When Hugg Beverages, a direct-to-consumer (D2C) and ecommerce brand, approached us, they were facing a challenging operational task, which was solved by our Retool developers by creating a custom application. As a brand delivering beverages directly to customers' doorsteps, they were working with multiple delivery partners like Amazon, PicknDel, India Post, and more. Managing thousands of order deliveries across these platforms was becoming a tedious endeavor, especially since each partner operated with a unique system.
What would have normally taken many weeks to build was built in 35 hours. From data retrieval to backend workflows to frontend computations to UI design on Retool, our team's expertise ensured that every aspect of the project was executed with precision and efficiency.
The Challenge
Hugg Beverages' operations team had been using Excel sheets to track every order. This meant they manually checked the order status for each order ID on the respective delivery partners' websites and then entered the delivery information into their sheets. Such a process was not just time-consuming but also prone to human error.
Further complicating matters, if they considered automating this system, they would have to contend with different API endpoints from each delivery partner. These varied endpoints meant varied request bodies and responses, making uniformity a significant challenge.
Our Retool Developers' Solutions: D2C and Ecommerce Order Delivery Tracking Applications and Workflows
To address this, we developed an integrated dashboard that offered a unified view of all deliveries, regardless of the delivery partner. Some of the columns displayed on the dashboard are:
Order ID
Order date
Delivery partner
Delivery tracking details
Current delivery status (in transit, delivered, returned, delivery attempt made, etc.)
Additionally, the operations team wanted insights into their delivery partners' performance.
We incorporated a 'delivery health' metric to indicate if deliveries were 'acceptable', 'early', or 'needed attention' due to delays.
For automating the process, we implemented a workflow using Retool. This workflow made backend API calls, computations using JS, and database interactions. It operated as a cron job, running every six hours daily. The workflow process:
Fetched all placed orders
Filtered for recent orders
Bulk upserted recent orders to a backend PostgreSQL database
Identified undelivered orders and triggered individual workflows specific to each delivery partner, such as India Post or PicknDel.
Consolidated responses from these workflows and upserted them back into the PostgreSQL database.
The frontend dashboard then pulled data from this database, offering a seamless, unified view of all orders. Features of the dashboard included a global, case-insensitive search across multiple columns and tracking by order ID and delivery details.
To ensure flexibility, we added a manual entry/write option. If a delivery partner's API was down, the operations team could manually input data and bulk upsert it to the database
Conclusion
By understanding Hugg Beverages' challenges and requirements, we crafted a comprehensive end-to-end ecommerce order delivery tracking retool app. This tool not only streamlined their operations but also provided valuable insights into their delivery process. In the ever-evolving world of e-commerce, having such robust systems in place is crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
You can watch the demo of the app here