Germany-based digital B2B marketplace, MagaLoop, is leading digital transformation for wholesalers and independent retailers across Europe – connecting them directly with suppliers through their order and delivery platform, built with HyperTrack. We had the chance to speak with MagaLoop's Head of Product, Prashant Soni, about how his team uses HyperTrack within their tech stack.
Read on for the transcript and play the audio recording below to learn more about MagaLoop and their ability to quickly implement HyperTrack to improve the customer experience. The video summary of the conversation is available here.
Transcript
Leigh Ann
Alright, so we're gonna start you off nice and easy here. Can you just give me a little introduction? Can you tell me your name, your title and the name of your company and just remember to look back at that lens when when you're when you speak.
Prashant
So I'm Prashant and I lead the product team at MagaLoop. And we are like a B2B e-commerce platform for mom and pop shops in Europe.
Leigh Ann
Okay, so if you could just tell me about some of the problems or issues that you were facing before you started working with HyperTrack.
Prashant
So before HyperTrack, we were a promotion only platform. What meant was that we were just passing great deals, to our mom and pop shop owners. And we were not controlling the end to end ordering experience. For the mom and pop shops. With HyperTrack, our initial idea was to make sure that we give order level visibility or fulfillment visibility to the mom and pop shop owners so that the entire ordering experience for them is world class.
Leigh Ann
Excellent. So just so I understand. So is it that your product you weren't delivering as part of your product and you found HyperTrack and decided to add that into the Okay. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about how not having that as part of your business was affecting your company's performance overall.
Prashant
So, initially, we did not own the delivery component, that means we did not own the order fulfillment component, which meant that still wholesalers owned the fulfillment component. But since they were analog, so the order fulfillment quality was not that great.
However, when we started on owning the Order, order fulfillment part, there came a question that how can we deliver great order fulfillment experience, and for that we needed good order visibility, full fulfillment visibility.
And that is where HyperTrack came in handy. They were like the plug and play delivery visibility platform for us, where we could assign delivery as well as provide delivery visibility to our mom and pop shop owners and thereby giving them a great ordering experience.
Leigh Ann
Perfect, perfect. I understand. How did it feel – and how was it affecting your team knowing that you had this analog experience, and it wasn't up to the standards you wanted it to be?
Prashant
So when we started working on this problem, the user retention was a very big issue. We did not – we were able to attract users to our platform, but we did not know that apart from great deals, what could retain the users to the platform.
After doing intensive research, our team realized that a great ordering experience is crucial in user retention. So, what we did was we went back to the drawing board and built the entire order fulfillment process.
However, we were executing in a very analog way without systems, so it was not solved in a very scalable manner to solve it in a manner that we could possibly do this for all the orders across Europe, we had to use some or the other order fulfillment system. However our business pace was so fast that we could not build the system overnight.
So that's why we chose HyperTrack to plug and play this order fulfillment order visibility platform or delivery visibility platform overnight within a few days to provide that order delivery visibility to our mom and pop shop owners.
Leigh Ann
Alright, so can you tell me a little bit about actually finding HyperTrack? What was that like?
Prashant
I think I think it worked both ways.
First, we were really scouting for plug and play solutions, to provide order level delivery visibility. And at the same time, throughout the professional network, we also knew about the fact that HyperTrack is actively solving this problem. So we thought of connecting these two dots and looking at started working with HyperTrack to solve this particular problem.
Leigh Ann
What do you feel sets HyperTrack apart?
Prashant
So I think, what I found in during all my experience of working with different tech partners, or solution partners, what I found extremely interesting and differentiating about HyperTrack was the fact that with them, we were able to co create a solution, which was tailor made to our business needs.
So this, it was not that, oh, they have a predefined solution. And we need to just force fit into our business needs. However, revolt like a team together, they were almost like an extended team for us, where we passed on them our user needs and problem statements, and they kept on solving while building on the existing solutions. And I think this this feeling of co creation, this partnership, really had set HyperTrack apart from the other other partners that we would have in building different solutions.
Leigh Ann
Excellent. In your own words, how would you describe HyperTrack
Prashant
To me HyperTrack is the plugin play order assignment, delivery assignment and delivery visibility platform, which, which is a tough problem to solve in itself. So if you would do it in house, it would, it might take you, let's say, many months, to start to actually start to actually see the results of what you have done. But with HyperTrack, it's almost like you can overnight, build the capability of order assignment and order, delivery visibility, and provide great experience to your customers.
Leigh Ann
Excellent, excellent. Can you talk to me a bit about how you and your team are using HyperTrack?
Prashant
So as I said, we are we are in the business of building ecommerce platform for mom and pop shops, where we receive orders from mom and pop shops, we build the order and we delivered the order. Okay, so we we do it, we utilize or we use HyperTrack in two ways. First, is that we deliver goods from our own warehouse, to our to our mom and pop shop users. So we use HyperTrack as an vehicle assignment and vehicle visibility platform for the orders that we execute on our own.
