Tag: Technology

How to secure your online delivery business

Posted on by Jea Vanity

Online shopping has become a necessity for all growing businesses in this day and age. Customers are gradually becoming more comfortable buying things they need and want with just a click. Many customers are leaving behind traditional shopping methods. This has led business owners to turn to online delivery solutions built on websites and mobile apps. In 2020, thousands of businesses had to close their brick-and-mortar establishments and move their services online. While this effectively allowed organizations to continue operations, it also posed a new threat: cybercrime. When it comes to cybercrime and cyberattacks, all online businesses and e-commerce solutions are always on the edge. Irrespective of the size and scale, no business is immune to cyber risk.  

In the first quarter of 2020, there were 273% more data breaches than there were in the first quarter of 2019. The main reason for this is that many businesses shifted their focus towards becoming more digitally orientated, such as embracing online delivery.

Tips to Secure Your Online Delivery Business

In this era of increased cybercrime, it is imperative that online delivery business owners are aware of prevention techniques against cybercrime. This applies to all types of businesses, whether it is an online food delivery business, a medicine delivery business, or an online B2B delivery business. These four tips can better help to secure your online operations:

1. Know the cyber risks

First and foremost, you need to educate yourself on the nature of cyber risks so you know what to expect and how to protect against them. 

  1. Phishing attacks
    One of the most common cyber risks is phishing attacks. This is when hackers send you emails that pose as legitimate institutions to lure you into providing sensitive data, like your banking details or credit card number. These hackers use phishing emails to steal money from their victim’s accounts and even impersonate their digital identities. 
  2. Ransomware attack
    This is when hackers encrypt your data, making it impossible for you to read, and demand payment for the cipher or the key to unscrambling the data. Both of these cyber risks can easily be avoided by double-checking emails with suspicious links or attachments. You should also back up company data and ensure that your passwords and accounts are secure.
  3. Financial frauds
    Hackers tend to perform unauthorized transactions and clear the trail so that the business owner is unable to investigate. The hacker also at times requests fake refunds and returns. Fraud management systems are one way to detect and get protection against fraud. 

2. Secure tracking systems

Your online delivery business can benefit from tracking systems that inform customers of their product’s delivery time and status. However, such systems can be hijacked and manipulated by hackers. In many cases, this causes little more than disruptions to the delivery schedule. However, this vulnerability can lead to more dangerous situations. For example, cybercriminals can use stolen tracking data to intercept your delivery routes and steal goods. This not only leads to a loss of property, but it could also be dangerous for your employees. For a secure online platform for delivery businesses, check out VentureDive’s all-in-one application and delivery management software for online delivery businesses.

 It’s highly customizable and a cyber-secure option for business owners. You can also secure tracking systems by doing the following:

  1. Securing your servers and admin panel: Do not keep passwords that are easy to guess. Keep complex passwords and keep changing them every now and then. 
  2. Keeping strong firewalls: Firewall software and plugins are easily available for free or at a price. They automatically keep a check on your servers and blocks any new threats. Good firewalls even resolve new viruses or bugs that might attack your server.
  3. Using anti-virus and anti-malware software: Hackers can be easily stopped if your antivirus is up to date. They are also able to flag any malicious activity or transaction. 
  4. Frequently backing up your data: You can employ an automatic backup service so your data is being protected and backed up regularly. A system malfunction or cyber-attacks can easily wipe out your entire data for good. So it is wise to take all the precautionary measures. 
  5. Checking from time to time for any malicious activity: You can get special monitoring software that keeps track of data and activity in real-time. It also notifies you if a suspicious transaction occurs.
  6. Stay updated: Keep your antivirus software and plugins up to date. Hackers can detect if a system is using an outed version of security software.

3. Educate your employees

Robust cybersecurity measures are only valuable if your workforce is aware of potential cyber risks and how to mitigate them. People are the weakest link in cybersecurity, so you—or better yet, your cybersecurity team—must educate them on the dos and don’ts of conducting business online. This protects company data from all forms of cyber risks, particularly those that prey on human error, like phishing emails. A small act such as clicking on a malicious link can make you the victim of a cross-site request forgery or cross-site scripting attack.

