What is the most inventive or innovative thing you've done? It doesn't have to be something that's patented.

It
could be a process change, product idea, a new metric or customer facing interface – something that was your
idea. It cannot be anything your current or previous employer would deem confidential information.

Please provide us with context to understand the invention/innovation. What problem were you seeking to
solve? Why was it important? What was the result? Why or how did it make a difference and change things?

In my previous role, I had the privilege of designing and implementing multiple simple and innovative ideas on
numerous business challenges by insisting on high standards through relentless customer obsession centricity and
high levels of ownership. Of all such instances, I feel proud of solving the last-mile delivery problem for a client in a
simple and innovative manner by leveraging external vendors for the doorstep delivery of our customer orders to
their doorstep, which not only led to considerable cost savings but also improved customer experience for the
company I was working for.

The business model of the company is to sell graded fruits and vegetables to premium gated communities
(residential apartment/villa communities with strictly controlled entrancessecured access, typically with a living
capacity of 1,000-1,500 people) in one of the southern cities in India. The company is responsible for sourcing &
procuring top-quality products from farms & markets; ripening, grading, & packing in a large-centralized
warehouse which is located 40 miles away from the city; and the distribution of packed orders from the warehouse
to the customer's doorstep throughvia distribution centers located in the city. The company has marketing
partners (each one acts like a stand-alone retail store) who are living/operating in each of these gated
communities, responsible for sales, order generation, and customer service through WhatsApp in a social
commerce model. The delivery of customer orders used to happen between 5 PM and 8 PM by leveraging multiple
smaller trucks directly from the warehouse to the customer's doorstep, covering both the middle mile (which is
from the warehouse to the distribution point) and the last mile (which is from the distribution point to the society
entrance and from the society entry point to the customer doorstep) of the delivery process.

As part of a broader marketing plan, I was working on, I found that the delivery model and the timings of delivery
were negatively impacting both revenue and costs due to bad customer quality perception, customer
inconvenience, and underutilization of trucks. In addition, there were delivery issues such as misplaced orders,
wrong packaging, and a larger transit time from the warehouse to customers in gated communities which were
delivered last on a particular route. These issues resulted in a relatively high returns & replacements ratio of 8-
10%.

In order to improve the overall customer experience, I pitched the idea of shifting the delivery model from evening
to morning to the founders and the management team (including the Souring & Procurement head, the
Warehouse Operations Head, & Technology Head). I supportedeconded this idea by supplementing with the
feedback I gathered from talking to various marketing partners and customers. I acquired the founders' buy-in to
shift the delivery mode and owned the responsibility of leading the entire change management process, which
essentially included aligning all business activities to suit the morning delivery model.

The change management program involved negotiation with 40+ marketing partners on delivery timings and gated
community entry approvals; coordination with the sourcing & procurement and warehouse operations teams to
ensure a smooth transition; and designing and implementing a logistics delivery model that can improve the
customer experience while optimizing cost per order (at least by 20%). The key challenge I faced was the
implementation of the logistics delivery model. In the new delivery model I designed, the delivery from the
warehouse to distribution points happens via larger trucks, and direct delivery through a combination of smaller
trucks and bikers from distribution points to the customer's doorstep. I built an internal logistics team by hiring
one logistics manager and 8-10 temporary personnel (delivery boys & bikers).

In less than 2 weeks, operations were stabilized, with almost 100% of customer orders getting delivered within the
set timeframe (6-8 AM). The management was very happy with the result as the overall returns and replacements
ratio was reduced to 3-5% which is the market standard, leading to an improved customer experience through
delivery timings and reduced errors in delivery. In addition, there was a reduction in cost per order by ~10% (vis-à-
vis the previous model of leveraging only smaller trucks).

The changed new delivery model inevitably threw new implementation challenges in terms of managing the
temporary workforce (bikers & delivery boys) due to their very high attrition rate. Hence, in order to provide best-
in-class service to our customers and to reduce the risk on business operations, I had to maintain a buffer, resulting
in a 20-30% underutilization of delivery boys and bikers to account for these contingencies. Including the ~5% cost
savings achieved by streamlining warehouse operations, we had achieved a total cost savings of ~15% (short by 5%
to the initial target of ~20%). While most stakeholders were happy with the transition, I was relentlessly looking for
ways to optimize the delivery process as still most of the returns and replacements issues were due to misplaced
orders by bikers & delivery boys driven by the naivety of the delivery personnel in understanding the gated
community layout. We also didn’t have the technology in place to support delivery personnel in reducing errors.
Therefore, I tried to negotiate with a few 3rd party logistics providers who can provide us with the logistics service
including technology. However, most discussions weren’t fruitful as their services were extremely costly.

As I was looking for a cost-friendlyeffective, scalable, and reliable way of delivering customer orders to their
doorstep from the gated community entrance, I stumbled upon an innovative idea of leveraging existing vendors in
each of these gated communities who deliver products such as newspapers, water cans, milk, etc., as the bulk of
the effort and costs in our delivery model are for delivering customer orders from the society entry point to the
customer doorstep. The revised delivery model involves delivery from the warehouse to the distribution point by
larger trucks, from the distribution point to the gated society entrance in smaller trucks/bikers and vendors
become our delivery partners who have the responsibility of delivering from the entrance to the customer
doorstep.

I took the idea to the founders and the management. However, they felt that it could be hard to implement this as
they were doubtful of concerns related to ownership, delivery timings, and even costs. Also, due to the success of
the changed delivery process, they didn’t want to disturb it. After deliberations, I asked if I could test this idea in a
couple of communities and the outcome will decide if we should scale this or not. I initiated negotiations with
vendors with respect to costs and ownership of delivery. Had I made an agreement with a couple of vendors and
implemented the process successfully. Surprisingly, the implementation was relatively hassle-free as the
employees of vendors are well versed in the gated society layout, which reduced misplaced orders.

The last mile costs in these couple of gated communities were further reduced by more than 35% given strong
negotiations with vendors. Seeing the success, I was able to get the founders' buy-in to implement this across all
communities. By the time I was leaving the company, I was able to implement this across 60% of the gated
communities that we were operating inwere being services. The idea was reliable, scalable, and cost-friendly.
Towards the end, there was a total reduction of 20-25 % in overall cost per order, and a returns & replacement
ratio of <1%, resulting in a highly improved customer experience.

Personally, I felt this to be very satisfying as thinking of leveraging other vendors with delivery capability (instead of
specialist 3rd party logistics providers) to solve our purpose and executing it in a mutually beneficial way, had
improved our customer experience significantly. This entire program hads also yielded a positive influence in
growing our brand, our customer base, and thereby revenues as well. One of the key learnings from the
implementation of this program is that there are always simple solutions to problems that are perceived to be we
think of as complex.