At the same time, we turn the analog wholesalers and bring their vehicles on our platform and provide their assignment and their visibility through HyperTrack as well. So both the first party delivery as well as the third party delivery, assignment and visibility problems are solved by my team using HyperTrack.
Leigh Ann
Perfect, what do you like best about HyperTrack?
Prashant
So I think it's the simplicity of the solution simplicity with which you can, you can execute with HyperTrack, both in terms of delivery as a function, as well as this tech stack as a capability how we can onboard HyperTrack very quickly, this simplicity in the user experience of the product, as well as simplicity in in onboarding HyperTrack with your own tech stack. That I think is really a fun to work with.
Leigh Ann
Excellent. Is there anything that isn't working for you about HyperTrack that you'd like to see improve?
Prashant
So from here, we can, we can evolve in multiple directions. And that is where I would like to. That is where I would like to work with HyperTrack.
So we want to build an end to end stack for our wholesalers, where delivery is one of the components, and we think we understand the user experience of the wholesalers and our users the best, we will just want HyperTrack as a working engine under MagaLoop’s, let's say hood, right, so with MagaLoop’s hood, we want HyperTrack as an engine working beneath it. So instead of using HyperTrack as a full fledged product, we would like that as a running engine for our users. And I think that's the and keep solving the problems in the direction of load building load assignment, and improve the accuracy and improve excellence or achieve excellence on that front.
Leigh Ann
Alright, so how do you and your team feel after implementing HyperTrack?
Prashant
So one thing, I think, there are two directions in which the experience has shaped with HyperTrack one is, one is obviously the engineering load of building this capability in house has radically reduced. So we do not have to look for hiring specific engineering talent, who could build this and maintain this and keep improving it.
On the contrary, we have HyperTrack as an extended team of ours, with whom we can, you know, keep improving the stack further and further. So that's one. And second is obviously from the business – business as a function where the delivery visibility has given a great experience to the trader and improve the way that they do their business.
Leigh Ann
Okay, so what results have you seen?
Prashant
So first of all, when when we intended to launch such a system, there were the users or the wholesalers were a little hesitant in coming onto this platform. But once they started using it, they could not go back. In fact, our own internal team, for whom we built delivery as a capability, they started immediately using it as well. So so the migration of the users from an analog world to a more digitally equipped world was one of the biggest achievement with HyperTrack.
Leigh Ann
Excellent. What problems are you solving or what benefits have you realized from using HyperTrack?
Prashant
In our case, a moment shop mom and pop shop user, or a shop owner has always been anxious about the fact that if that user did not know where the where his or her order is in, in process, that visibility was not there.
So, first of all, the moment we started providing this visibility over a period of months, users started valuing this visibility a lot and directly or indirectly, we can connect this user satisfaction or this user experience to improve user retention.
So from that point of view, it had a direct business impact.
Another another impact is that since HyperTrack has we on boarded HyperTrack as a capability, so we saved a lot on the engineering cost that we would have incurred if we would have built this capability in house and built and maintained this capability in house. So I think these two are the most tangible benefits that we saw as a team while working with HyperTrack.
Leigh Ann
Excellent, what features are you benefiting the most from and why?
Prashant
One, three top features one is definitely the order assignment, then order visibility, and the next is dashboarding.
The dashboard which gives you visibility of all the orders, which are which are live. And HyperTrack’s feature in which you can replay a delivery to assess where it broke down and varied Where did work and vary did not has been one of the biggest advantages.
Leigh Ann
Excellent, you were talking about customer retention and that sort of thing? Do you have any specific KPIs or metrics of success that you're able to share with us?
Prashant
Definitely, by the moment, we started providing end to end order visibility, user retention has significantly gone up. Okay. And so in the end, the customer NPS score as well.
Leigh Ann
Perfect. That's great. Do you feel that the original problem that you're facing has been solved? Or is at least on the way to being solved?
Prashant
Yeah. So I think I think the, the entire order fulfillment experience as a problem is a much wider problem. And we have just solved the delivery visibility perfectly, but there are many layers of the problem.
There are many layers to this problem, which will take time to solve it neatly or completely. But I guess that's the ongoing nature of the business that we will keep digging it and unearthing the problem more than more than keep solving it with greater depth together.
Leigh Ann
Perfect. Last question here would you recommend HyperTrack and if so, why?
Prashant
I mean, so, across the globe, you would see increasing or surge in the companies which are trying to serve their customers directly through deliveries. Now, traditionally, these companies are not digitally equipped. So for these companies, it makes a lot of sense to partner with a company like HyperTrack and build this capability of delivery assignment and delivery visibility overnight, so that they do not fall behind in this race of being equipped with digital supply chain solutions.
