We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? From standing in long queues just to send a parcel to doing so with a click on our smartphone’s screen. And from the operators’ point of view, they are saved from the pain of monitoring all the logistics and transportation operations – all the time. It’s all a result of the revolution of the transportation and logistics industry with the mobile app development domain.
But how? How do these mobile applications perform a multitude of tasks single-handedly and efficiently? What features make them so great? Well, this is something that we will discuss here. Don’t get anxious, since I know what you are here for – the most-awaited answer to “how much does it cost to develop an on-demand logistics (or management) app?” But before we dive straight into the answer, how about a little detour?
Let’s have a look at the current market ratio of the logistics mobile app development industry and what the future holds for it.
Logistics and Transportation Industry Market Figures
According to MarketWatch, the global logistics market is expected to grow to $287.1 million between 2020 and 2024. This corresponds to an average annual growth rate of 5%. The annual growth rate in 2020 is expected to be 4.13% by the end of the forecast period. It is also the highest total annual rate for the period 2019-2023.
Leading emerging logistics markets in 2021
According to a report by Transparency Market Research, the logistics industry is expected to be worth $15.5 trillion by 2023, highlighting the future of on-demand logistics application development. According to logistics industry statistics, the market share of logistics and cargo is the largest at 35%.
Types of Mobile Applications for Logistics Company
There are different types of mobile apps that your app development partner can build depending on the logistics and transportation business processes and requirements.
There are various types of logistics applications in the market that you can choose for development as per your transportation and logistics business needs. Some of the most common types of logistics applications are:
Logistics On-Demand Applications
This on-demand model became popular after the success of Uber applications. A logistics application enables the users to book the freight carrier easily and directly from the application. An on-demand application saves time as well as resources for the customers and eliminates the risks of errors.
Fleet Management Application
In the fleet management application, all the data related to fleet management is stored in the application. This application helps various fleet management and logistics companies to coordinate with each other from various geographies. With this application, the logistic manager can easily know the real-time status of the vehicle to boost productivity and make quick decisions.
Warehouse Management Application
The warehouse management mobile applications store and collect all the data and information related to the products in the warehouse of the logistic company. Serving a wrong delivery usually spoils the reputation of the company and no company wants to bear it. A well-designed warehouse management application can help you to eliminate all these types of problems and make the delivery process smooth.
Why Do Businesses Need a Transportation and Logistics Application?
Any product that is launched in the market is meant to solve some existing issues and queries that customers may face. With our flexible logistics and transportation mobile app development services you can streamline your transportation and fleet management to offer smooth services to your users. Here are some reasons why you should think about developing a logistics application for your business.
Warehouse and Fleet Management
It is not possible to be available physically to keep track of the data about the fleet and warehouse. With the help of a logistics mobile application, it becomes easy to keep track of all these features without being available physically. Our professional mobile app developers make sure that you do not face any troubles while managing the fleet and warehouse through the application. The application can easily store a large amount of data without any issues.
Quick Online Booking
Forget about the traditional queue systems and book your parcel with just a few clicks. The logistics and transportation mobile application will enable you to see the status of your order in real-time through the tablet, mobile, smartphone, or laptop. This means you are always keeping an eye on your business regardless of your location and time.
No Paperwork Required
By developing a logistics application for your business, you are saying no to paperwork. All the data and information will be available online to help you maintain all the records efficiently. We have been offering robust logistics and transportation solutions to businesses of all sizes and types.
Process Confirmation
Getting real-time confirmations is one o the best part of using logistics and transportation applications. Whether the item is delayed, scheduled, or delivered, all the details are shared with the customer through the application. This means, the customer also becomes a part of real-time tracking of the process. If you want to grow your logistics business in the right direction then you need to hire a logistics application development team that can cater to the needs and requirements of your business.
Ease of Vehicle Tracking
For any logistic business, it is important to know when the vehicle leaves the premises and where it is. It is important to have a tracking system that would keep you updated. Our iPhone mobile app development team implements the latest technology to ensure the smooth running of your business operations.
