Client

SoftBank Corp.

Mee Truck Co., Ltd.

Service

Service supporting vehicle mobilization for transportation companies

Sun* Team

Sun*JP

1 Project Manager

2 Director 

2 Designer

Sun* VN

1 Lead BrSE 

1 Communicator 

1 Lead Android Engineer 

2 Android Engineer　

2 Lead Frontend Engineer 

4 Frontend Engineer 

1 Lead QA 

4 QA 

Solution

Branding

Design logo

Research user

Design UI/UX

Develop MVP

Create specification documents, requirement definition

Create design document

Programming (Develop App)

——

Softbank / MeeTruck

Vehicle maneuvering system, a challenge for DX with core distribution operations

This time, we will introduce the achievements of collaboration with SoftBank Corp. (hereinafter referred to as Softbank), Mee Truck Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as MeeTruck company) in developing the business of MeeTruck – Service to assist in maneuvering vehicles for transportation companies (Service has the same name as the company name).

Problems of the customer

Softbank’s digital transformation headquarters engages in various DX promotion and new business development activities with various partners. This combination is in the field of circulation with the DX-chemical mission of “Core Distribution”. Sun* project team has been involved in the project since August 2019, but the partner had internally analyzed the business environment, researched users, and built business ideas since more than a year earlier. Therefore, we discovered that there was a big problem related to “vehicle maneuvering” in the business process that makes up the core distribution activity. 

Vehicle maneuvering is an important operation that has a great impact on the profitability of a transport company, requiring the person in charge of vehicle mobilization to have a rich understanding of circulation and distribution. However, most operations were done on paper, which is very laborious. There were also other issues such as no one other than the person in charge was able to maneuver the vehicle so he/she could not take a day off. Consequently, we have seen the potential demand and the necessity of a service to support this job. To solve this problem, it is necessary to digitize paper, phone, FAX … and contribute to solving the problem of Logistics companies by providing a system that can perform appropriate vehicle maneuvering on the Web Application platform. The project originated from such an idea.

At the concept-building stage, the project is led by project members of Softbank Company. At the commercialization stage, the project is promoted with core team from MeeTruck Company (A joint venture established by Softbank and Japan Express).

Proposals from Sun*

User-centric product design 

Starting out primarily as a part of UI/UX design support, but when together working on the project, in response to Meetruck’s enthusiastic desire to “make this business successful” and “support people who work at the goods distribution place”, Sun* team has actively proposed from many perspectives such as: what kind of product this vehicle coordination support service will realize (Product design), what UX is really necessary for the user from the design side, and what kind of system design will ultimately be incorporated from the technical side.

What we offer in our proposal sticks to “user-centric product design.”

Although having a rough understanding of users at the concept stage, we conducted a survey to better understand users during the commercialization stage. The directors, designers and engineers also visited the vehicle dispatching site and had the opportunity to feel the problems, difficulties and desires there. Accordingly, we have proposed to extract suitable value to offer the user, perform prototyping multiple times and continue to work on a user-centric product design. Customers are also very eager to create user-centric products, thus the two sides are able to promote the project with the same value and enthusiasm.

As the form of the service is gradually being completed, because of  differences in culture and the position of the team members, there is a gap in the image of the service we provide. In this situation, customers said: “We want to identify the name and logo of the joint venture as soon as possible to agree on the idea”. In order that the team has a unified spirit, Sun* also carefully listen to the group members’ thoughts about the project and propose to unify the group’s ideas at the workshop.

For both companies, this was not only the first test, but it is also the opportunity to increase the motivation for a new brand to be born. Clarifying the value provided and the ambiguous non-handover parts of the service has a great influence not only on naming decisions, but also on specific functionality and future design decisions. Sun* team has continuously supported from branding, decision on naming MeeTruck to logo design that reflects the concept of MeeTruck brand.

The name Mee Truck means “I want to accompany the companies that distribute goods and support them by working together. I want to provide a place where many distribution companies can gather together.” (Meet + Truck). “

Project Topic

Work hard with serious customers

MeeTruck was established in April for commercializing, but development needs to be done at a rapid rate in a short period of time before the service begins. The development system consists of three companies: Sun* engineer team x MeeTruck internal engineer x partner company. We used Agile’s hypothesis test model as the development method. 1 sprint has a two-week cycle. Particularly important for projects with short delivery time is “Continuously unify processes, procedures and order of development.” For that reason, we have repeated conversations within the development team and immediately corrected the mistakes caused by misunderstanding.

In terms of UI/UX, we need to “make it as simple as possible, intuitive and easy to use” so that even the man in charge of dispatching at the dispatch company who is not used to using digital tools is able to use it. Since the coordinator has been accustomed to the paperwork for many years, the conversion costs are very high. A bit of difficulty occurring while using the product also leads to discontinuation of the product. In order to do Fit & Gap well with users, we asked an actual post-delivery company to use it as a small test in mid-July, and the feedback obtained was used for UX, UI, design, functionality in August. 

After completing the product development, we continued to build the product management system which went into operation smoothly in October.

Looking back on the process until service-in, what left me an impression was a team full of energy. From MeeTruck’s strong desire to make a good product and help those who work in the distribution of goods, they made more and more requests to Sun*, and that energy has spread to the whole team. The spirit of Sun* to provide value to users is also highly appreciated.

Despite recent service-in, plus the customer’s business has just started, we have already received reviews about the service and design. In addition, this service has also been featured in various media such as economic and industry newspapers, and we are being supported in the development of attention-grabbing products in the market.

Client Voice

“Thank you for your support since the company’s establishment. Due to the coronavirus as well as the special nature of the JV environment, it is difficult for the two sides to meet face-to-face, but we have received support regarding deep understanding of the project as well as product development. Thanks to everyone’s supporting, we were able to service-in in October, which was once thought to be quite difficult. This is a very important period to better the product, so we are happy to continue working with you.”