DiUS is known for helping companies innovate and grow by developing custom-designed technology solutions. Its agile and lean approach mobilises the development of its customers initiatives. By starting small, engaging the user community and iteratively building on its value proposition to achieve speed to market, DiUS gives its customers a competitive advantage. With this approach in mind, DiUS was successful in its bid to partner with Myfreight to help conceptualise, design and build a custom freight management system that would allow the company to engage more closely and respond more quickly to its customers changing demands, as well as expand its Australian operations, and in the longer term enter new overseas markets.
Myfreight is a freight management company that simplifies the complex freight needs for some of Australia’s largest organisations. The company seamlessly and now electronically manages the entire freight management process for its customers – including freight carriers, transport companies, freight accounts reconciliation and a freight management system to enable the smooth integration of its customers supply chains.
With a reputation for outstanding customer service and an intimate understanding of the complexities relating to transporting, tracking, receiving and invoicing goods; Myfreight needed a next generation digital solution that would serve as a key differentiator and provide the company with the ability to quickly adapt and take advantage of new opportunities before its competitors. MyFreight’s previous system made it difficult to add new features, it was costly to licence, onerous to update and slow to onboard new customers. In addition, surveying existing platforms available on the market found them to be expensive to operate, limited geographically and useful only to large freight organisations with lots of people to support them.
DiUS knew that by using secure, scalable, open source and cloud based technologies it would be able to provide the affordability Myfreight needed, but more importantly invest in the speed and flexibility to easily build and launch new features at any time; giving the company the ability to respond to its customers needs and deliver the competitive edge it required to succeed in the future. In just seven months from proof of concept, Myfreight was launched to customers. Myfreight completely integrates and consolidates all aspects of freight management into one system. It allows customers to be in control; supporting their varying requirements, both quickly and simply. Customers can view a range of carrier options, make bookings, create freight documentation, track distribution and delivery, as well as manage their accounts. Under the hood, the application architecture comprises a responsive, browser-based client talking to a server-side web application, in conjunction with a suite of micro-services. Given the multitude of concerns implicit to freight-brokerage, a central design goal has always been to separate responsibility along lines of independently managed runtime components. Having core domain concepts such as rates, transit-times, event-tracking, and consignments deployed and monitored in this way (and backed by auto-provisioned and auto-scaling infrastructure) has proved crucial in enabling the continuous release of new features in response to a very dynamic and competitive marketplace.
“We wanted to be in a position of controlling our own destiny. What we wanted to end up with was something that no one else could replicate, and of course, we wanted it to be the smartest and fastest freight management system out there.“
– Marshall Hughes, Chief Operating Officer, Myfreight
Since the launch of Myfreight, both the company its customers have found the system’s feature rich interface fast and intuitive. Myfreight is now able to on-board its customers in-house, decreasing on-going costs and enabling its business to scale. More importantly, the company has developed a piece of intellectual property that will support its plans for global expansion and provides an ongoing source of competitive advantage. The success of Myfreight is not only attributed to innovative thinking and technology, but also the partnership and collaborative approach taken by DiUS and Myfreight throughout its development. A key aspect to this approach were the fortnightly showcases where the project team and Myfreight would review the work done in the previous two weeks and outline what would be done in the next. Marshall said, “What I really enjoyed about that (the showcases) was I got to see people taking pride in their work and getting excited about what they had done. By having all of the people in the room, on a regular basis, it meant everyone was throwing out ideas and getting the best results.” Additionally, to make sure the right product was being built, DiUS’s UX team conducted user observations and tested the system with customers early and often throughout the development process. Valuable insights and feedback were gathered and implemented where appropriate to ensure the team was on the right track to achieve its primary goals for Myfreight and its customers.
Myfreight was a finalist in the 2015 Australian Supply Chain and Logistics Awards – the longest running national awards program in the supply chain, logistics and transport industry.
