Lane 41, Sanyuan Road, Putuo District, Shanghai, is a commercial and residential building where the blue-and-white "Ele.me" logo hangs. He Shengsheng, 28, is the webmaster of the food delivery platform Ele.me in Shanghai.
"In December 2014, I came to Shanghai to work hard and saw that Ele.me was recruiting a large number of riders, and the salary was not bad, so I came here." He Shengsheng told First Financial Reporter that in May 2015, due to his outstanding work performance, he was promoted to become a stationmaster, mainly responsible for helping riders solve problems encountered in daily work and life.
Ele.me Hummingbird Delivery released the "2018 Takeaway Riders Group Insight Report" shows that there are more than 3 million registered riders in Hummingbird Delivery, of which 77% of Hummingbird riders are from rural areas, the average age is about 29 years old, and the proportion of post-95s has exceeded 20%. Riders deliver 48 orders per day on average, and travel nearly 150 kilometers.
With the accelerated pace of life, people are increasingly concerned about the value of time, and instant delivery has come into being. Nowadays, instant logistics distribution platforms have entered the field of intra-city, small-scale, and takeaway, and gradually expanded to the field of fresh food, supermarket delivery, and even a wider range of express terminal areas.
longest3.5kilometer
As a young man who came to Shanghai from Lu’an, Anhui Province to work hard, making money is He Shengsheng’s top priority.
"Joined Ele.me as a rider on December 22, 2014. At that time, the order volume was not very large. The overtime salary was more than 8,000 yuan, and the unit helped pay five insurances and one housing fund." He Shengsheng told reporters that there are now 65 riders (full-time + part-time) under his own management. Every month, the company will settle the salary according to its own control of the site and performance. Generally, if you do a good job, the monthly salary is more than 10,000 yuan; if you do a little worse, 6,000 to 8,000 yuan.
The reporter learned that almost all the instant delivery fields such as Ele.me, Meituan, and Dada use the agent model. Take Ele.me as an example. Ele.me has dozens of agents in Shanghai, each agent has multiple sites, and the maintenance of the site is jointly managed by the channel manager dispatched by Ele.me and the area manager dispatched by the agent. And He Shengsheng’s site belongs to Jiangxi Hummingbird Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd.
When He Shengsheng first took over the position of stationmaster, most of his time was occupied by manual orders, such as the same rider arranging several orders in the same direction for him. "At that time, it was still manual, and there was no intelligent order like now."
The intelligent dispatching system He Shengsheng mentioned is the "Ark" of Ele.me intelligent dispatching system, which is the core link in the field of instant delivery of takeout. The system replaces most of the work of webmasters, reduces the degree of human intervention, and realizes automated and intelligent dispatching.
The first financial reporter saw in the computer background of the Ele.me site that the Ark system can display the intelligent scheduling order link: user order, merchant order, intelligent scheduling (rider order/robot order), delivery to users, etc. Through big data and machine learning, user orders are matched with the optimal path under the optimal decision to ensure delivery efficiency.
In addition, the system can also display the location of the rider in real time, as well as the number of orders in his hand and the number of orders to be completed. "The location is mainly based on the rider’s exclusive app loaded in the rider’s mobile phone. Generally, the rider who completes the order delivery task will return to the business district where he is located, which is convenient for the system to send orders. The longest straight line distance from the food pickup point to the customer is 3.5 kilometers." The business district He Shengsheng is in charge of is the Centennial Central Shopping Plaza and 118 Square in Putuo District. How far is 3.5 kilometers? If you use a 1 yuan coin (25mm diameter) to spread in a straight line, you need 140,000 pieces.
In the current situation of intelligent ordering, He Shengsheng no longer dispatches orders manually, but also needs to manage the riders, such as the problems encountered by the riders need to be dealt with in a timely manner; in terms of orders, there are merchants who need to be solved, and riders who need to come to him to solve. In addition, it depends on whether the distribution of system orders is reasonable.
