When every minute counts: How ZIN Corporation transformed a meat supplier’s delivery operations with real-time tracking

Key Takeaways:

• The ability to provide real-time updates of shipment times to customers builds trust and bolsters loyalty.
• Companies looking to easily digitalize their business should take a more comprehensive look at how technology can fundamentally enhance the way they operate.
• ZIN Corporation’s successful implementation of a new tracking system for Meatbox allowed it to stand out from a crowded field of competitors and boost sales.

Knowing when to be at home to receive an important package, whether it’s medicine or a big screen television, can be stressful. Now imagine if you’re a restaurant or distributor and that important package is expensive refrigerated meat that comes daily or multiple times a week. The stakes are exponentially higher.

Meatbox, a Korea-based online meat supplier, wanted to make it easier for its customers to keep tabs on inventory when it moves around, and worked with ZIN Corporation Co., Ltd., a technology integrator, to deploy a more robust tracking system powered by the Qualcomm Aware Platform. 

But this isn’t a story about one company’s decision to upgrade its supply chain management system. It’s a lesson about how the introduction of new platforms can change how you operate for the better, and how keeping your customers informed can earn their loyalty. Kim Il Joong, director at ZIN Corporation, breaks down why it’s important to take a smarter and more holistic approach to digital transformation.

Meet ZIN Corporation

For more than 35 years, ZIN Corporation has helped companies such as Meatbox embrace new technologies, and more recently has focused on customizing smart systems for various industries. While headquartered in Korea, it has operations in China, Japan and Thailand.

The need for change

The meat industry in Korea and cold chain management — or the system of transporting and storing temperature-sensitive products — is highly regulated. As a result, distributors have been slow to change, often responding to more demand by hiring more workers, leading to higher costs. Kim says that some companies that go digital take small steps to computerize their systems.

But Meatbox realized it needed to do things differently and looked to ZIN for help. Initially, the prospect of developing new equipment and adding cellular connections to its sensors made this too expensive to pursue. But ZIN introduced Meatbox to Qualcomm Aware, a platform that offered a blueprint for exactly what the meat supplier needed, all without the need to do its own research and development. 

“The Qualcomm Aware Platform allows us to select and build products from the perspective of the consumer, rather than thinking about sourcing the individual components of a solution separately,” Kim said. “From my perspective as a development consultant, it’s almost a blessing to only focus on building and scaling services, and not worry about the technology behind the solution.”

Transforming the business

When contending with the notoriously bad traffic in Seoul, companies need to be smart about when they make their deliveries. Deliveries usually occur early in the morning or late afternoon, which means your expensive meat products could arrive at wildly different times of the day. Meatbox removed this unpredictability by giving its customers accurate and updated information on delivery times.

The location tracking allowed Meatbox to proactively direct drivers to alternative routes to avoid trouble spots. The temperature sensors meant the company could also see if the valuable meat was getting too warm and direct the driver to intervene with the refrigeration system if necessary. 

The result was order volume increasing by 10% and service quality improving by 20%. Customers felt they could rely on Meatbox more and were more willing to keep ordering from the company despite a raft of competitive options. 

That ability to offer accurate data to its customers helped foster trust and illustrates how transparency and information can foster customer loyalty. “Gaining that trust is more valuable in the market than simple cost cuts,” Kim said. 

What’s next?

Meatbox is working on real-time inventory tracking for purchasers using a cloud-based warehouse management system, which will help it better predict orders and keep the right level of inventory available. 

Kim says Meatbox, like other companies, needs to decide now whether it will continue to rely on more traditional sales methods or begin supplying its sales force with artificial intelligence (AI), big data and more advanced tools. Another challenge ZIN and Meatbox are working on is ensuring its business partners and customers have the same level of access and a similar interface. This could mean providing them with software, and Kim said they were working on providing a low-cost option in a cloud environment. 

Beyond AI and big data, Kim says he sees automation and robotics potentially shaking up the supply chain industry. Technology is changing rapidly, and the costs to deploy are falling quickly, so it’s a good time for companies to educate themselves about these different kinds of solutions. 

Learnings from ZIN Corporation

• Providing more data and insight to your customers gives you a competitive edge.
• Don’t upgrade for the sake of upgrading. Consider how new platforms and solutions can address your company’s fundamental problems.
• Utilizing the Qualcomm Aware Platform saved Meatbox and ZIN from having to go to different suppliers to piece together a costly custom solution.