How SAMEDAY transformed logistics and became a regional leader in last mile

The Market

In Romania, the e-commerce boom and shifting consumer expectations have placed significant pressure on the courier and express delivery sector, driving growth while simultaneously presenting new challenges. Key obstacles include inadequate rural infrastructure, geo-coding issues, and increasing costs and delivery times. To overcome these challenges, it is essential to focus on strategic investments in technological innovation and process optimization, which can enhance efficiency and address these bottlenecks effectively.

In Europe, the market is mature but fiercely competitive. Global giants like DHL and FedEx compete with regional leaders like DPD, alongside disruptors like Amazon’s in-house logistics network. Advanced technologies, like AI and analytics, are driving efficiency, from demand forecasting to optimized delivery routes.

Sustainability is another critical factor. From electric fleets to carbon-neutral shipping, companies must align with regulations and consumer expectations. Cross-border logistics, while simplified by the EU’s single market, still face complexities in regulations and customs, creating opportunities for innovative solutions.

For this reason, any logistics company that wants to continue to maintain competitiveness must focus on:

• Scalable technology as the key to sustainable growth

• Customer-centricity and the rise of Out-of-Home deliveries

• Security at all steps

The Challenges

SAMEDAY’s journey to becoming a leader in logistics in the region was not without hurdles. Here’s why:

• During peak periods like Black Friday, the company’s infrastructure struggled to handle traffic surges, risking delays and potential downtime.

• Expansion across three countries added further complexity, which required solutions tailored to diverse customer needs and cross-border logistics.

• Lack of modern delivery options, such as same-day or scheduled deliveries, mobile app deliveries, real-time parcel tracking, OOH networks

• With its growing digital footprint, safeguarding sensitive data while ensuring compliance with industry security standards became critical.

• Operational inefficiencies, such as manual workflows and delays in driver-dispatcher communication, slowed delivery processes and impacted customer satisfaction.

• Timely and safe delivery of parcels (e.g. avoiding parcel damage, incomplete deliveries, and manual workflows) was proving to be a hurdle impacting customer experience and operational costs.

The Solutions

To address these challenges, we took  a tailored, incremental approach designed to revolutionize SAMEDAY’’s logistics operations. Hence, below, we’ll explore each factor contributing to SAMEDAY’s success.

Core logistics management system

To support rapid growth and increasing operational complexity, together with SAMEDAY we reimagined a powerful logistics management platform designed to streamline every step of their parcel delivery process, driving business efficiency and contributing to SAMEDAY’s hyperscale ambitions.

At the heart of the solution was real-time visibility and control over parcel operations. The platform enables SAMEDAY to manage everything from pickup to delivery through a single interface, improving decision-making and response times. Route optimization and automated workflows significantly reduced delivery times and operational costs, while advanced tracking features improved customer satisfaction and reduced support requests.

The system also brought flexibility through configurable pricing plans, automated invoicing, and integration with financial tools like SAP. This helped Sameday improve cash flow management and streamline COD (Cash-on-Delivery) operations.

Key modules such as warehouse management and microzone-based delivery assignment have enabled smarter resource allocation and reduced manual overhead. With the Android apps for couriers and warehouse staff, field operations became faster and more accurate.

By digitizing and automating core logistics workflows, this custom software solution allowed SAMEDAYto scale efficiently, improve service quality, and maintain full control over its growing network of deliveries, couriers, and partners.

Out-of-home deliveries reimagined

Key components of the out-of-home (OOH) delivery ecosystem include the locker infrastructure and PUDO (Pick-Up Drop-Off) points, which facilitate convenient parcel collection and returns at various locations. This system streamlines interactions between three key players:

1. Customers – who collect or drop off parcels efficiently.

2. Couriers – who deliver and pick up parcels from PUDO points.

3. Service Agents – who manage and oversee transactions via an integrated interface.

Concretely, SAMEDAY worked closely with Zitec to design a comprehensive easybox lockers network, expanding SAMEDAY’s delivery options and catering to customer preferences for flexible, self-service pickups. Thanks to this solution, SAMEDAY deployed more than 8,000 lockers across three countries increasing delivery success rates and cutting down on failed attempts.

• The system provides real-time locker availability, helping couriers optimize routes and making deliveries faster and more efficient.

• With real-time tracking, service agents can optimize parcel distribution, prevent locker congestion, and balance workloads among couriers.

• Customers benefit from instant updates about their parcel’s status, including when it has been delivered and which easybox locker it’s stored in.