"The factors to judge whether an order is reasonable are based on a rider’s ability to carry orders in the past period of time, the timeliness of orders, the timeliness of riders’ delivery, etc. Only in this way can we determine the amount of riders’ orders and the shortest time he can deliver orders to customers." He Shengsheng revealed that under normal circumstances, riders with strong ability have no problem going out to receive 12 to 15 orders at a time. If they encounter peak delivery periods, such as going to the same office building for food delivery, they can also reach 18 orders at a time.
The Ark system will combine nearby orders from the same street and the same building, and deliver them to one rider in a unified manner, which is called "chasing orders" in the industry. He Shengsheng said: "Although it doesn’t matter if the pickup point is different, as long as the customer is in the same building, the delivery efficiency is quite high. This is why so many orders are sent to capable riders, because he knows which restaurant is fast and which is slow, and he will go to the restaurant with the fast meal first."
From "bronze" to "king"
This is an industry where every second counts, and riders need to consider two factors: the speed of the restaurant’s delivery, and whether the customer is in the same location. They need a path plan.
For a rider who has been in the job for a long time and has strong ability, after he receives the order, he has a plan, such as which restaurant to drop by, where to pick up the meal, the speed of the restaurant’s delivery, etc., and then deliver it to the customer. Which orders are delivered first or some customers urge orders to be delivered first, there is a reasonable plan.
He Shengsheng said: "For a new rider, he doesn’t know where the restaurant is, so the Ele.me platform will tell him where the food pickup point is and where the delivery point is, and he can follow the prompts given to him by the system. In this case, it is more suitable for him to give one or two orders at a time."
Ark learns the rider’s food delivery data, delineates the rider’s level, and ladders the rider’s target order quantity at all levels, so as to make a ability portrait for each rider, and assigns the waybill to the most suitable rider.
During the midday and evening peaks of takeout, Ark will prioritize orders to high-level riders during peak periods based on waybill efficiency to improve delivery efficiency. According to data provided by Ele.me, the Ark system can process orders at a peak of more than 80 orders per second. During the peak period of takeout, Ark will emphasize fairness on the basis of considering efficiency. Through big data analytics, the order volume of riders is balanced to ensure that the order volume allocated by riders of the same level and team is roughly the same within a certain time span.
The Ele.me platform divided Hummingbird’s riders into different levels, and the Honor of Kings game was divided into 6 levels, followed by bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, and king. "The more orders a rider gives, the better, the higher the level will be."
"Different agents may pay riders different salaries in different cities. The salary of riders on our site consists of three parts: 1. Performance commission, the standard is less than 600 orders, according to 7 yuan/order; more than 600 orders, according to 8 yuan/order. 2. Subsidies are made according to the weight, distance, weather, rider level, etc. of each order. 3. There are praise rewards and rush orders rewards every month." He Shengsheng said that the average monthly income of full-time riders at his site is 7,000-9,000 yuan, and the KPI assessment indicators for riders are similar, basically changing once a month. At present, the main assessment is the cancellation of riders’ delivery and T12 timeout.
T12 timeout refers to a timeout of 12 minutes. For example, the assessment time of the rider’s order T is 10:30. If the rider arrives after 10:42, it has exceeded the time value of the rider’s order assessment.
How to determine what time is the expectation of the booking customer? He Shengsheng said that under normal circumstances, it is divided into pre-orders and instant orders, and pre-orders can be booked to a certain time period; for instant orders, the system will determine the time expected by the customer of the order according to the timeliness of the restaurant, order memory and other factors, and then give a time.
Not only Ele.me, but also its competitors Meituan and Dada have long integrated AI and big data into their business development.
The reporter learned that there are many entrants in the field of instant delivery at present, mainly divided into three categories: one is established in 2014, flash delivery, Dada, UU errands and other established intra-city courier companies, the other is the instant delivery originating from the takeaway model, such as Ele.me’s Hummingbird delivery, Meituan’s Meituan special delivery team, Dada-JD Daojia’s new Dada, etc.; the third is SF Express, Yuantong, Yunda and other traditional logistics companies, SF Express’s instant delivery business, Yuantong’s timing, Yunda’s cloud delivery. The players on the track are gathered, all intending to get a share of this emerging market.
For the future, He Shengsheng expressed the hope that he can seize the opportunity and grow with the takeaway platform. (Wang Hai)