With delivery businesses holding valuable personal information like addresses and bank details, it is important to hold workshops or distribute resources on the importance of cybersecurity to your workforce.

4. Consult with cybersecurity professionals

Basic cybersecurity measures might not be enough to protect your delivery business against hackers. As your business expands, consulting with professionals might be a necessary step forward. The increase in cybercrime in 2020 is one of the reasons why cybersecurity jobs are being created in droves—3.5 million in 2021 to be exact. With the sheer number of businesses migrating to some digital platform or another, there is huge pressure on the cybersecurity industry to respond.

Filling this gap, though, is a massive undertaking. This is why educational institutions have developed their cybersecurity certifications and degrees to have a strong business focus. This is helping the cybersecurity graduates of today be much more knowledgeable about the business landscape and the needs of growing businesses like delivery services. Mixing business with cybersecurity training has opened up the industry to more professionals. If your business is too small to have its own cybersecurity department, put your trust in outsourced experts who can set up strong defense and offense strategies against hackers and cybercriminals. This way, instead of hiring in-house resources, you can hire and manage QA teams and other cybersecurity experts to share the load.

Always Secure Your Online Business – Whether Big or Small

To sum up, the world of e-commerce fraud can seem complex. But keeping your cybersecurity up to date will only benefit your business and fight against fraud and viruses. Developing a cybersecurity plan for your online business is vital to the growth and success of your business. Though not every business can allocate resources for cybersecurity, small initiatives such as workshops can also assist in training your staff better. This will further help in eliminating a huge gap in your defense against hackers and criminals. You should take as many measures as your business demands. Your end goal should be to be able to create a website or app or develop custom software that your customers can absolutely trust. 

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How agile methodologies help you optimize development processes

Posted on by Sidra Sidiqqui

Whether you are someone starting in the software development business or are in the game for quite some time, you’ll agree that managing projects that don’t use agile methodologies can get very tricky.  There are missed deadlines, buggy releases, upset customers, and things that you didn’t foresee. 

It is fair to say that managing projects of different sizes come with its own level of complexity and variables. Nevertheless, you can successfully execute projects by using the right methodologies and techniques available. Project management methodologies not only help you streamline the software development process but also enable effective time management and cost reduction.

An agile methodology is a project management process, mainly used for software development, where demands and solutions emerge through the collaborative work of self-organizing and cross-functional teams, and their users. Agile has multiple methodologies including Kanban, Scrum, XP, feature-driven development, etc. All these methodologies share the same principles behind the agile manifesto.

In this blog, we will focus on the most popular methodologies used in software development, highlighting the pros and cons and the recommended use cases for each one. After reading through this article, you should be able to decide which methodology is more fitting for project needs.

Kanban

What is Kanban?

Kanban (Visual Signal – Card in Japanese) is a visual way to manage tasks and workflows, which utilizes a Kanban board with columns and cards. It is one of the most popular agile methodologies and helps you visualize your work for your own, and others’ understanding, and helps you keep everyone on the same page. To start with, you would need to build a Kanban board, then fill it with Kanban cards, and finally set up a work progress limit. The cards represent tasks, and the columns organize those tasks by their progress or current stage in development.

Elements of Kanban that make it truly agile 

  • Visualize the workflow
    Capture your team’s high-level routine as a series of steps (If you are unsure, start with the steps Specify, Implement, and Validate).
  • Limit work in progress
    Implement a pull system on the workflow by setting maximum items per stage to ensure that a card is only “pulled” into the next step when there is capacity.
  • Feedback loop
    Run your daily standup at a set time each day, focusing on issues that block work from progressing (cards from moving between columns).
  • Manage the workflow
    This can be made achievable by managing workflow and monitoring performance on the go in order to fix obstacles as they occur.
  • Adapt to the process
    Track external input that is blocking the implementation of a work item (such as a late or unstable dependency) by documenting it in the implementation step. 
  • Improve collaboratively
    Work through a problem (as a team) more smoothly and effectively by having a shared understanding of your workflow and end goals.