By tapping into OOH solutions, SAMEDAY succeeded in streamlining logistics, making sending and receiving parcels more convenient, all the while improving return processes and giving customers a hassle-free and more reliable experience.

Scalability that sustains operations with Kubernetes

Handling peak periods like Black Friday involves a scalable infrastructure that can dynamically manage surges in parcel volume. Zitec reengineered SAMEDAY’s infrastructure using Kubernetes to meet these demands.

The Kubernetes deployment now allows SAMEDAY to process over 1 Million parcels in peak days while maintaining 99.98% uptime even during traffic spikes. This way, SAMEDAY can provide uninterrupted service and consistently strengthen customer trust.

The modern container-based architecture, built on Microsoft Azure, allowed for dynamic resource allocation. This helps ensure optimal performance without overspending on infrastructure, while also reducing maintenance overhead.

“Migrating to a container-based architecture helps us scale up and down individual parts of the ecosystem depending on the area that is more active during a certain time of the day, whether it is the warehouse, the last mile, or the easybox team, etc. This is an important technical advancement as this way we can use the allocated hardware resources to their highest potential and get the maximum efficiency for what we are paying in terms of infrastructure.”

— Logistics Director Zitec & Product Owner Movacy

Better security with Microsoft Sentinel

As SAMEDAY’s digital operations expanded, we implemented Microsoft Sentinel to provide real-time threat detection and response. On the business front, this safeguards sensitive logistics data and reinforces compliance with industry standards. Microsoft Sentinel introduced automated incident response, which streamlines the detection and mitigation of potential threats across SAMEDAY’s growing ecosystem.

For SAMEDAY, the monitoring system built by Zitec, powered by Microsoft Sentinel and integrated with Falco for runtime security on Kubernetes has so far processed 300 million events (logs) monthly and generated over 500 alerts.

Proactive monitoring minimizes disruptions, which means that seamless operations continue to remain that way.

A user-friendly mobile app

To align the company with modern consumer standards, we developed a custom mobile app that revolutionized SAMEDAY’s delivery operations. Here’s why:

Mobile-app-sameday-preview-830px
The app puts users in complete control of their parcels, every step of the way. From tracking deliveries and managing addresses to making payments and scheduling pickups, it offers a seamless, user-friendly experience tailored to individual needs. Available on both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, it’s the ultimate tool for staying connected to your deliveries, anytime, anywhere.

From a user perspective, the app’s features, including real-time parcel tracking, a user-friendly interface, and flexible delivery scheduling, are all state-of-the-art. With over 5 million downloads, the app became a key tool in boosting customer satisfaction.

“Our partnership with Zitec has truly been a journey of innovation for our customers. The launch of the SAMEDAY mobile App represents a significant milestone in redefining how our customers engage with their parcel deliveries. This app doesn’t just provide information; it’s a flexible and empowering tool that places everything our customers need right at their fingertips. From live tracking that offers unparalleled visibility into their parcels’ journeys to the convenience of redirecting or rescheduling deliveries, the app brings unprecedented control to our recipients.”

— Dragoș Bărbulescu, CTO, SAMEDAY

AI-powered damage detection POC

We worked on an AI-powered proof of concept (POC) to address parcel damage, a key challenge in logistics. For SAMEDAY’s business goals, this system aims to reduce the cost and inconvenience of damaged goods, improving overall customer satisfaction. With a detection accuracy of 99.7%, it has the potential to minimize returns and processing delays.

This POC demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of using AI for damage detection in parcel sorting, setting a good foundation for integrating AI-powered tools in the logistics ecosystem. The solution proves the potential for further automation and operational savings for SAMEDAY.

The Impact

So far, SAMEDAY expanded its footprint across three countries and strengthened its market position as a trusted and reliable partner. From a logistics provider in 2017 to today’s leader in the field, the company has come a long way, proving its vision of sustained innovation alongside Zitec.

“The synergy we’ve built with Zitec so far has significantly contributed to SAMEDAY’s performance, and the technologies we’ve developed together have been a key part of our success and growth. Zitec has gained valuable expertise in this field, which it aims to leverage in opening new opportunities for logistics companies in the region looking to adopt modern solutions to meet market demands.”

— Lucian Băltaru, CEO of SAMEDAY

Building on this successful collaboration and the logistics expertise gained through our partnership with SAMEDAY, in 2024 we launched Movacy, an innovative, end-to-end software solution tailored for postal companies, couriers, and logistics operators.