as Outlook, without a centralised management process for dealing with them.

Voicemails were recorded through their phone system and managed by an application built many years ago, in an obsolete, unsupported piece of software.

There was a potential for things to go awry - and our aim was to create a bespoke B2B solution that would give Delifresh a competitive advantage and, importantly, deliver valuable efficiency savings.

What We Did

The project was laser-focused on enhancing efficiency from the outset, and went through a number of iterations in order to ensure that the bespoke functionality was exactly what users wanted and needed.

We kicked off our involvement by analysing Delifresh’s system infrastructure, thanks to a combination of on-site visits, remote access and meetings with key stakeholders.

These insights allowed us to come up with the tech solutions that would maximise efficiency. 

We determined that replacing the voicemail system was the priority, as the existing software was effectively obsolete.

It also became clear that Delifresh also needed an email system to work in tandem with the voicemail system and help improve efficiency.

Their main website had previously been built by our experienced team of developers using Craft CMS, a modern PHP framework that lends itself well to being extended to include the latest features and updates within its architecture. 

Our team utilised this extensibility to create the new areas required within the technical specification of the project.

Time and strategic planning was invested in the development of the new system, focusing on the ability to split orders into ‘waves’, which allows for location-based priorities to be created. 

Functionality is also in place to allow two-way customer communication, as users can request confirmations of items or find, review, change and update their order based on stock queries.

Alongside a clean, modern user experience for their admin team, the site also features easy-to-learn search and reporting capabilities so that Delifresh’s management team have everything they need in one place.

As an integrated agency all development work was carried out in-house.

Once the voicemail system was completed and rolled out, the new email order management system was then created, utilising the same user experience as the voicemail system, piggy-backing onto the same search process and reporting methods.

Due to the scale of orders Delifresh receive and the complexities of the overall system, AWS was chosen as the hosting platform and the accompanying applications utilise micro-services to aid performance.

The website and email and voicemail systems were all created specifically with the needs of Delifresh in mind and work as part of a new integrated order process.