Our team’s number one priority at all times is building systems that run efficiently, operate reliably, and scale seamlessly when we need them most. Peak season is where the rubber meets the road stress testing those systems.
We start planning for peak in Q2 to ensure that our tech can withstand the barrage of additional volume that we receive during peak: from on-the-road systems that assist driver partners with delivery, to systems in our warehouses that help run a seamless ground operations, to data systems that help us look at metrics, to our label and package APIs that our clients use to send us data on the packages. Every decision we make centers shippers and their customers. At Veho, our engineering team is the leverage that helps Veho lead the industry in OTD and continuous innovation.
Quality + Cost + Speed + Experience = The Holy Grail
Quality: Setting a new standard in delivery
At Veho, we are able to achieve >99% on-time delivery (OTD) by relying on the on the road systems that coordinate delivery between driver partners and consumers, geocoding systems that run in the background to continuously adjust the precision of our delivery, and advanced machine learning and optimization engines that seek to optimize routes and manage support (to ensure a seamless overall delivery experience that optimizes for on-time delivery). Our team prioritizes building strong infrastructure that can both handle the pressures of modern logistics and nimbly scale during peak season, which sets us apart in the industry.
Cost: Improving operating cost in all aspects of the business
Our investments in operations research, route optimization, industrial engineering allows us to continuously improve our unit economics and offer competitive pricing to our clients.
Our route optimization team focuses on building routes that lead to the best cost outcomes. We deploy additional optimization models to understand locations where volume is shipped for the last mile that further helps us manage costs as well as OTD.
The investment in industrial engineering, operations research, advanced machine learning, and core engineering infrastructure has allowed us to establish a new standard on how to balance cost, quality, and speed in our operations.
Speed: Our secret ingredient
Speed is King – not only for delivery, but also for our teams. We have built tools and made infrastructure choices (like building our platform using serverless architecture on AWS) that help our teams move faster and continuously create value for our clients. We build fast, deploy faster, and continuously tweak how our platforms operate to make sure everything runs smoothly—especially during peak periods. We don’t slow down when scaling.
We keep our “code freeze” to a minimum - in fact, we do what we call “limited deploys” rather than code freeze during peak periods. If something were to go wrong, our investment in reliability tooling gives us a leg up in responding to issues and fixing it right away. We seek to minimize recovery time and measure it continuously. And, we get good at this by building this muscle throughout the year. This adaptability ensures that we maintain efficiency and reliability—even under pressure.
And our systems scale seamlessly without any intervention from us, allowing Veho to quickly handle the heightened demands of peak periods with confidence. The idea is to keep things running efficiently and reliably, no matter how crazy things get. Our culture thrives on rapid iteration and quick decision-making, which helps us stay ahead of the game.
Experience: Our differentiator
We obsess over every single detail; and we go after what we call “papercuts” in addition to step changes. Whether it is the experience for our consumers who care about what side of the door the package is placed in or if the package is placed in the shade where it won’t get hot, or the experience of a driver partner who has to click through one less button at a stop, or the experience of our on the ground staff who cares about getting their job done, our teams continuously challenge each other to delight every single one of our users. We know we won’t build the perfect thing on the first go, but we are unrelenting in the pursuit of perfection… and that makes us different.
Case study: 2023 Peak
Let’s talk about last year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We knew it was going to be intense, with three times our normal package volume. But instead of just surviving during peak, we invested in building systems that could handle that kind of load on a regular basis - and scale effectively in the coming years.
We had put in the legwork throughout the year to switch our platform to operate in multiple regions in AWS. This meant that if one part of our infrastructure had issues, the rest would keep running. Thanks to our setup, we rerouted traffic smoothly and avoided downtime when our systems encountered issues in one region without any impact on the stakeholders that rely on our systems. The packages continued to get delivered on time and as planned.
Today, these systems handle loads equivalent to our peak (and more!) on a regular basis. We set out to transform something that seemed impossible into something unremarkable. And today, it is unremarkable!
That’s every engineering teams’ dream and we are achieving it everyday; and our clients and consumers benefit from it everyday.
Looking ahead: Peak 2024
As we look towards Peak 2024, we have further fine-tuned the systems we built last year to ensure we’re ready for another surge in volume. Peak season is the ultimate stress test for our systems, and we’re confident that the work we’ve put in will keep us ahead of the curve.
We also have a new set of challenges to solve this year. A new set of things that were considered impossible at the beginning of the year. And we are on the cusp of ALSO making those unremarkable for the foreseeable future. I'm excited about what our team is about to deliver!
Future innovations
Looking forward, we’re focused on building dynamism in every part of our business to continuously optimize cost, experience, and quality - no easy feat for any engineering team but we are going to do it. Because, that's who we are!
We will relentlessly focus on improving the customer experience: from sweating over details of creating the perfect delivery to engineering adaptability to last minute requests from consumers that helps get one more package delivered perfectly. This pursuit of balancing efficiency in service of customer satisfaction is what sets us apart from others in the industry; driving down defects in our network by centering a better customer experience is how we do it.
We won’t compromise on speed, quality, cost, or the customer experience. As we head into Peak 2024 and beyond, our commitment to innovation will continue to drive us forward. We’re building the future of logistics—and we’re doing it now; and we will get there before anyone else!