KANBAN PROS

  1. Kanban methodology is easy to understand.
  2. It maximizes the team’s efficiency.
  3. There are no set roles,  so there is flexibility in terms of individual responsibility. 
  4. There is less time spent in meetings like planning and retrospective meetings.
  5. Kanban has no mandatory requirements for estimation.
  6. Changes can be made to the backlog at anytime.
  7. It reduces the time cycle of the process.

KANBAN CONS

  1. An outdated Kanban board can lead to problems in the development process.
  2. The team can end up making the board overcomplicated.
  3. There can be a lack of timing as there are no given time frames for each phase.

Scrum

What is Scrum?

Scrum is a highly prescriptive framework compared to Kanban. It’s included in one of the most notable agile methodologies and requires detailed and restrictive planning, has predefined processes and roles. It mainly focuses on team productivity and continuous feedback.

The Scrum framework is based on 3 pillars:

  1. Transparency
  2. Inspection
  3. Adaptation

The term is inspired by rugby, where a scrum is a formation of players. The term scrum was chosen because it emphasizes teamwork. And it is like the rugby players where players gather multiple times to check up on the project status. Once executed, the team players have to run in sprints to score a goal.

Scrum is a process to let the team commit to delivering a working product through iterative time-boxed sprints. This process is based on a specific set of roles, events, and artifacts.

scrum process

Essential elements of a Scrum

Sprint planning 

Each team member helps set goals and the team has to produce at least one increment of software within 30 days or more.

Daily scrums

This meeting is held every day to discuss any problems the team is facing to avoid any delays in the project completion.

Sprint review

The sprint review is held at the end of each sprint to go over what was delivered, how it is delivered, and what was not delivered.

Sprint retrospective

This is an end-of-sprint session where everyone reflects on the sprint process, how it helped them and how can it be improved in the future.

SCRUM PROS

  1. The methodology leads to team accountability.
  2. The team can plan what will be achieved and estimate when will be delivered. And can communicate this plan with other teams or any stakeholders.
  3. The team knows clearly the sprint goal and can resist any interference.
  4. Three is daily communication which leads to efficient problem-solving. 
  5. Continuous process improvement and retrospectives with lessons learned.

SCRUM CONS

  1. Scrum team members require to be experienced and skilled individuals, lack of experience can slow down the scrum process and obstacles can occur. 
  2. The scrum team requires a committed team. If even one team member lags, it can cause a lot of damage to the process. 
  3. A less experienced scrum master can ruin the whole process of development.
  4. If a task is not defined accurately then the entire project can be lead to inaccuracies.

Scrumban: Going agile with a hybrid approach

Scrumban, like the name suggests, is a hybrid of the Scrum and Kanban agile methodologies, which gives teams the flexibility to adapt to the needs of the stakeholders without feeling overburdened by meetings and without giving estimates. It provides the structure of Scrum with the flexibility of visualization of Kanban.

Scrubman can be divided into 7 stages. Here is a step-by-step guide to developing a Scrumban framework for your team.

Step 1: Visualization of work

Create a Scrumban board to get a full picture of your workflow. It is similar to a Kanban board and you will be using it as your primary workflow tool. Add as many columns to your Scrumban board as your team needs to mark each discrete phase of progress.

Step 2: Stop Early Binding

Don’t assign work to a specific team member as part of backlog refinement or sprint planning. 

Step 3: Impose Work-In-Progress (WIP) limits

WIP limits to columns enable the Kanban Pull System. Before each iteration or sprint, the team creates a WIP (work in progress) list of items from the backlog. These are the requirements they want to accomplish in the upcoming iteration. 

Step 4: Pull instead of Push
Stuff from Left to Right should be pulled; don’t Push. If needed add extra buffer columns for your convenience.

Step 5: Ordering is important
Prioritize the stuff in your backlog. Or add an additional step like ‘Ready’, if needed.

Step 6: No estimations
Kanban doesn’t have estimations; this means no story points and no planning poker.

Step 7: No predefined planning
Planning is done based on triggers instead of being pre-defined, weekly, or bi-weekly. When to-do reaches a threshold, planning becomes essential.  

