On-demand service industry has been growing in India. Today we have on-demand service starting from cabs to laundry. This is catching up a trend among the new generation as it makes their life easy. Soon things like getting a haircut, fixing a tap becomes a part of on-demand service industry.
Say you have a great idea that would be a part of on-demand service economy, and then you need to know just two things to get started – a business knowledge of your industry and technologies you need to run your business. This blog is all about the latter one.
Mobile app for all participants
Most of the on-demand services operate by making aggregation of local services in their industry. In simple sense business make a tie-up or an agreement with the other business entity or individuals at different locations. These business entity or individuals are called vendors.
On-demand services serve its customer at different locations just by route the orders from customer to the nearest vendors. From business prospective, on-demand services are location based order routing system. As the services are location based and needs to be served instantaneously, you need a mobile app which connects between the participants – customers and vendors.
Business activity control system
These mobile apps are quite simple. They collect very few information from both the customer and vendor. An order get raised with few taps on customer’s mobile and order get server with few taps vendor’s mobile. They would be just that simple but it your on-demand business will not be as simple as that.
Later or sooner, you will find that real-time control on the orders is required. At least you need to manually assign a vendor for few orders which don’t get accepted through your normal business process. In simple sentence you need a back office control system for your business activities. These system needs to be custom developed as there is nothing readymade yet.
Automated Billing System
Generally your customer pays the bill either to you using your mobile app or to your vendor directly. In both cases you need a customized automated system to clear the payables or get the receivables. This can be a part of your control system defined earlier.
Billing system functions differently, based on your business agreement with the vendors. Your on-demand service may pay the vendors weekly or monthly after subtracting the commissions. You can automate calculation of commission, creating a debit note. This would increase accuracy and on other hand trust among the vendors.
Last thing you must be aware of
This is a last but not least which you must be aware of.
There is a lot of possibility for your on-demand services to tie-up with other business which brings in the value. To make tie-up happen easily from technology front, make sure that your developer build your business solution on top of API. Integration with 3rd party will become way lot easier if your business is built on API.