An article by open innovation Not talking about big names wouldn't be a good article. Like any science, citing your references is an obligation. We could talk about Henry Chesbrough, Erik Ries or Xavier Marcet, to name a few examples. But today we will not talk about theories and beautiful books. Today I want to talk about reality. The one that is hard to see in the midst of so much editor review. Why reality, sometimes, is not as beautiful as it is presented in books. Sometimes, some insignificantly important details are avoided, but in this blog we try to be faithful to our thinking and we like to share them.

How would I say Javier G. Recuenco speaking of complex problems:

“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong”
H. L. Mencken

Not everything can be theorized, nor is every theory applicable in practice, much less to your particular case. The simple thing seems beautiful, leaves our mind calm and allows us to breathe coherence, perfection. Far from reality, innovation is harshness, irregularity, is full of failures and, above all, it is difficult to predict.

I would like to talk about innovation in the corporate world from the point of view of a startup. Our biased view of reality, although we already have some experience behind us after having worked with several corporations.

To make it easy to understand, I will use the beach as a metaphor (because of our proximity to the Mediterranean and my passion for the sea) accompanied by brushstrokes of our own experience and a pinch of personal opinion.

I hope it will not leave anyone indifferent, it may even inspire someone. Who knows, they say that stories are the most powerful weapon in our world...

Every good story begins in an idyllic place on the Costa Brava. Coarse-sand beaches and crystal clear water. You can get inspired here Link.

Every good story needs a Caballero, the startup. This time, turned into a sad building brick. Made from clay. Perfectly straight out of the mold of any business school, startup incubator and/or MBA. You already understand me, serial entrepreneurs. (Greetings to the entire industry 😄

I think we're the fastest startup in history so we'll have seen something good in signing up so much... 😉

). Perhaps it is that we too are part of a series, although the experience makes us look at the world from a different point of view.

There is no story without a Princess. Ours will be called Corporate. With great scores of results that our gentleman aspires to be able to scratch and perhaps one day he will conquer. In this story we will turn it into beach sand. Millions of small grains perfectly united to form a great and wonderful beach. Just like its thousands of workers paddling in one direction.

You can sense an epic story full of adventures. All that remains is to introduce our evil and dreaded dragon. The perverse MARKET. We will give it the shape of the sea, storms and waves. In the memory of all, we will remember great market victories over Kodak or Blockbuster, as undisputed leaders, they ended up on the seabed and utterly forgotten.

The story begins at the beginning of this century. Traditional innovation seems exhausted, lagging behind the incremental development of a regular business without much expectation of major improvements. Quiet days of sun and beach, some would say. Nothing to worry about. But suddenly, a great stranger appeared. Climate change.

Unexpected storms, of extreme force that make entire beaches engulfed by a market ruthless by new business models disappear in just a few years, even months, without time to maneuver.

Our beloved corporation is trying to face the challenges of the market and decides to open its beach and embrace new ways to combat climate change. This is where open innovation is born.

Collaboration between startups and corporations with a common goal. Give an innovative market exit, with external help, new ideas, easy and fast to execute (and on top of that very cheap). What more can the princess ask for?

Just one thing. Decision. It is essential that the corporation be created and committed to innovation as the model that will maintain the company's survival. For this reason, it is essential that top management truly bets on this process. Dedicate resources to make the needle move. Budget and human resources dedicated to making plans work. As Team A would say.

The word Greenwashing sounds a lot lately. Companies that use the environment to provide a more committed vision of the company. (Read Apple removing chargers from its iPhones on the grounds that they are doing it for the environment). We associate innovawashing with large press conferences, large PR agencies and little pilot project. The next storm may be ahead of you... remember that!

Can you imagine a super press conference, with a big project to build a supermega-construction, with infographics, cameras and not a gram of cement on the beach? Well, just as we often see politicians with great ideas and little execution, there are also corporations with a lot of marketing and little execution.

Either your business is to be in the media all the time, or rather look for some other princess that you can really learn from. At the other extreme, we find the pharaonic projects, with only 20 years of delays and 3 Gigatrons of steel and cement. In which the sea takes her ahead at the inauguration. Surely one comes to mind...

