BungkusIT uses Amazon QLDB and VeriDoc Global’s ISV technology to improve the customer and delivery agent experience

Blockchain is a versatile, shared digital ledger that finds applications in various industries, including banking, automotive, healthcare, manufacturing, and logistics. It offers end-to-end solutions by enabling automation, transparency, security, and cost-effective organizational systems that increase overall efficiency.

In shipping operations, ledger technologies like blockchain brings a paradigm shift in the system by making it reliable and secure because the data in blocks can’t be forged or altered. It also allows traceability with automation, eliminating inefficiencies and enhancing the work’s speed significantly. Blockchain also promises to lower costs because it reduces paperwork through intelligent smart contracts and shared distributed ledgers. Every year, logistics businesses incur a loss of over 50 million dollars due to stolen cargo, mislabeling, and shipment inefficiencies.

Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (Amazon QLDB) is a purpose-built ledger database that provides a complete and cryptographically verifiable history of all changes made to your application data. Amazon QLDB’s features make it a natural fit for system-of-record applications—those for which data integrity, completeness, and verifiability are critical. For example, in the supply chain and logistics space, an application built on Amazon QLDB would have the entire history of changes, such as movement between carriers and across borders, available for query and analysis.

In this post, we show how one logistics firm, BungkusIT, used Amazon QLDB to implement a centralized, transparent platform for inter-industry communication with an immutable and cryptographically verifiable transaction log. VeriDoc Global’s ISV solution integrated Amazon QLDB to help BungkusIT reduce the time and money lost every year due to inefficiencies in the system like mislabeling, stolen goods, and merchant disputes.

About BungkusIT

BungkusIT is a delivery operation organization that provides quick, efficient, and cost-effective delivery solutions through its mobile application. It’s the fourth-largest delivery app in Malaysia with over a million users and over 50,000 delivery agents. They are headquartered in Kuala Lumpur.

The customers of BungkusIT use the services of its delivery agents, famously known as the BungkusIT Roadies, to run errands for them such as posting parcels, making grocery and dinner deliveries, or picking up last-minute birthday gifts. Customers can select different vehicles for delivery services, from cars and bikes to trucks, vans, and lorries.

The co-founders of BungkusIT created the organization to fulfill three primary purposes:

• Provide an affordable on-demand delivery service for anything to anywhere
• Empower low-income individuals in Malaysia with job opportunities and financial assistance
• Support local small-sized and medium-sized businesses by making innovation more accessible to them

They have helped over 3,000 Small And Medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) expand and digitize their operations to meet the daily needs of customers.

Business challenges faced by BungkusIT

Although the idea was a success, the Roadies, customers, and management of BungkusIT faced several challenges. These issues rose because of low transparency, lack of traceability and security, and a manual acknowledgment system.

The administration faced a lot of delivery rejections, and the data collection system was unreliable. In addition, the client demands for the secure delivery of confidential items were not being met. BungkusIT needed a safe way to deliver high-value objects, like expensive items or sealed documents with utmost security and verification.

How VeriDoc Global’s ISV solution helped BungkusIT

VeriDoc Global offers a secure blockchain-based, tamper-proof QR code tracking system.

BungkusIT saw the potential in using ledger technologies in their products and services. So they incorporated Amazon QLDB technology combined with VeriDoc Global’s solution to gain automation and security.

Aliasgar Abbas, the Regional Director of VeriDoc Global, stated that blockchain implementation is the “ideal resolution that can be used as a dependable point of reference and verification.”

Instead of opting for a public blockchain, BungkusIT chose Amazon QLDB as a centralized ledger.

How does BungkusIT Amazon QLDB implementation work?

BungkusIT implemented Amazon QLDB in their platform through an easy, secured QR code verification technique. They confirm each action by registering a digital handshake, marking where and when exactly the item changed hands. The solution consists of a Rider mobile application, which is installed on the Roadies’ smartphones, and a customer-facing mobile application, which is installed by BungkusIT customers.

When the Roadies arrive at their destination, the Rider mobile application automatically generates a QR code, which is embedded with a hash containing all the relevant information regarding the shipment, such as collection point, drop-off location, and delivery time. The customer acknowledges the parcel receipt by scanning the QR code and the Rider mobile application also takes a photograph of the package being delivered. The entire process serves as an acknowledgement of delivery and captures the entire of trail of the transaction from start to finish. The QR code is also printed on an electronic receipt that is issued on the customer mobile application and can be used for verification.

The following diagram illustrates the architecture of this solution and services used.

All the captured transaction details are stored in Amazon QLDB, which serves as an immutable ledger. VeriDoc Global uses its API to integrate with Amazon QLDB and the existing system quickly in the following four steps:

1. The solution uses Elastic Load Balancing to automatically distribute the incoming mobile application traffic across API servers that are hosted on auto scaling Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances.
2. The Roadies mobile application connects to the API servers to obtain significant details, like the pick-up and drop-off location, delivery photo, and more.
3. This information is first converted to an electronic receipt in PDF format and stored in an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket.
4. The VeriDoc Global API generates the QR code, which is stored in Amazon QLDB along with a secure hash of the receipt stored in the S3 bucket, as well as the S3 bucket object URL. The transactional data is also stored in an Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) database for analytics and reporting purposes.

During the verification process, the QR code on the receipt is scanned and VeriDoc Global’s patented technology compares the receipt’s hash with the hash stored in Amazon QLDB for authentication and end-user validation.

The solution also uses Amazon CloudWatch to continuously monitor BungkusIT applications. This provides the network and infrastructure team with actionable insights that help them to respond to system-wide performance changes and optimize resource utilization.

VeriDoc Global made it easy for BungkusIT’s technical team to embrace Ledger technology. They have an easy-to-use API that doesn’t require prior knowledge of Blockchain or any learning curve. The whole implementation process took just 3–4 weeks to complete.

– Hatim Mustafa, CMO at BungkusIT

Conclusion

The logistics industry is vast and complex, and is always on the lookout for new technologies that can help them create efficient processes, cut administrative costs, and improve transparency.

In this post, we showed how BungkusIT uses Amazon QLDB to improve security, transparency, and easy verifiable tracking of shipments and easily share data with all stakeholders across their logistics network to decrease the risk of disputes.

To learn more about BungkusIT, please visit their website. We also encourage you to visit the Veridoc Global website, our ISV technology partner, to explore various use cases based on their patented verification solution and learn more about their other products.

For hands-on experience with Amazon QLDB, you can reference the Amazon QLDB workshops and explore the Developer Guide.

About the Authors

Ali Asgar Abbas is the Regional Director (SE ASIA) at Veridoc Global. Ali has over 20 years of experience in the IT industry as a project leader and solutions architect. Prior to VeriDoc Global he led several major systems integration projects for major government & private organizations in Malaysia such as TNB, MCMC, BNM, Shell and AmBank. Ali leads the VeriDoc Global office in Malaysia and manages a team of developers working on blockchain based applications and solutions. Ali graduated from the University of Bombay with a Bachelor of Accounting and Finance. He also graduated from the National Institute of Information Technology with a Diploma in Computer Science.

Charles Okochu is the Global Business Development Manager for Amazon Managed Blockchain and Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB). He is based out of New York City and has a background in Financial Services, Blockchain, Digital Assets and is passionate about how blockchain technologies can transform the technology landscape. In his spare time, Charles enjoys running, playing and coaching soccer, and spending time with friends and family.