Staying In The Loop - How A South African Tech Startup Is Leveraging Google Cloud To Optimize Its Processes

Have you ever heard of the ‘last mile’ in logistics?

In a product’s journey from the warehouse to your door, the last mile is the final stage in the process. Not only is it the hardest to get right, and the most time-consuming leg of product delivery, it’s also the most expensive, reportedly accounting for around 50% of total shipping costs. If you’ve ever waited hours for a package that was “out for delivery”, you’ll understand exactly how inefficient this final step can be.

Luckily for the industry, and for customers, a number of new and emerging tools and technologies are being developed and deployed to improve last mile delivery. These solutions make smarter and simpler deliveries possible. Solutions like Loop, a delivery management app that is optimizing and shaking up the logistics space by improving the interactions between everyone across the supply chain - from the business and the driver, to the end customer.

Loop was founded by Kimberley Taylor, who came up with the idea for the business while completing a university assignment. She was asked to solve the traditional travelling salesman problem – the salesman has to visit every city on a list starting from a particular location and ending at the start location.

The challenge is to minimize the length of the trip by finding the most efficient route. Solving this route optimization problem opened the door for Taylor to ask even more questions about the visibility and communication issues that exist within the delivery space. And she immediately knew that there were a number of problems that needed to be solved.