What situations have allowed us to move the needle as a startup?

Fight for a pilot project. I remember the first one we did with Aigues de Barcelona (Water Utility of the city of Barcelona) within the defunct Sity accelerator (Yes, innovation fails, it's normal, but you learn). Aigües de Barcelona is a public-private company, with a vision for innovation that is out of the ordinary in our country. (Hopefully this will encourage more companies to follow in their footsteps!)

Our negotiation was clear, if there is no pilot we are not interested. I think I remember that we were the only ones fighting for a pilot. Obviously we didn't win the contest, but we won something more important. To have demonstrated the value of our project and to be able to fight for a second pilot: Put our technology into production and see the real impact. We were touching the sky, seeing the million-euro contract (😂 we were young and inexperienced I would say now...).

In reality, we had to go through 3 pilots and 4 years to achieve full integration into production. A very hard journey, full of uncertainty and demand but above all full of learning.

Thanks to these pilots, we were able to enter an incredible level of depth into the analysis. We even demonstrated that the drivers who paid the most attention to the optimized routes we suggested were 10% more productive than those who didn't follow them as much! It's no coincidence that the drivers were happy that two guys with a geeky face could solve a daily, costly problem that had a direct impact on their goals 💰).

If you want to know More details in this video (with 2 other startups talking about their experience).

The last success story I would like to talk about is Prio Energy. Energy company with an innovation program Prio Jump Start very well organized. They just chose the 3 startups selected to pilot their solutions and SmartMonkey was one of them.

What have we learned in this case? Get your product to work as soon as possible. Even before your company is elected. I want to think that part of the reason for our choice was how easy and fast it is to put our tool into production. They were able to start optimizing production routes with literally 1 meeting and a 20-minute demonstration. Even we couldn't believe our eyes. We have overcome the main obstacle, now it is time to demonstrate real value in order to grow within the corporation.

My recommendation to others is that one should always be humble, say NO and stick to a strategy. Open innovation is a path that is done hand in hand. The princess and the gentleman. The corporate and the startup. If both work together, make an effort, success is guaranteed. A beach that is well reinforced with bricks is much more resistant to any type of storm.

If your employees, like those at Prio, are open to trying new things that make their daily lives easier, faster and more efficient. What is to be expected is that wonderful things will happen. Time and storms will put everyone in their place.

Main factors for the success of the start-up-corporate collaboration

After going through several collaborations, Aigües de Barcelona, Heineken and Prio Energy, my personal recommendations can be summarized as follows:

1. Top-bottom support: Without clear management support, it's impossible to succeed. There will always be other priorities. Innovation for corporations must be a priority. Failure is guaranteed, but if you don't innovate, the corporation is sure to fail.
2. Continuity to the project: If the projects are successful, giving them continuity not only helps the startup, but it also encourages intra-entrepreneurship. You don't want those experts you've been training for years to decide to leave their golden cage to sell you the same much more expensive thing, right? The security of a large company and the resources to innovate as an outsider can be wonderful.
3. Requirement to the startup: Put the startup in a difficult but real situation. If you can demonstrate courage in the worst case scenario, the rest will be a piece of cake. However, remember to continue the project if it goes well, or you will generate frustration in the startup and the internal team.
4. Free pilots, no thanks: Top-bottom support is essential and must be accompanied by resources. Startups have a healthy habit of wanting to eat (little and cheaply, but to eat something, yes). If the CFO doesn't scratch his pocket, real innovation is unlikely to exist. Without a budget, it's also difficult to demand anything from anyone. Neither startups nor corporate teams. In addition, startups tend to have a short lifespan, supporting them allows them to generate metrics that encourage other investors and have more resources to invest in your company's innovation.
5. Deal flow: The main problem for investors (Venture Capital) is to get enough quality deal flow. As a corporate, getting enough startups to innovate with will not be an easy task. Having a good brand, good references, a good collaboration proposal and having other startups speak highly of your program is a great cover letter that will make it easier for you to work in future editions. Obviously, more and better companies will want to work with you.

