Presentation: TweetHow Shutl delivers even faster using the Neo4J, the Graph Database

Shutl is the London startup that's revolutionising e-commerce delivery. We connect a fragmented same-day carrier network to national retailers, allowing them to offer delivery in minutes, not days. UK partners include Argos, Oasis, Warehouse, Schuh, Maplin, Hotel Chocolat and The Entertainer. 2013 saw Shutl launching in the US, and in November we were acquired by eBay, working as the logistics team within eBay Local.The first version of our product was built on top of a traditional relational database and as we grew, the cracks started to show - our physical deliveries were often quicker than our database queries! We replatformed and placed Neo4j, a graph database, at the core of our system. In this talk, we touch on the key differences between relational databases and graph databases (which, ironically, are much more relational!), and discuss in detail how we utilise this technology both to model our complex domain but also to gain insights into our data and continually improve our offering.

In 2014 our story continues as we expand to 30 cities in the US, launch with major retailers on both sides of the ocean and continually make same-day delivery more accessible with better availability and lower prices. Product advances, Neo4j and graph databases are the backbone of everything we're doing.