Core Features of On-demand Logistics and Transportation Mobile App
To make your logistics and transportation application successful, you need to consider integrating some core features. It will additionally make the application easy to use and flexible for your users.
Easy Registration
This is the first page on which the client will land, enabling the client to make the account or sign in from social media credentials or Gmail account.
Selecting Vehicles
The companies can book vehicles according to their necessities, capacities of the truck, and thinking about distance. This allows the companies to deliver every one of the products in a single trip.
Managing all the Booking
As indicated by the clients’ necessities and interests, users can easily plan the appointments for later or the date and time as per their needs.
Alerts & Notifications
All the alerts and different warnings can be easily given by the deliveries, tracking, offers, and other data related to the delivery
Billing & Payments
This allows the clients to get invoices effectively to get more data in incurred cost and simple exchanges through various channels like cards, wallets, PayPal, and so on
Rate Driver Performance
According to the driver’s behavior, the logistics companies can rate the services given by the driver, making it simple for the others to pick the right driver for them.
Track Shipments
Every shipment that went out for delivery can be effectively followed by the client. This application allows you to check the path that driver has picked so you can see if they are heading the correct way or not.
Estimate Fare Charges
Each logistics company has its spending plan and they even think about it while getting the shipments. Thus, fare assessment can help logistics companies of each size to know the amount they need to pay for the specific shipment.
Driver Panel
Register
Just like the user panel, this would also engage the registrations of the drivers by different means like social media accounts, Gmail, and so on
Get and Manage Request
This feature allows the drivers to deal with their requests that were allocated by the client, so they can track their finished and upcoming shipments.
Shipper Details
This will share every one of the shipper’s details like name, address, contact, information, and the destination area, the receipt that was generated and stored.
Freight Details
Drivers perform different tasks like fuel and toll charges, the weight of the merchandise that is transported, the cargo details are also graphed by the drivers.
Route & Navigation
A specific route can be determined and set up for the driver to arrive at the destination. This allows the clients and admin to track the administrator’s behavior while making deliveries.
Approval of Bill
Every one of the bills that should be paid by the clients like cost, fuel, and refreshment information. Along these lines, drivers can later repay by approving it by the administrator.
Payments
This will store all the data on the payments done by the clients either online or through cash on delivery that can be accepted and recorded by the drivers.
Admin Panel App
Secure Login
This will allow the administrator to safely log in to the account with their separate email id and password for keeping up with the general system integrity.
Dashboard
Under this panel, admins can analyze information of all the registered clients, the number of accounts in pending requests, and all the other available business data.
Track Drivers
All of the drivers that are reserved for delivery and the numbers of orders taken by then. So this would help you in tracking and dealing with the drivers.
Managing Trucks
The screen in the administrator panel will contain the data of the vehicles, transporters, and other additional expenses and manage them.
Push Notifications
This offers all the data like payments, request completion, driver distribution, and so on to be updated.
Billing & Invoice
All of the bills and receipts can be generated from this feature and can be managed and approved by the administrator.
MS Feature
It will allow the admin to address all the client inquiries regarding services, drivers, and so on.
Fuel Consumption & Vehicle Management
As indicated by the number of vehicles running, the fuel consumption for every one of them is tracked and recorded accordingly.
Additional Features that Can Make your App a Successful Idea
Chat
In application visits for the simplicity of clients and the drivers can be progressive as it can assist you with getting associated with both parts of your business. The visit alternatives answer every one of their inquiries and keep them refreshed with every one of the changes.
Live Stats of Delivery from your Merchant
It will also help you track every one of the exercises of the driver and allocate the new assignment once they are done with the task. It helps in expanding features and extending the business. It also helps in understanding your business so the clients can follow and get all the data of the driver in a couple of clicks.