I just want to end this story with a film ending: The brick ends up molten in the corporation as just another piece of its complicated beach of sand, stones and waves. Who knows, they may one day become part of the same company, but until then, they will work together in the face of storms and climate change.

Who would have said that optimizing routes was so beautiful and with such a noble mission: To generate less emissions to save our beaches.

If you're still one of the few laggards resisting digital transformation, you need to read this article. Learn about the path to logistical success

The profile of new users in the growing digital era stimulates the fact that companies are being pushed towards digital transformation (also known as logistics 4.0), in order to adapt their businesses to the new social, business and technological reality. In this way, users have adopted digital culture in their environment thanks to the incorporation of new tools, which often allow greater speed, efficiency and even user autonomy.

For all these reasons, most companies in practically any sector have already begun to adapt to this new era. This transformation triggers new business opportunities, revenues and even increased efficiency. In this way, all those companies that are successfully participating in the digital transformation process will be better positioned in the market given the competitive advantages compared to other non-digitized companies.

How to apply digital transformation strategies in logistics

Below we show you what are the most important aspects for proper business digitalization in logistics. All initiatives must take into account the particular situation of each company considering the difficulties it faces, the opportunities it has in its sector and the objectives it sets itself. Therefore, it is advisable to go step by step:

Strategy: it is very important that the company's strategy is aligned with the challenges of digitalization. Digitalization can be a very important lever in the strategy because if you only invest in technology without clear guidance, the result is usually not as expected.

Starting point and objectives: it is necessary to carry out a prior analysis to assess the current state of the areas most affected in the company due to the imminent digitalization.

Partida Budgetary for digitalization: the company's internal procedures or bureaucratisms should not be an impediment to making the investments in technology necessary for digital transformation. One of the pillars of digitalization lies in the simplification and automation of many processes, which is why it is often welcome.

Talent 4.0: it is essential to bet and invest in those employees who have specialized training in supply chain management, in addition to also having advanced skills in software and digitalization.

Metrics and KPIs: it is essential to analyze each stage and measure its results (KPI) in order to make the best decisions that increase the efficiency of our company.

LEAN method: Prototype, measure, and iterate. It is necessary not to approach the project in a very ambitious way if the company does not have the human capital with sufficient experience in this type of project. It is preferable to start with small projects that give confidence in the execution and management of change in the company itself.

Technological tools: key factors of logistics 4.0

Once analyzed what are the strategies to be implemented towards logistics 4.0, it is now necessary to know those technological tools and key factors in order to carry it out.

Cloud Computing: Cloud computing technology is a pillar of digital transformation since it allows you to store data online, thus allowing different sectors or departments to share information without the need for a software or storage system.

Management software and systems: The implementation of new technological solutions (software) that help to systematize management will promote the automation of some processes that until now were mostly manual, such as planning delivery routes. Thanks to the use of our tool SmartMonkey Planner efficient route planning is already a reality for many small and large companies, such as the case of Alfil Logistics or Pink Basket, among others. Do you want to know more about the benefits of intelligent route planning? Read the following article and discover the success in Success Story: Alfil Logistics — Alfilxpress.

Big Data: With the incorporation of Big Data, companies have the possibility of being able to work with a large volume of data in a much more strategic and analytical way, thus allowing them to more easily forecast market demands and trends or transport weaknesses and needs, among others.

Internet of Things: It allows the interconnection between the different items in the same system in order to act collaboratively and intelligently. This, within the logistics chain, represents a great benefit already implemented in a large part of the process chain.

Advantages of digital transformation logistics

Automation in logistics processes: Especially in inventory, warehousing and route planning, among other processes.

Extensive data collection across the supply chain: measurable and analyzable

Predictive maintenance based on collected data

Advanced control in all processes and digitized quality system

Management system for digital performance

Bigger and better user experience — end customer

In short, the adaptation of the logistics industry to this new digitalization is crucial for the evolution of the sector, not only because of the threats to those companies that are unable to adapt, but also because of all the competitive advantages that will be obtained by all those companies that know how to take advantage of existing opportunities.

