Cox Automotive - Ready Connect
Creating Cox Automotive’s Ready Connect system to transport 80,000+ vehicles monthly
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Amazon Web Services (AWS)
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UI/UX Design
Design System
Frontend Development
Backend & Infrastructure Development
Data Transformation
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About Ready Connect & Cox Automotive
Ready Logistics, a subsidiary of Cox Automotive, is one of North America’s leading full-service transportation logistics solutions to support planning, execution, and overall improvement in logistics operations from point A to point B for automotive auctions, dealers, commercial, and consumer clients.
Traditionally, Ready Logistics was managing the transport of 80,000+ vehicle monthly all via Excel Spreadsheets. Cox Automotive and the Ready Logistics team then approached Lazer to figure out a better way of managing this. That’s when we built the Ready Connect platform for them.
OUR APPROACH
Leveraging the knowledge of the Ready Logistics team, Lazer designed, built, launched and scaled a solution which automated the entire transportation management process, allowing the onboarding of infinite new drivers and saving thousands of labour hours.
Understanding the dependencies and parties involved in the management lifecycle
Before being able to conduct any designs or development, we needed to get thorough insight into how the current operations were being run. We conducted user interviews, met with key stakeholders, and walked through the entire lifecycle of operations manually to understand what was being done.
Crafting user stories and wireframing initial flows
Having a strong understanding of the operations, we started to create user stories and plan core user experience flows we wanted the platform to enable. From there, we drafted wireframes to ensure that all parties involved in the operational process were all aligned on the same page. We also used this opportunity to test any assumptions from a technical perspective and ensure that what we wanted to recreate in a platform was possible.
Diving deeper into initial technical infrastructure and systems
In addition to wireframes, we needed to understand what systems were already created by the Ready Logistics and Cox Automotive team. This dictated what we could leverage and what we needed to factor into the new build. We also needed to understand what technology the carriers already had and if any integrations were needed.
High fidelity designs for an efficient development process
Once we laid out the plan, we created high fidelity designs for our team to leverage in the development phase and proceeded to automating the flow of operations.
Automating the flow of an order
In the development phase, one of the key initiatives was automating the flow of an order. How it worked was that all orders were pushed into Ready Logistics system via an API which meant that they can come from any source. For instance, anyone from anywhere could request a transport whether the request came from Manheim's MUVIT platform or via physical agents at the auction.
In addition, orders had many attributes, such as various IDs, dates, a status, details on the vehicle, pickup location, drop off location, internal notes, charges, assignees and more! Since orders could be categorized by a specific state, we create tabs to move the order through specific flows:
• New - new requests in the system that haven't been assigned
• Active - orders that have been assigned to a carrier to move the vehicle
• Delivered - orders that have been delivered to the end location
• Completed - orders that have been invoiced, paid for, and now completed
Additionally, orders could be edited so carriers and ready logistics employees can leave notes and charges. Notes can be internal or external, and all charges uploaded by the carrier needed to be approved and have receipts uploaded.
A carrier app for the other side of the marketplace
In addition to the platform we needed to build for the Ready Logistics team, we needed carriers to have their own app as well. This was to allow them view the vehicles they need to transport, their payouts, and accept or reject jobs, and more.
THE RESULT
The Ready Connect system Lazer developed has become a staple in the Ready Logistics and Cox Automotive suite of software tools. It’s saved thousands of hours of manual labour and provided an ultimate experience that now lets the team manage 80,000+ transports per month.
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