Conclusion

Both Kanban and Scrum were created to help teams to increase their efficiency and productivity. The custom software development teams at VentureDive leverage these methods, and are counted as one of the top tech talents in the IT industry. Explore our tech talent outsourcing services to learn more.

Picking between the two (Scrum and Kanban), however, depends on the team, as they can determine the best method or framework that would increase their team’s productivity and save time. 

In a nutshell, Scrum is an agile process that allows the team to focus on delivering business value in the shortest time possible. Whereas, Kanban is a visual system for managing software development work. With the Kanban method, there is continuous improvement, productivity, and efficiency. Scrum is centered on the backlog while Kanban revolves around the dashboard. The scrum master acts as a problem solver. Kanban encourages every team member to be a leader and promotes sharing responsibility among them all. Scrum advises time-boxed iterations whereas, Kanban focuses on outlining a different duration for individual iterations. In the end, the team members should carefully observe all the available methodologies and decide which seems likely to meet their needs. 

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A comprehensive guide on last-mile delivery solution: Features, benefits, and future implications

Posted on by Ameer Hamza

The term ‘last mile’ was originally used in telecommunications to describe the difficulty of connecting end users’ homes and businesses to the main telecommunication network. This ‘last mile’ of telecommunication cable was going to be used by only one user, thereby not justifying the cost of installing and maintaining it.

As the world increasingly turns to e-commerce for shopping, the ‘last mile’ issue is one of the biggest and most expensive challenges for businesses.

What is last-mile delivery?

As soon as you check out from your shopping basket on any online shopping website, your product begins its long journey from a warehouse shelf to your doorstep. Here the ‘last mile’ represents the last leg/gap between the fulfillment center and you. Most businesses depend on a third party, like a shipping carrier, to handle their orders in the last mile. This last mile can be just a few meters to 100 kilometers or more. The key objective of last-mile delivery is to deliver your package as soon as possible and as safely as possible.

Challenges of last-mile delivery

Just like in telecommunications, the last mile is the most time-consuming and expensive part of the whole shipping process. If done correctly, it can convert users to loyal customers and save you a lot of time and money. The problem with last-mile deliveries is that not all of them are the same, some of them are pretty straightforward and usually involve a big truck carrying a large number of goods through a major road or highway. The complicated ones are those which require the delivery person to navigate through crowded streets, confusing alleyways, similar-looking buildings, and even large swathes of uninhabited rural areas to make singular deliveries.

Inefficiency is a major problem for last-mile deliveries as most of them require multiple stops with low drop sizes. The issue has been further compounded by the continuous rise of e-commerce, which has dramatically increased the number of parcels delivered each day, as well as raised customer expectations to include not just fast, but also free delivery.

The last mile of the entire supply chain adds up to about 30% of the cost and as free shipping becomes more commonplace, customers are less likely to be willing to pay a delivery fee, leaving retailers to shoulder the cost. Other challenges include:

Allocation & Address Issues

Destination grouping/management is a major issue for last-mile deliveries. Many retailers allocate jobs manually, which leads to human error, allowing shipments to get misallotted or missed out on a particular route. Additionally, bad and incorrect addresses and a lack of proper signage are also major concerns.

Dynamic Routes

If the delivery person is not changing routes based on conditions that prevail on that particular day, then they are further complicating the scope of last-mile delivery and timeline adherence for order fulfillment.

Delivery Density

There is a fine balance between managing the number of deliveries in a day within a particular area. Taking into account the size of shipments, and considering the following use cases, the delivery density problem quadruples in magnitude:

  • Low-Density Short Distances
  • Low-Density Long Distances
  • High-Density Short Distances
  • High-Density Long Distances

Transit unpredictability and lack of communication

While this is something retailers have no control over, the least they can do is to have a communications plan in place so that the delays are communicated to the respective stakeholders in a proactive manner.

Fulfillment timelines

Missed timelines can prove to be very expensive to retailers. In the case of food deliveries, some companies cannot charge customers for the delivery if the guaranteed timeline is missed. Not just that, it also causes damage in terms to the reputation of the brand.

