scroll

Spedibot

A SaaS application for small and medium-sized transport companies supporting their forwarding processes

This case study tells a story of a concept for SaaS application that was born as a part of our Product Challenge initiative where cross-functional teams resolve pressing issues for various industries. This app uses integrations with AI and cargo markets to reduce the operating time, costs, and increase efficiency for forwarding firms, while bringing the positive impact on the environment.

Expertise

Product Discovery 

Product Design

Branding 

Industry

Transport

Timeline

2 weeks

The challenge

Transport service providers, particularly small and medium-sized ones, face challenges in efficiently planning and adjusting vehicle routes. The aim is to minimize the number of kilometers traveled without a load. Currently, it takes human forwarders several hours to find the perfect load for a driver that is both close enough for pickup and ensures the mileage rate that aligns with company standards.

Thus, Product Challenge participants needed to come up with a SaaS solution that would incorporate AI and API of transport exchanges, aiming to reduce the time taken to find the perfect load for drivers, ensuring they don't have to travel far for a pickup, and that the mileage rate meets the company's standards.

The challenge
Requirements
Challenge
Process
Technical Requirements

Our solution is called Spedibot and is meant to transform the logistics landscape through a comprehensive SaaS platform, automating forwarding processes while providing unparalleled management of document flow and vehicle fleet operations. The Forwarding Assistant stands at its core, offering a seamless Google Maps integration, real-time vehicle tracking, cargo planning, and automated notifications on truck arrivals. Additionally, integration with external cargo markets, coupled with our in-app cargo market, ensures optimal utilization of resources, reducing idle time, and boosting revenue potential for companies using Spedibot.

The platform boasts a suite of advanced features including document management, chat live translation, innovative cargo sharing for small shipments, and cargo optimization for non-full truckloads.

Underpinning this robust platform is a tech stack comprising Django Admin panel for backend operations, React SPA for frontend, and proven algorithms like Dijkstra Shortest Path and Travelling Salesman Problem for efficient route planning. Our dedicated development team is set to bring this solution to life within an 8-week timeframe, ensuring a swift yet thorough transformation of your transport operations.

The Challenge

Our ideation journey began with an intense ideation process, aiming to create a robust model capable of calculating quantifiable components of transport data. Parallelly, we invested our efforts in crafting an application prototype specifically designed for the forwarding departments. It served as a tangible representation of our vision, allowing us to experiment and iterate on our ideas rapidly.

API Integration was crucial for accessing real-time data and insights, and also acquiring data from the external cargo markets. We ventured into creating our own transport exchange, aiming to provide a more tailored and efficient experience for our users.

Another integral part of the prototype was an internal application dedicated to document management, supervision of the vehicle fleet, and planning.

Our project development was meticulously focused on individual drivers, striving to understand the ins and outs of their daily operations. We also delved deep into comprehending how our product could function within small and medium-sized enterprises, ensuring that our solution is versatile and adaptable to various business scales.

Our Process

Embarking on the MVP phase, there's a need to navigate through the complexities of routing algorithms, understanding the dependancies between routes, cargo, and fuel consumption.

It's also important to weigh the benefits of web versus mobile, all while considering the potential advantages of AI integration. Financial foresight would be a final chapter, ensuring the full application development and server maintenance are both feasible and sustainable.

In this compact yet intense journey, we’ve not just developed a product concept; we've crafted a solution, ready to revolutionize transport management and adapt to the evolving needs of companies across the spectrum.

what partners say about us?

The code and the work were good quality and really what we were looking for. They were able to bring technical design thinking to the project. Project management was tight and I always knew what was happening.
Daniel Kiyoi
CEO & Founder Magic Dust
Apptension was flexible and professional. When I needed to quickly add capacity, it took a week or two at worst - often days. The cooperation enabled me to slowly scale up my own IT team, and the company was very helpful until the last moments of the transition.
Mateusz Oleksiuk
CEO LESS_
The technical creativity delivered by the team at Apptension was invaluable in the formation of our mixed reality start-up Hyper.
Nathan Sparshott
Co-Founder & CEO of Hyper
The SaaS Boilerplate Apptension built was a huge reason we were so successful, because all these little seemingly unrelated tasks and integrations needed to happen. If we had been working with anybody else, It would have probably taken months to do the same work.
Kwame Nyanning
CEO blkbx.
We needed their help to build the backend services and capabilities needed to deliver a production level on demand. Their ability to produce high-quality work with consistency while dealing with a new type of project was impressive.
Kelly O’Conor
Product Lead, Siberia
The project’s success has resulted in a long-term partnership for design and development. Apptension is a fantastic partner, who is willing to go above and beyond in order to deliver what the client needs.
Catarina Rocha
p(r)oud solutions
Apptension fared well in our project, working with our bespoke CMS and complex requirements. The designs were implemented well and the schedule was kept tight.
Christian Marc Schmidt
Partner at Schema
Looking for similar outcomes?

recent case studies

Spedibot
A SaaS application for small and medium-sized transport companies supporting their forwarding processes
About
This case study tells a story of a concept for SaaS application that was born as a part of our Product Challenge initiative where cross-functional teams resolve pressing issues for various industries. This app uses integrations with AI and cargo markets to reduce the operating time, costs, and increase efficiency for forwarding firms, while bringing the positive impact on the environment.

