Technology Stacks and Costs towards Developing Logistics & Transportation App
Technology is changing everything, starting from the very little to everything, logistics and transportation are no exceptions for this. The way, logistics and transportation used to be in the past, is no way in comparison with the latest methods. Mobile App Development is ruling the logistics and transportation now. Technology is becoming the integral part of logistics and transportation. Many technology are perfect fit for logistics and the technology stack has resulted in making the logistics app development most demanding. Now, let us know about the integration of technology into logistics.
Ideal Features in the app
Following are some of the ideal features which need to be included in the logistic app
- Dashboard
- Admin panel
- Management of fleet
- Monitor window
- Push notifications
- Tracking of fleet/assets
- Log reports
- Invoicing
- Schedule maintenance calendar
- In App chat
- Fuel consumption
- Vehicle handling characteristics
- Live tracking
Solutions which are needed by Fleet Manager
The requires of logistics are one and the same since decade, and the solutions for fleet manager should mainly focus on meeting the basic need of the service. For instance, a services involve the transportation of the consignment from one place to another within a stipulated time safely. In such scenario, the entire process needs a fleet manager for tracking it live. This will help in knowing the up to date information about the exact position, ETA of the consignment at the destination. This will also help the manager to guide the driver regarding the traffic updates for reaching the destination quickly and safely.
Ideal features of a fleet management solutions include the following
- Telematics-GPS system
- Geo fencing and Fleet Management
- Traffic updates for route optimization
- Telematics- Asset tracking
- Fuel calibration
- M2M communication
- Vehicle handling characteristics
Telematics- GPS system
All thanks to ride hailing apps and Google maps which made this GPS system popular. GPS system function for navigating, tracking and helping the fleet managers and drivers to work in tandem for taking the consignments safely to the destination.
In the near future, GPS systems, in the form of OEM are seen all over the nation and it is made mandatory.
In India, as per AIS 140 regulation, it is necessary for public transport systems in order to have advanced safety features. GPS/telematics systems goes as a part of its features. The government mandated safety requirement involves the application which is location based announcements, announcement of routes, ticketing applications, and occupancy information.
Telematics systems are open ended systems which can be designed and customized as per the specific requirement of the users need. The various other benefits of this system includes advanced embedded solutions, that link driverless trucks into a convoy and is evident in Europe.
Geo fencing and Fleet management
Geo fencing serves very useful for the operations of the vehicle on a particular route. This is another feature of GPS systems. For example, a self-driver car agency, may require to contact the managers when they are about the head towards a border checkpoint, because the car agency may not have permissions to drive beyond that. It would be difficult to hire the requisite resources for monitoring the progress of self-driven cars of a large fleet at various locations.
In such scenario, getting alerts about the vehicle serves very useful. A complete set of inputs with the required plan of trip is needed for managing fleets. This has to be taken care by fleet managers where they are expected to take into consideration all the various inputs and check with the requirement before the assigning the path for the truck and a driver.
Traffic Updates for route optimization
Drivers need not worry about not knowing the routes. All thanks to the Google maps, which made it easy to get navigated without asking any person. Also, there are so many third party apps which help the fleet managers in planning routes and allotting consignment deliveries as per the optimized route.
In other cases, this route information will also help the managers to plan for an alternative in case of contingencies. During the movement, event driven updates can also be triggered to managers.
Telematics- asset tracking
Tracking of the vehicles, sometimes may require tracking of detachable trailer or a consignment or it may also involve tracking of the whole truck. This can be done using telematics which works with the assistance of GPS system. The modern fleet requires asset tracking in which the client need to get regular updates about the movement and positions of the consignment.
Fuel calibration
Calibration is one of the most important thing to be considered in fleet management and it require to calculate the tie. Out of Goodwill, the petrol stations are helping the fleet managers in calibrating their vehicles.
Pumps of loyal customers are calibrated and large fleets will fill gas at some selected stations. A vehicle is calibrated at selected filing/pump points for a long time, which has to be periodically conducted.
With the help of technology, fleet management system is able to take care about the vehicle calibration without the requirement of the vehicle to be taken to the filling/pump station. This will help a lot in saving time for calibration, thus increasing productivity.
M2M communication
Machine to Machine communication is making it possible to automotive manufactures to monitor their machine’s health remotely. Fleet managers need to be updated about the vehicle condition, time when the vehicle needs pulled off operations and such. This kind of regular updating of the information will help in ensuring the smooth running of the vehicle.
Vehicle handling characteristics
The way in which the vehicle is being handling and the manner of consignment transport is important. Even the passengers in the vehicle, the manner of handling is needed to be known for safety purpose.
Fleet management system should keep the information about the manner in which a vehicle is controlled constantly. This will a lot in controlling accidents due to unsafe driving. Also, it alters the drivers about safe driving practices.
Integrating all the features into Transportation apps
All the above mentioned features are very important and needs to be included in the Transportation app development, but sometimes inclusion of all the transportation apps may not be possible, in such cases, in corporations of as many features as possible is done along with integration of other features in tandem.
This combination of including the features and making some features work in tandem will result in making fleet management solutions run smoothly. For instance, map is integrated in the restaurant management mobile app which helps in navigation towards restaurant.
Some of the Popular Technology stacks for different Transportation applications
There are so many options available for choosing the right technology stacks for various features. Following are some of the popular options
- Nexmo or Twilio, for authentication of credentials
- Braintree & PayPal, Stripe or popular EWallets, for payment gateways
- Twilio or push for notification triggering
- MongoDB, Hbase, Cassandra or Postgress for database requirement
- Hadoop, Spark, BigData, Apache Flink, Cisco, IBM for real time analytics
- AWS, Google, Azure for cloud platforms.
Cost for developing the logistics and transportation app
Cost involved in developing the Transportation app is one of the most important thing to consider. Owing to control the cost, if the apps which are low cost are adopted, if may or may not serve the purpose. At the same time, it is not advisable to invest more unnecessarily. So, one has to go balancing the CapEx and OpEx in a way that operations are not affected.
Ensure that investments, time and efforts are put in the right direction for the development of logistic company. The cost of developing logistics app and cost of developing transportation app, differs from app to app as the requirement of the technology stack required is different. Also, the cost of developing the app depends on the integration of the features into it. The estimated cost of logistics app development in India Ranges between 20,000$ to 30,000$ and is also varies with the requirements.
After all, testing is one of the most important to consider and at all stages, it requires regression testing. As a bottom line, it is best to have services with all the features incorporated in it.