Multilingual support for the driver
With local language in your grasp, you will have ease in organizing with your drivers. It tends to be extremely helpful as you need to scale your business. With normal language, you can easily dole out errands, execute, and grant the client to profit amazing help in pretty much every area.
Real-Time Analytics
It assists you with recognizing the parts of your business which are turned out great and which are not working accurately. With ongoing investigation, you can understand in which perspective you need to improve for the most extreme benefit and meet the client’s necessity in a superior manner.
Driver’s Safety
This extra feature guarantees the well-being of drivers while driving. It helps in tracking all of the drivers on the job, their driving behavior while dispatching the products, and scores their wellbeing according to the relating information. It can also produce a scorecard of each driver’s conduct for guaranteeing the greatest wellbeing.
Payment Integration & Referral Rewards
You can allow your clients to profit from your services. Whether it’s tied in with moving the house merchandise, or mechanical products. Offer them a solid and simple payment feature like PayPal.
Adding Cloud
Expansion of the cloud can also be helpful as it makes access and information heap basic and simple. You can easily access armada data identified with the driver, request position and delivery information, driver conduct report, times consumed for a product delivery. An ever-increasing number of effective organizations are integrating distributed automation for the simplicity of taking care of the job.
How AI and ML in Changing the Logistics Application Development Industry?
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are rapidly penetrating more and more industries, and our living spaces and logistics, and transportation are no exception. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are a huge help in buying in the supply chain. It can be used to improve processes, identify mistakes people make or overlook, and anticipate future opportunities and challenges. So make your business more profitable and successful. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of using AI in your supply chain. So read on to understand how artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms can help you grow your business.
Supply Chain Planning Through Machine Learning
Supply Chain Planning is considered one of the most crucial activities in supply chain management strategy. So it is a must to have some reliable tools for creating effective plans. By integrating Machine Learning in your supply chain planning, you can optimize and streamline your business processes significantly. By applying smart algorithms and huge data sets, you can easily balance the demand and supply at the same time.
In addition to making better purchasing decisions, another great benefit is that human intervention is minimal. You do not need to analyze a large amount of data yourself. Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms do all the work and avoid errors. Just set the parameters.
Warehouse Management through Machine Learning
Proper warehouse and inventory management is essential for effective supply chain planning. How about it? As over-and-under stocking is a real problem for companies and can destroy even the most effective consumption and productivity strategies. Machine learning and its predictive capabilities can solve problems and improve overall warehouse management. And this, in turn, means that you will have to spend money on these procedures.
Computer Vision (CV) is the field that develops a variety of technologies that allow computers to see and understand images and videos. This is a tool to automate your warehouse and do many tasks yourself. For example, computer vision systems can automate, accelerate, and simplify the barcode reading process. You can also monitor your warehouse environment, track employees, analyze data, and prevent theft and security breaches. Machine vision systems can also use facial recognition technology to identify people entering and leaving the warehouse.
Artificial Intelligence for Demand Prediction
To improve supply chain performance, artificial intelligence and machine learning can be used to predict or improve demand forecasting. If you have already tried. Get a detailed analysis of all factors that can affect demand based on experience. With this knowledge, you can make the right business decisions. As in many cases, AI and machine learning are more efficient than traditional demand forecasting methods. Importantly, these methods are infrequently used to influence demand factors. Therefore, these forecasts are not as reliable as those made using advanced techniques.
Smart Route Optimization
Artificial intelligence can be used to find the optimal route to reduce transportation costs and accelerate the transportation process. This is especially important for large e-commerce companies with many customers. They look forward to taking orders early, without delay. And artificial intelligence (AI) is now what we need to analyze and optimize routing. So you get better results and higher returns.
Supplier Relationship Management
Choosing a reputable supplier and maintaining a good relationship with them can be very difficult. Bad choices can harm your business and make mistakes in managing your partnerships. In the worst case, your business could go bankrupt. However, if you want to apply machine learning to your dataset based on supplier relationship management practices (such as audits and credit ratings). There are very reliable predictions of interactions with potential or existing sources. These tips will help you avoid many mistakes and build mutually beneficial partnerships.