Expertise

Product Discovery 

Product Design

Branding 

Industry

Transport

Timeline

2 weeks

django
flask
react native
node.js
next.js
python
gatsby.js
vue.js
react.js
javascript
aws
docker
serverless
figma
photoshop
illustrator
after effects
firebase
blender
graphql
nuxt.js
Scss
typescript
apollo
saas boilerplate
styled components
D3
bigcommerce
bigquery
Wagtail CMS
Django Rest
redux
gsap
i18next
kubernetes
Google Cloud
Platform
rabbitmq
celery
Before
After
Prerequisites
The challenge

Transport service providers, particularly small and medium-sized ones, face challenges in efficiently planning and adjusting vehicle routes. The aim is to minimize the number of kilometers traveled without a load. Currently, it takes human forwarders several hours to find the perfect load for a driver that is both close enough for pickup and ensures the mileage rate that aligns with company standards.

Thus, Product Challenge participants needed to come up with a SaaS solution that would incorporate AI and API of transport exchanges, aiming to reduce the time taken to find the perfect load for drivers, ensuring they don't have to travel far for a pickup, and that the mileage rate meets the company's standards.

Challenge
The process

Our ideation journey began with an intense ideation process, aiming to create a robust model capable of calculating quantifiable components of transport data. Parallelly, we invested our efforts in crafting an application prototype specifically designed for the forwarding departments. It served as a tangible representation of our vision, allowing us to experiment and iterate on our ideas rapidly.

API Integration was crucial for accessing real-time data and insights, and also acquiring data from the external cargo markets. We ventured into creating our own transport exchange, aiming to provide a more tailored and efficient experience for our users.

Another integral part of the prototype was an internal application dedicated to document management, supervision of the vehicle fleet, and planning.

Our project development was meticulously focused on individual drivers, striving to understand the ins and outs of their daily operations. We also delved deep into comprehending how our product could function within small and medium-sized enterprises, ensuring that our solution is versatile and adaptable to various business scales.

Requirements
The solution

Our solution is called Spedibot and is meant to transform the logistics landscape through a comprehensive SaaS platform, automating forwarding processes while providing unparalleled management of document flow and vehicle fleet operations. The Forwarding Assistant stands at its core, offering a seamless Google Maps integration, real-time vehicle tracking, cargo planning, and automated notifications on truck arrivals. Additionally, integration with external cargo markets, coupled with our in-app cargo market, ensures optimal utilization of resources, reducing idle time, and boosting revenue potential for companies using Spedibot.

The platform boasts a suite of advanced features including document management, chat live translation, innovative cargo sharing for small shipments, and cargo optimization for non-full truckloads.

Underpinning this robust platform is a tech stack comprising Django Admin panel for backend operations, React SPA for frontend, and proven algorithms like Dijkstra Shortest Path and Travelling Salesman Problem for efficient route planning. Our dedicated development team is set to bring this solution to life within an 8-week timeframe, ensuring a swift yet thorough transformation of your transport operations.

Roadmap
Solution
The next steps

Embarking on the MVP phase, there's a need to navigate through the complexities of routing algorithms, understanding the dependancies between routes, cargo, and fuel consumption.

It's also important to weigh the benefits of web versus mobile, all while considering the potential advantages of AI integration. Financial foresight would be a final chapter, ensuring the full application development and server maintenance are both feasible and sustainable.

In this compact yet intense journey, we’ve not just developed a product concept; we've crafted a solution, ready to revolutionize transport management and adapt to the evolving needs of companies across the spectrum.

WHAT The CLIENT Said ABOUT this project?

what partners say about us?

The code and the work were good quality and really what we were looking for. They were able to bring technical design thinking to the project. Project management was tight and I always knew what was happening.
Daniel Kiyoi
CEO & Founder Magic Dust
Apptension was flexible and professional. When I needed to quickly add capacity, it took a week or two at worst - often days. The cooperation enabled me to slowly scale up my own IT team, and the company was very helpful until the last moments of the transition.
Mateusz Oleksiuk
CEO LESS_
The technical creativity delivered by the team at Apptension was invaluable in the formation of our mixed reality start-up Hyper.
Nathan Sparshott
Co-Founder & CEO of Hyper
The SaaS Boilerplate Apptension built was a huge reason we were so successful, because all these little seemingly unrelated tasks and integrations needed to happen. If we had been working with anybody else, It would have probably taken months to do the same work.
Kwame Nyanning
CEO blkbx.
We needed their help to build the backend services and capabilities needed to deliver a production level on demand. Their ability to produce high-quality work with consistency while dealing with a new type of project was impressive.
Kelly O’Conor
Product Lead, Siberia
The project’s success has resulted in a long-term partnership for design and development. Apptension is a fantastic partner, who is willing to go above and beyond in order to deliver what the client needs.
Catarina Rocha
p(r)oud solutions
Apptension fared well in our project, working with our bespoke CMS and complex requirements. The designs were implemented well and the schedule was kept tight.
Christian Marc Schmidt
Partner at Schema

other success stories

Conversational AI Avatar
Building a real-time conversational AI avatar
Riyadh Air
Building a microsite with a 3D plane model
Feelit
A SaaS mobile app designed to bridge the gap between event attendees and event makers
Creative agency
Developing an eCommerce website for a luxury brand
Mojo
A website solution for an AI-based fertility tester
mTab
Building a full-stack data analysis, visualization and storytelling platform