Shipment Tracking & Status Update

A dedicated logistics team spends over 5,000+ hours annually manually tracking and updating the status of approximately 50,000+ shipments across multiple courier platforms. Lacking real-time visibility in shipment tracking. The tracking is done between 3 different systems depending on the type of consignment and the sectors like zonal, regional, national and international. The updates are not real-time and also prone to errors which then cascade as escalations and customer management challenges.

Business Challenges

• Each courier (global big 3) has different UI, structure & tracking logic. Depending on the carrier the shipment was to be processed differently.
• Some websites ask for CAPTCHA or OTP for frequent access, mostly legacy systems had traditional security processes and lacked API integration methods.
• Logistics portals might change structure without notice, and this posed a huge challenge as the larger carriers used to make changes to their sites and bots had to deal with the changes in a run-time manner.
• External sites are often slow or down, impacting productivity, session time outs, and operational challenges in meeting SLAs.
• Many courier companies don’t offer free API for tracking, most of them published the status data in their own systems which had to be checked manually.

Solution Highlights

• Build reusable Dispatcher-Per-Courier component in UiPath with separate workflows.
• Used API-based tracking and attended bot mode for exception handling.
• UiPath smartly keeps dynamic selectors & regular bot maintenance schedule.
• Web scraping or screen scraping might be the only option unless premium API is available.
• Add retry logic, delay, and smart exception handling.
• Implemented UiPath Excel Activities, Database Activities, API integration, or Custom Connectors.
• Encryption of sensitive data & follow organization compliance guidelines was also implemented.

Business Outcome

5,000+ manual hours saved annually, and Shipment update turnaround time reduced from 2 days to near real-time. Over 96% success rate in shipment tracking across all courier platforms and 99% accuracy in shipment status updates into ERP. 98% reduction in customer queries on shipment status that resulted from 100% Proof of Delivery (POD) captured. This had a significant business outcome improving customer satisfaction and transparency in the business process.