Do you want to know more trends in the logistics market? We recommend that you read the article Green Logistics: discover what it is and how to join the current market trend to learn about the industry's latest complaint.

If you want to be part of the digital transformation and technological advances in logistics, join Planner and reinforce the scalability of your business.

The creation process is a very complex process that always Part of a idea. But an idea in itself is nothing more than a seed that needs to be watered and cared for patiently. Not all ideas end up blossoming, and it's important to know why.

There are generally three reasons why an idea fails; 1) It wasn't a good idea 2) It wasn't executed properly 3) The context wasn't right.

At Routal, over the years, we have had failures of all three types. We have had crazy ideas that have ended up turning into failed projects. Good ideas that have gone down the drain because of not knowing how to put them into practice. And finally, great ideas for which we didn't have a suitable market context.

In this article we are going to work on a framework for how to move from idea to implementation to ensure that our idea grows and develops correctly.

1. Problem definition

TL; DR: If the idea I have is: “Buy me a hammer”, should be able to express as the solution to a problem: “I have nails to nail and for that I'm going to buy a hammer”.

An idea, in order to be evaluated from a market perspective, and to measure performance in the way we execute it, must be able to express itself as the solution to one or more problems.

In R&D environments, the idea usually comes first, and yet in a productive environment it is more common that the first thing that appears is the problem or the need.

• Idea first: It occurs to me to buy a hammer, I look around the house and find nails to nail. I'll buy the hammer and nail them.
• Problem first: I see that the house is full of nails, it occurs to me that I can buy a hammer. I'll buy the hammer.

What is essential is that they appear as an inseparable duo.

• Just the idea: It occurs to me to buy a hammer. I'll buy the hammer. I'm looking around the house to see if there are nails. Since I can't find them, I use the hammer to eat my soup.
• Just the problem: I find unhammered nails. I'm going to sleep crying because I don't know what to do with them.

In the case of the scenario”Just the idea” it is important to clarify that no, because there are no nails in my house, the hammer is a bad tool. We simply don't have the right context for that tool to be useful and to extract its value.

The output of this phase is a paragraph of text in which both the idea and the problem are identified in a clear and understandable way.

2. Conceptualization

Once the need or problem has been identified, the An idea becomes a solution. The objective of this phase is to detail the solution and to make the team agree on its scope and value.

Scope of the solution

Evaluating the scope of the solution consists mainly of placing the proposed solution in the current context of the company.

Let's imagine that a company is making hammers, and it occurs to someone that they should also manufacture screwdrivers. Determining the scope of the solution means defining whether they are going to manufacture flat or star screwdrivers, or both. Decide if they will use the existing production process to manufacture the new tools. Define if it is necessary to buy new machinery, etc.

Another of the key points to be defined at this point are the limits, where the proposal begins and where it ends; If a solution can work for everything, then it's good for nothing. It's very important to know when to stop. It is very tempting when you are defining a process, a feature or a product to say that “well, since we are...”.

To illustrate this, in the same hammer company they have decided to continue with their business and now they are going to produce a new hammer that has to be more ergonomic and lighter because they are having complaints from users about it. But an enthusiastic manager says “hey, users who drive nails usually screw in as well. Why don't we add to the hammer, while we are, a screwdriver tip and a level? That way, they'll have three tools in one.” This manager is joined by the manager of the support team and says “Besides, there are users who don't have the strength, why don't we add a second handle?” The marketing director also has his opinion on the matter and joins the brainstorming “And besides, it would be nice if it were friendly to girls and young boys who are our potential customers of tomorrow”.

It is likely that if we don't have a good definition of what the limits of the solution are, the initial value proposition will be blurred.

This doesn't mean that ideas are immutable, quite the contrary. But to carry out a value analysis we need to know What is and What is it not what we are proposing.

Valor

In the conceptualization section, we must also consider the potential value of the solution based on our experience. This calculation is speculative, but certainly, as the company's maturity in the area grows and the user base grows, it is easier to estimate it more realistically.