Workspace Planning
Workforce planning is essential for modern business. This includes processes such as recruitment, retention, employee development, relocation, and performance management. Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions can make this much easier and make workforce planning strategies more effective. It makes you a happy team. This is important because people who enjoy organizations and work styles tend to be more productive. And with this team, your business will be even more successful.
Autonomous Vehicles
Logistics and transportation are very clear while talking about the supply. In most cases, the goods must be delivered to the customer, contractor, or another person in some way. And there are a lot of restrictions here! For example, a driver may drive non-stop for a certain amount of time. So you need to take a break or switch to another driver. However, having a minimum of two drivers on each truck can be expensive, and waiting to pick up a driver can increase loading times significantly. Both of these issues can negatively impact your business, especially in today’s highly competitive world. However, autonomous vehicles can solve these problems and save time and money. However, these vehicles are currently not very developed. So you have to wait a bit. But once you enter the market, don’t miss this opportunity. From a cargo standpoint, autonomous vehicles are a great choice.
Other Additional Feature to Consider
- Enable/disable driver monitoring and route planning functions with driver details.
- Scorecards and Driver Cards help reward drivers with the following prizes, points, and guidelines.
- Load and fuel consumption can be easily monitored.
- Rent mechanical and nearby gas stations for long trips.
- Offline/online support for easy control of road logistics and communication with drivers.
Involved Technology
Most importantly, you need a mobile app development company to get the mobile logistics app for free. You also need to use the right techniques when developing applications. Develop the latest technologies and ideas to beat all your competitors. Let’s take a look at some key features for mobile app development.
SMS & Phone Verification: Twilio, Nexmmo
Push Notifications: Push.io, Twilio
Payments: Paypal, Strip, E-Wallets & Braintree
Database: Hbase, MongoDB, MailChimp Integration
Cloud Environment: Google, AWS, Azure
Real-Time Analytics: Hadoop, Big Data, Apache, Cisco, IBM
Cost of Developing Logistics and Transportation Application
To create a great mobile app and website from an idea, you need a professional mobile and web app Development Company that has an entire team of developers, testers, and designers to build a complete app. Also, if you want to create this program yourself, you need the following protagonist
Project Manager
They add value to your team with all your knowledge and experience in the mobile communications industry. They must be able to provide solutions with the right management skills.
Developers
Developers are essential because it is the developer who creates the app from scratch. If you need an app on both operating systems, your team needs iOS and Android developers. Your skills and experience can be the key to success.
Designers
The Designers help you create perfectly excellent programs. Designers are responsible for creating beautiful and engaging apps for users and integrating design features and background displays.
Testers
The tester verifies that the developed program works correctly. They follow various test standards to make sure that the application is errorless and runs smoothly on every platform.
The cost of building a mobile app depends on the company you use, the app’s features, development time, and the field of development. Prices start at $200-$500 in Europe or the United States. Eastern Europe is much cheaper than the rest of Europe. So usually the cost of Android Logistics Application Development is around $15,000, whereas the development cost for the iOS platform is around $25,000.
Conclusion
All current data and projections for the development of procurement programs only provide a positive outlook for the future development of the on-demand logistics and transportation industry. Everything has been smooth and simplified since the advent of mobile application development in the logistics industry. The next big thing for the industry is to augment AI in response to AI trends. You can expect AI-based logistics programs that are useful not only for transportation but also for logistics and warehouse management. The Internet of Things is another next-generation technology that is revolutionizing logistics.
Going forward, the emergence of numerous types of on-demand logistics applications will eventually make the logistics industry prosperous due to the several benefits of logistics apps. If there was ever the right time to invest in the logistics app development services, it is now. Contact a reputed Logistics App Development Company and hire on-demand app developers. So, with the estimated cost to build the logistic app, it would become easier to make a firm and well-contemplated decision.
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