Scaling to meet customer demand
A food delivery company experiencing rapid growth
Starting out as a family run business in Melbourne, EASI has grown to be the largest Asian food delivery platform in Australia. In 2018, when the company was rebranded from Melbourne delivery to EASI, they began expanding the delivery platform overseas.
Its yellow boxes, perched on the back of bikes, can now be seen scooting through 30 cities in seven countries around the world.
In order to manage their growth and scale operational frameworks accordingly, EASI needed a better way to manage their Google Maps Platform (GMP) delivery API’s which they had been using at a premium cost.
In 2019, EASI partnered with Liveli, a Google Cloud Premier Partner for Location-based services—for local technical support and to help identify opportunities where the API usage could be further optimised. Working with Liveli also meant that EASI had access to Liveli’s Volume Tier Discount pricing model to access additional cost savings.
Realising operational efficiencies
EASI were looking for ways to manage their increasing GMP usage, further enhance the customer experience, and improve their seamless delivery operations. However, using more advanced Google API’s would come with additional cost. Liveli were able to support EASI in ensuring they were maximising the benefits of each of their APIs to reach their desired outcomes.
Prior to partnering with Liveli, EASI had been using GMP to display order locations in their Management Portal. When it came to delivering the orders, “we were relying on formulas to calculate the distance between a pick up and drop off location” said Evan Li, Chief Information Officer at EASI. EASI was also relying on in-house expertise to manage its GMP usage. “When our tech team encountered any problems, we weren’t sure where to find the solution or the support,” said Evan.
“Liveli has been in the industry for a long time, and were able to provide us with valuable insights and guidance on how we could use google maps and cloud api’s”
Evan Li, Chief Information Officer at Easi
Utilising google maps and google cloud api’s
Liveli worked with EASI to identify inefficiencies in how GMP was being used and made technical recommendations to reduce these inefficiencies. Liveli also provided technical support and access to Volume Tier Discounts, benefits that are only available to companies working directly with a Google Maps Premier Partner.
Read more about how you can ensure that you’re set up for success on the Google Maps Platform in our blog below:
Google maps platform api’s
Since partnering with Liveli, EASI are now using GMP API’s for:
- Address auto-completion: By integrating the Places Autocomplete API into the platform checkout process, EASI can ensure a faster and more accurate check out experience for the user thanks to the API’s ‘type-ahead’ capability, as well as providing a validated address for the delivery driver.
- Delivery routing distance: To optimise the driver’s delivery route, the Directions API provides the most direct route with real-time traffic information.
- Displaying the position of restaurants, orders and drivers: Hungry customers want to know exactly how long they have to wait until they receive their food. The Distance Matrix API computes an accurate and up-to-date journey time between restaurant and the customer’s house.
Google cloud platform api’s
Since EASI holds the largest market share of Asian users in the Australian food delivery market, Liveli recommended using the Google Cloud Translation API to provide basic translation within the app. EASI is currently using this API to translate customers’ reviews left on their platform in both English and Chinese.
Ongoing support as growth continues
EASI has access to a dedicated Google Maps team at Liveli who are available to assist with any Google Maps or Cloud queries on their growth journey.
“Early on, we were having issues with Chinese characters in the Places Autocomplete API, and Liveli were able to directly access Google Support for us—something we couldn’t do before,” said Evan.
EASI also benefits from the Volume Tier Discounts and advice provided by Liveli as a Google Cloud Premier Partner. Evan says that they also rely on Liveli to provide them with information on other world leading mapping technologies, such as CARTO, to potentially unlock additional data insights with Liveli in the future.
To learn more about the benefits of working with Liveli, such as gaining technical support and Google Maps Volume Tier Discounts, read our blog.