The points to be taken into account when calculating the value may vary depending on the environment in which the proposal is developed. In our case and for the product part we use the following elements:

1. Target audience: Who is the proposal aimed at? What percentage of users does it affect? What processes does it affect?
2. Technical Assessment: What infrastructure is needed to develop the proposal? Do you need to add new elements? What is the estimated development time?
3. Return on investment: What is the cost of implementation (Time/Headcounts/Marketing/€)? What benefits are expected (upsales/new customers/landing visits)?

This time our hammer-maker friends, guided by their support team, have decided that it is necessary to design a hammer for left-handed people. Let's evaluate the value proposition:

1. Target audience: All the left-handed masons in Spain (the country where we are currently selling) who are 10% of the existing 3M masons, or 300,000 potential users. It's a new product so it doesn't affect users who already have a hammer at home.
2. Technical Assessment: New handles would have to be manufactured. All the necessary machinery is available and the implementation time would be two to four weeks since only a new mold would have to be manufactured.
3. Return on investment: 4 operators and a project manager to make the new mold for 2 weeks 15000€, marketing campaign to promote the hammer 15000€. If you sell the hammer with a 10€ profit margin, you would need to sell 3000 hammers to cover costs.

The output of the conceptualization phase is a document containing the development of the Scope of the solution And the worth estimated.

We know how hard your day to day is. Planning routes is a tedious job that requires a lot of concentration and experience. From Routal.com we want to help you, that's why we launched a series of training pills to help you improve day by day. Our goal is for you to plan better, faster and more successfully.

Shall we start?

In today's post, we'll talk about one of the biggest problems: georeferencing, or Geocoding in English. This term refers to being able to convert a written address into coordinates (GPS) on a map.

This fact, which may seem so trivial and obvious, is a very complicated process indeed. How many times has Google Maps taken you to the wrong place? In my personal case, dozens if not hundreds of times. And I have a personal anecdote, in the middle of the Swiss Alps, snowing and carrying a heavy suitcase, I sent my wife and me to the other end of town. That's a long time ago, but I'll never forget it...

This anecdote cannot happen in your daily life. Your business depends on it. Luckily your delivery people know the areas well and have no problem getting to the places. (A secret, they were lost many times before and now they have already learned 😉)

How can we better geolocate?

Very simple, following a few small formatting tricks depending on the place you want to geolocate. These are our recommendations after working with all of these countries and finding a way to be the most successful.

Argentina	Pedro Moran 5002, 1419 Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Australia	Macquarie St, 6 Sydney NSW 2000, Australia
Brasil	Rua Barão de Iguape, 681 – Liberdade, São Paulo
Chile	San Pablo 1130, Santiago, Región Metropolitana, Chile
Colombia	Carrera 14 112 96, 110111, Bogota D.c., Colombia
España	Calle de Azcona, 17, 28028, Madrid, España
USA	895, 29 Ave, San Francisco, CA 94121, United States
Mexico	Calle Tlaxcala, 151, 06100, Cuauhtemoc, CDMX, Mexico
Peru	Avenida 28 de Julio 1595, 15048 Miraflores, Peru

By following this recommendation, you will achieve much more success when it comes to geolocation, either by manually uploading your addresses or by importing them in bulk using an XLSX file.

Bonus track — Importing GPS coordinates on Highway

The world of geocoding changes radically when we have the GPS coordinates of the places we want to go to. In this case, the concept is called reverse-geocoding, or reverse georeferencing, which tries to convert GPS coordinates into a street and a number. This work is very simple on the part of map systems and the error is usually minimal.

The good news is that you can use GPS coordinates directly on the Highway platform and our system will do the reverse geocoding for you.

We simply have to copy the coordinates following this format:

Latitude, longitude
41.387021, 2.170123

It is important to keep the decimal separator with the dot and the separator between latitude and longitude with a comma. This is the Anglo-Saxon format, which we will find in most map systems (Google Maps, HERE, OSM,...).

We hope it was useful and we look forward to seeing you next week!