How is last-mile delivery changing?

App-based delivery and the gig economy

As traditional delivery companies have started becoming inefficient, last-mile startups are on the rise, providing a cheaper, faster option. From food to large item delivery, crowdsourced delivery is becoming a viable and popular option.

Payment

Once the user selects what they require, they make a payment to Postmates. The payment includes the price of the product, the delivery fee, and service fee.

In-house delivery

Another new development is that businesses have started to hire their own drivers and trucks to cut down on costs, although this brings up a host of other issues.

Warehouses in major cities

Businesses are also adopting Amazon’s model of having fulfillment centers in high-ordering areas to improve efficiencies, allowing for rapid order fulfillment in major cities, including same-day delivery. Reducing the distance from the warehouse to the final destination costs less and can shorten delivery time to same-day or next-day delivery.

How can you boost your last-mile delivery?

Investing in a last-mile delivery solution that is feature-rich and can holistically transform your business by making your last-mile delivery more efficient than ever. Your custom mobile app can have features & benefits like:

  1. Route optimization
    Delivery route optimization is a crucial feature that can help in minimizing total delivery time by discovering the most efficient routes. It works by taking into account several factors like traffic, location, capacity, and time under consideration to come up with the most efficient routes. It also allows you to make last-minute changes or re-optimize by sending a real-time update to the driver. 
  2. Auto-dispatch
    This feature helps in efficiently managing your assignments and on-demand orders by assigning the right driver for the right task at the right time and thus minimizing the service time and labor costs.
  3. Bird’s eye view
    This feature allows you to get a bird’s eye view of all important aspects with the team, time, and status filtering. You can search using time, text, and status-based queries to quickly find the customers, drivers, and delivery tasks. 
  4. Proof of delivery
    This allows recipients to sign off on their goods through in-app signatures, photos, notes, and barcodes.
  5. Real-time status update
    This is an important feature that provides real-time status updates of the shipment to customers so that they know exactly when their goods would be delivered and by whom. They are also informed in case there’s any delay.
  6. Real-time visibility
    This helps you increase your fleet’s visibility by quickly being able to check where your vehicles are and how many of them are idling. It also helps in minimizing theft, spoilage, and pilferage. 
  7. Audit key metrics
    This feature allows you to visualize success rates, service times, on-time rates, distance traveled, feedback scores, and much more.
  8. Reports & analytics
    Gain detailed insight into your business through graphical and date reports.
  9. Delivery Flexibility
    A customized last-mile delivery solution will allow your customers to choose the time and location of delivery.
  10. Boost productivity
    The last-mile delivery solution can help you boost productivity by eliminating any unnecessary idling or unplanned diversions.

What is the future of last-mile delivery?

As e-commerce increases, time-critical deliveries will become paramount. Here are some ideas on what innovations will be necessary for last-mile delivery in the future:

Multiple Options

Companies must adapt to changing customer demands; home deliveries, same-day deliveries, time windows, delayed deliveries, alternative locations, unmanned pack-station at offices, neighborhood stores, and in public transport stations, customer-centric return processes for products and packaging, and just-in-time deliveries. There will be multiple touchpoints with customers in the future.

Robotisation

Robotisation will soon become an integral part of urban freight solutions. Unmanned deliveries by robots and drones, and unmanned pack-stations for pick-up and delivery at offices, stores, and public transport stations will become commonplace.

Smart planning, IoT, and reliance on ride-sharing

Since urban freight mostly involves finding an unloading zone, walking, and actual delivery, new transport planning, and scheduling systems will be developed using big data to forecast delivery routes and using real-time traffic information and availability of unloading zones for planning and scheduling. The reliance on ride-sharing will become commonplace as these social delivery networks will lead to innovation in urban freight.

Food for thought

Last-mile delivery is a major bottleneck for a lot of retailers. The solution is to shore up on last-mile delivery with a custom-made solution that is tailor-made for your organization, it will surely boost your last-mile delivery tracking and hence increase the profits.

Keep in mind the latest trends though, couple that with a last-mile delivery solution, and you are ready to take your business to new heights.

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