METRO is a global retail and wholesale group, based in Germany, whose mission is to become a leading, global, multi-channel wholesaler, by setting tomorrow’s standards for absolute customer focus, practice-oriented digital solutions and sustainable business models.
Many of the countries in which METRO provides food delivery service use its own off-the-shelf transport management system (TMS) to fulfil deliveries. The web interface offered by METRO gives the route planners a means to integrate with multiple systems, to visualise the driver route plans and information about the delivery vehicle. The aim is to ensure that orders are delivered to customers within their preferred time window and in the most cost-efficient manner for METRO.
ThoughtWorks partnered with METRO.digital’s Transport Management team, who faced the challenge of maintaining separate interfaces with all of the disparate systems used across different countries. As more and more countries were brought onboard over time, the risk of additional maintenance overhead and costs increased.
The Transport Management team’s mission was to become the single tool of choice for transport planning for the countries in which the METRO Food Service Delivery business operates. They wanted to offer a uniform solution to replace the separate TMS solutions with a single one, that would fit all of the countries’ needs. In a nutshell, by using a single standard solution METRO aimed to introduce a centralised solution that provides customisable features, reduces planning time for the tour planners and, at the same time, reduces the licensing, operating and maintenance costs.