Sant Jordi is always a special day, books, roses, queues and people, lots of people. Everyone is out on the street, enjoying a magical day for both children and adults. It is the day of the year when the most books are sold, 7.5% of annual sales In the city of Barcelona.

This year will be special. We'll have to spend it at home, enjoying a good read, our recommendation for these days The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. This year we will save ourselves the hassle of Las Ramblas and we will have to buy the roses online. Without a doubt, a special year.

We want to take advantage of this important date to see the success of initiatives that, in a normal year, would hardly have achieved such overwhelming success.

One of our customers Santjordiacasa.com is using Highway as a tool to optimize the distribution of roses on such a special date as Sant Jordi.

Thanks to the power of the Highway route planner, they have been able to grow in deliveries and reach customers that would have been impossible for them before.

Like them, hundreds of other customers are entering a world such as home delivery. A channel that had often been completely forgotten. Thanks, or unfortunately, COVID-19 has forced the launch of new marketing channels such as Ecommerce and its own distribution and home delivery.

We are seeing this in our traditional customers, distribution companies to the HORECA channel that are converting to home distributors overnight.

Pastry shops such as Cropics they were able to deliver all the Easter monkeys in record time and have the detail of leaving a monkey at my wife's grandmother's house 😁. These types of details make being able to help small businesses make you proud of the work you do and of seeing how you can help more people around you.

We are in a very difficult time for many companies and families. There is little help to get through this crisis and reaching those people we can help is always a challenge. I encourage you to share our story, the story of our users and customers, companies that are embarking on a new adventure, delivery. Without experience, without processes, but with a desire to fight and face the corona, you are not alone.

We won this together.

The distribution on demand is an industry that is growing at a very high speed. New companies appear every day, especially in the market for food, beverages and deliveries of perishable products. And the competition is wild. Efficiency is a key metric in the “I want it all and I want it now” era and the most critical part is what happens from when a new order is placed until it is delivered.

Today I want to focus on the problem of sending new orders, that is, how to decide which courier service the order should be assigned to when an order enters the system. This is because the dispatch today is not addressed systematically. Optimizing the dispatch system can minimize delivery time and improve customer satisfaction.

The operating paradigm of companies that deliver on demand can be divided into two different types:

1. Operations based on a single warehouse are those operations focused on a single tank. This warehouse has several dealers and the programming is done once to obtain an order list; usually grouping orders by area. Amazon Prime is a good example of this paradigm.
2. Operations based on multiple warehouses are those operations that rely on choosing the order in one of the multiple warehouses and delivering it to a customer. In this case, the delivery people are scattered around the city, and once a new order arrives, it is assigned through a shipping process to one of the multiple delivery people. Companies such as Uber, Just Eat, Delivero, etc. operate this way.

The problem of dispatching is solved more or less satisfactorily in the first scenario thanks to the possibility of linking together a list of deliveries and considering it as a Traveling Seller Problem (Traveling Salesman Problem) with some pre-clustering restrictions (OK, I know that TSP is an expensive problem, but... come on, it's about Amazon).

On the contrary, in the second scenario, it is not so clear that the problem is being optimally addressed. How can a new incoming order be added to a running scenario? There are tons of variables to consider:

• Can the courier make multiple collections before starting to deliver?
• Can an already assigned order be reassigned to another courier service?
• Do all orders have the same priority? (for example, all orders must be delivered no later than 30 minutes after placing them)
  Do orders need to be delivered by a particular vehicle?
• ...

Modeling this scenario can be quite challenging, and that's why SmartMonkey has been working on this problem for a while. We call our solution Online Programming Optimization Model (OSOM) (Yes, branding isn't one of our strengths 😅, but phonetically it sounds like “incredible” and that's pretty fun). OSOM can model business restrictions and find a feasible solution to the dispatching problem.

In the simulation below, we have modeled a world where:

• A courier service can be assigned multiple pickups and deliveries at the same time
• and the first next service of each messaging service is fixed and cannot be reassigned in subsequent iterations.

The visualization contains twenty iterations of the world divided into two steps:

1. New incoming services are marked in gray.

2. Services are dynamically assigned to deliverers to optimize overall delivery time.